Adventures of Batman and robin technical questions

I was just playing Adventures of Batman and Robin and I noticed a few really cool effects which I'm not exactly sure about how Clockwork Tortoise pulled them off. First, how are the light beams from the henchmen's flashlights (1:40 in the video) handled? They don't look like the usual blurred mesh effect done for light beams and they even cast light onto the ground depending on how they're pointed. Highlight mode maybe? Second, how are the weird, multicolored triangles shot by the robots done (1:02:32 in the video)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onFnV_swG2I

Dunno how exactly, but former Clockwork employee employee Chris George, who was interviewed a couple of years back had this to say about the game's graphical fireworks:

All of the technical achievements in Batman and Robin were due to the programming prowess of John O’Brien, the lead programmer at Clockwork. His technical abilities actually drove the game design. He would make some amazing effect, and we would find a way to showcase it in the game. I think half of the bosses in the game were initially his idea, because he would think of some cool effect.

Flashlights are done using Highlight, just a genesis hardware feature. The triangles are just polygons rendered in real-time.

What about the crazy color patterns in the triangles? Are they a plasma effect like the ones in C64 and Amiga demos?