While Batman has had a large number of spin off games (mainly from the film franchise) and Superman had a rather poor coin-op there has been to date only one Justice League game on the 16bit home consoles. Titled Justice League Task Force the game appeared on the SNES and Sega Megadrive (called Genesis in some parts of the world). Like the later X-Men and Marvel Superheroes games from Capcom (producers of Streetfighter) it was basically a two dimensional beat-them-up.

Released in 1995 by Acclaim the format of the game was based on six heroes and three villains, each with their own special abilities and motions.The six characters were represented with what we would think of as limited attacks relative to today’s Teken or Soul Blade games. Aquaman was limited to a "Water Spray" and variants on punches and kicks, Batman at least had his Batarang but even he was limited to the rest of his moves being kick variants. Things look better for the Flash with four superspeed based attacks (including "Tornado" and "Hyperspeed Uppercut") and with Superman the player got a full choice including flight, heat vision and the old hold back of "Freeze Breath". Old Green Arrow was relegated back to his old trick arrows with Ice, Flame and Bomb Arrows making a come back from the old stories. At least Wonder Woman got her "Lasso" and "Bracelet Shield".

For the villains we had Darkseid as the big boss complete with "Omega Effect Eye Beams", alongside him were old JLA villain Despero (the L-ron/Despero appearance) and for some unknown reason (possibly to introduce more female characters) the Cheetah. As with all games we were treated to various different backdrops including the top of the Daily Planet building, the Gotham skyline and an underwater Atlantis.

Visually the game was a wonder to look at. However a real problem appeared when you actually played the game. Almost every review that I have come across described the animation as the worst point -with poor frame rates, jerky motion and at times sluggish controller. Looking back this Justice League game was too much too soon, it would take the emergence of next generation Playstation and Sega Saturn technology to bring superheroes to the home console market.

All in all the game could best be described as average through it probably has it’s fans. That was 1995. Recently I have been getting rumours that a new Justice League was in the works, this was backed up by one line in the Wizard JLA Special where Rubin Diaz refers to a background work on a computer game. This was ages ago and I considered no more about it until recently when I stumbled onto new articles from the JAMMA - Japan Amusement Machinery Manufacturers Association (one of the premier arcade machine organisation in the world) November 1997 Show. The first report had one line saying that the best playing game in the show was "Legion of Heroes (Justice League in US, Capcom)".

I’m not getting my hopes up over this game as I can find nothing else to tie it to the Justice League. If I get any new news I let the reader know.

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