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Lego Batman, like all Lego games, is absolutely loaded with references and easter eggs. As well as recreating memorable scenes from the Dark Knight's storied history, it is packed with geeky, niche in-jokes. One such easter egg requires a Commodore 64 to actually make sense of.
As pointed out by Cabelsa over on TikTok, when Batman analyses something on his computer in-game, a short splash screen pops up to signify that the computer is booting up. Turns out that screen isn't just for show, as Cabelsa points out: "Did you see that? Did you catch that? Back up. That, my friends, looks like Commodore 64 BASIC."
Effectively, the 1982 8-bit Commodore 64 (otherwise known as the C64) required its users to know some code in order to get it to function, and BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is the language used for the machine. Think of the modern Terminal you find in Windows, imagine having to use that all the time, and you have a decent idea of how the C64 functioned.
Well, if you bust out your C64 or type the two pages of code into a C64 coding emulator, it puts a small yellow bat symbol on screen and makes it float around. It's a simple effect for quite a lot of work, but still a neat easter egg nonetheless.
Now that you've seen it work in Cabelsa's video, it may not be worth all the effort of actually trying it yourself, but part of the bit is how much effort was put into just this tiny portion of the game. It's an animation that will take a few seconds to watch, and yet even typing in the code will take significantly longer (I know, as I tried).
@cabelsa this incredible lego batman × commodre 64 easter egg is super nerds only (me)
♬ original sound - cabel
But then, that's part of the joy of the game. I've played the opening hours, and it's very silly and self-referential. Our Jody Macgregor had a great time with the game, giving it 83% in his review. He says, "This is an Arkham game in all but name. In some ways, the fact it's Lego makes it better."
It gets a free pass to be more goofy and take itself less seriously than the traditional Arkham games. It has a reference to Michael Cain's "Batman Begin" Tweet, a ton of references to the Batman animated series, and even literal easter eggs scattered around the world. At least they don't require coding knowledge to find.
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