In a few years, the title Batman: The Brave and the Bold will be come synonymous with the future live-action feature film that will bring the Dark Knight into the new shared DC cinematic universe. For a certain generation though, Batman: The Brave and the Bold will be fondly remembered as an animated series that saw a silver age style Batman wonderfully voiced by Diedrich Bader team-up with heroes from across DC Comics’ vast catalog of characters.

During the series run, it was adapted into 2 unique video games, both from WayForward Technologies. One was produced for the mega successful Nintendo DS portable, while the other was built for Nintendo’s equally lucrative Wii platform.

Earlier this summer, I had the chance to speak to Adam Tierney from WayForward who worked on Justice League Heroes: The Flash. When I reached out to Adam initially, he informed me that he also worked on the Wii version of Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame and was more than willing to talk about it. After a brief refresher with the game, I took Adam up on his offer and shot off some questions about one of the better Batman games without the word “Arkham” in the title.

COMIC BOOK VIDEO GAMES: The talented folks at WayForward have exceptional skills with 2-D animation. What was it like applying those talents to the style of Batman: The Brave and the Bold?

ADAM TIERNEY: It was great! Most of the games we’d produced up until that point were in low-resolution pixel artwork, so it was fun (and challenging) to produce high-resolution 2D artwork for the game. We worked very closely with Warner Bros. Animation, and even worked off their model sheets to ensure characters looked 100% identical compared to the TV series.

CBVG: You’re credited as sole writer on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. This is a very funny game, but it also has important lessons for the younger crowd like respecting your elders in the Hawkman stages and managing your temper with Guy Gardner. Describe your process in balancing humor with important morals. Did you get any input from the writers of the show?

TIERNEY: We presented outlines for the plots, and at least one episode got swapped out because it was too similar to a film around that time. From there, I think I just dove into the full script, and I don’t recall DC or WB having too much feedback for revision.

CBVG: If you look closely, there’s hidden jokes in the background environments. How much fun was it to squeeze those in?

TIERNEY: That was something we added pretty late in development, but was a lot of fun. We had some obvious nods, like a Red Hood cloak and hood in an Ace Chemicals-like location. One of the more obscure additions you can see in the comic book store epilogue with Bat-Mite is a cardboard standee of Shade the Changing Man, one of my favorite DC characters ever.

CBVG: Batman: The Brave and the Bold features the talent from the show like Diedrich Bader and Will Friedle among many others. Did you get to sit in on any recording sessions with the cast or work with any other creatives from Warner Bros. Animation?

TIERNEY: Yes, I sat in on all the sessions, which I remember taking about two weeks because of how much dialog needed to be recorded. The legendary Andrea Romano directed all the actors, and I would chime in when I needed a different take (usually for gameplay purposes).

CBVG: Though it’s a 2-D game, Batman: The Brave and the Bold blends 3-D backgrounds with character models what look like they were taking directly from animation cels. How did you go about accomplishing this?

TIERNEY: The game is technically all 3D, although the backgrounds are polygonal and the characters and playfield are flat 2D. The game engine allowed us to keep gameplay classic and flat for the platforming, but still have 3D far backgrounds to add a little visual depth to each scene.

CBVG: Batman: The Brave and the Bold marked the videogame debut of Blue Beetle and Jaime Reyes. Jaime uses his scarab powered armor to create various weapons like energy blasters and blades in combat. Much of his dialogue is him being self-aware of being in a video game. How did you go about writing for Blue Beetle and designing their toolset?

TIERNEY: I didn’t know that! That’s very cool. I love Jaime, he was one of the more fun characters to write. We mostly just kept in line with how he was written in the TV series, and how Will Friedle performed him. But since he was one of the funnier characters in the game, we did allow ourselves to almost break the fourth wall once or twice.

CBVG: Apart from Blue Beetle, you also partner with Hawkman, Robin and the Green Lantern, Guy Gardner. How did you decide what characters fit each “episode”? Did you have a personal favorite to work on?

TIERNEY: Guy Gardner, hands down. One of my favorite DC characters, and just so much fun to write for. I think the series works best when Batman’s partner gets on his nerves, and no one does that like Guy Gardner. As for why we chose each character, it was mostly trying to come up with a nice variety of partners for Batman to interact with – those who annoy him, those who look up to him, those he looks up to, etc.

CBVG: Batman: The Brave and the Bold is a 2-D action platformer, though the tools you collect later in the game encourage you to replay earlier levels for hidden secrets. Was there a point in the design process where backtracking played a larger part, or was it always just used to encourage replay value?

TIERNEY: That was always planned, and something we aim for in every WayForward game. It’s always a balance between having content that most players will see, while saving enough content to encourage reply, too.

CBVG: The source material skews younger, but it’s also a show that people of all ages can enjoy. When building this game, did you try to balance the level of difficulty for older and younger players?

TIERNEY: Yeah, to a degree. The game’s core combat is inspired by Double Dragon II. The first Arkham Asylum game came out mid-development too, so we incorporated a little bit of that (such as dashing to enemies with a punch). If you’re an older or more advanced gamer, you can pull off longer combos, but we ultimately needed the game to be playable (and beatable) by pretty young gamers.

CBVG: Provided you have a copy of the DS game, you can link the 2 versions of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. When did you decide that you wanted the DS and Wii games to talk to one another?

TIERNEY: At the start of development. I love how this feature came out (shoutout to WayForward programmer Daniel Kellogg for getting the two systems communicating in just a few days). Bat-Mite makes the console game practically unplayable, but in a mostly fun way.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bat-Mite was voiced by the late Paul Reubens. This game marked one of his few video game roles.

CBVG: This is a gorgeous game, but unlike say, A Boy and His Blob which was at one time a Wii exclusive, Batman: The Brave and the Bold never found a home anywhere else. Were there ever any plans to bring this to another device, and did you ever consider allowing players to use a pro or GameCube controller?

TIERNEY: I would love to see it adapted to other consoles, but since the show is no longer airing on TV, and there have been more recent iterations of TV Batman, it might be a challenge to get such a port approved (as opposed to something like Blob, which is still the most recent iteration of those characters). If WB was interested, we would love to port the game to modern consoles, though, or even work on new game episodes.

CBVG: Blue Beetle is the first character in the new DCU, Guy Gardner and a Hawk person are in the upcoming Superman: Legacy and Batman’s debut will be in a film with the same title as this game. Does it feel that Batman: The Brave and the Bold is weirdly prophetic, or is that just me?

TIERNEY:  I’m very excited to see what James Gunn does with the upcoming DC films. BTBATB was a celebration of the lesser-known heroes and villains, and I think it’s smart for the DCU to now start dabbling with the same roster, as opposed to every film just rotating the same handful of the most popular villains and allies.