There has yet to be a great Superman game. In fact, there has yet to be one that I would even call “good” without some serious qualifications. The reasons why are a bit harder to pin down. I mean, Superman is an A-tier license, a universally-recognized character, with over 70 years of material to draw from. Surely, at some point, a capable developer would put in a suitable effort to make a great game, right? Batman is the obvious point of comparison here: how is it that Batman has produced several great games, and several more decent ones (albeit, with a few stinkers along the way), while even the best Superman games are just sorta-okay? Stuff like Batman (NES), Return of the Joker, Batman Returns (SNES), Adventures of Batman & Robin (both the Genesis and SNES versions), and of course the Arkham series all blow away any Superman game.
The most common explanation is that Superman is simply a boring character. His popularity and relevance have faded in recent years, and devs accordingly regard him a second-string character who is, at best, an afterthought compared to Batman, who is the real prize when obtaining the rights to DC characters. While this explanation may have merit, I also think it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: devs treat Superman as a boring character not worthy of their time, and so we get boring, half-assed games.
I think that, perhaps, an even bigger problem is that it’s difficult to apply Superman’s abilities to conventional game design. As I see it, there are two major problems that Superman, the character, presents to any would-be developer:
1. He’s invincible (Kryptonite and magic notwithstanding.) The usual way to make a game is to threaten the player with hostile enemies; the play must always stay on their toes to avoid being shot, stabbed, eaten, etc., by the various bad guys populating the world. But these guys shouldn’t be a threat to Superman at all. In fact, combat shouldn’t even be the focus of a Superman game, unless it’s involving some cosmic-level menace. Superman’s self-preservation should not be in doubt; instead, the challenge should revolve around his ability to prevent collateral damage. Superman is a character who concerns himself with the big picture; he single-handedly averts disasters as they happen. Civilian casualties should be the main thing to avoid, not damage to Superman himself.
2. He can fly. A standard, linear, level-based game just doesn’t make sense for Superman. One of his defining features is that he can go anywhere, whenever he wants, in a very short time. Open-world is the obvious fit for him, but most open-world games, particularly those set in cities, don’t give you unrestricted flight abilities—Saints Row 4 being somewhat of an exception (though full flight is only granted in the expansion.) After all, a whole lot more things can break when the player can move in three dimensions at will.
Many developers can’t be arsed to think outside the box to make a game suiting Superman’s abilities, so they just shove him into a standard action game where he can be punched to death and can’t fly (or, at least, can only fly when the game says so.) Let’s take a look at the history of Superman games to see how various devs have responded to the challenges that Superman poses to conventional game design. You probably know where this is going, but let’s look at each game anyway.
Superman
1979
Atari 2600
Developer: Atari | Publisher: Atari
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USwj5LfUTPw
In his video game debut, Superman’s goals are twofold: repair the bridge that Lex’s henchmen blow up, and then carry the henchmen to jail. The game is, in several respects, truer to the Superman mythos than many of the games that followed: Superman can fly to any location in the gameworld at any time; the gameplay emphasizes disaster-management over combat; it includes both the Superman and Clark Kent identities in gameplay; and, since the only enemies are a few street goons, Superman cannot die or be damaged in any way. Now, I won’t oversell the game’s appeal for you: it came out in 1979, and is boring, primitive garbage today. It is definitely not the best Superman game. But on the other hand, if we’re talking about the most important Superman game, this one wins by a landslide. It lays claim to a spate of firsts in video game history:
-First console game based on a non-video-game property.
-First game of any kind based on a comic book character.
-First game in which you can freely explore an environment spanning more than one screen, in real time. It is arguably the first open-world game.
-First game in which the player can pick up and carry objects in real time.
-First game to feature a scripted narrative event during gameplay (Lex’s henchmen blowing up the bridge.) That’s right: it did the Half-Life thing 19 years before Half-Life.
-First game with a pause function (using a switch on the 2600 console.)
-Lastly, the game was based on early code for Adventure, which came out a bit later; therefore, Superman should rightly be considered the first action-adventure game.
Reviews:
Superman: The Game
1985
Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, ZX Spectrum
Developer: First Star Software | Publisher: First Star Software
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K2rRB0B7NE
Superman never actually walks in this game; he is always in flight. This is a remarkably varied game for its era, featuring six gameplay modes: a top-down static-screen view, in which you fly around and rescue civilians; a vertical scroller that scrolls down, in which you shoot through barriers to hit Darkseid at the bottom of the screen (similar to Gorf); a pseudo-3D view in which Superman rotates around the screen and must shoot a core off in the distance (much like Tempest or Gyruss); a 3D rail sequence where Darkseid throws a barrage of obstacles that Superman must avoid (pretty much the inverse of Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom); a side-scrolling level in which Superman is chased by Darkseid and must activate various switches and force fields to stop him (almost the inverse of Laser Gates on the 2600); and a side-view section where Superman must block fireballs from reaching the cities at the bottom of the screen (like Kaboom on the 2600.) Also, the intercutting between the overhead map and the action stages brings to mind David Crane’s Ghostbusters game, released on C64 the previous year. Although it’s a pretty well-made game, there’s not much reason to play it now unless you absolutely must play every Superman game, since the various segments, though numerous, are all very simple.
Oddly, this game isn’t listed on Mobygames yet, so I wasn’t able to retrieve reviews for it, though I know several magazines did review it.
Superman
1987
NES
Developer: Koboyuki Systems | Publisher: Kemco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-sOFozn5-8
The first truly terrible Superman game, this NES turd was produced quickly and cheaply by a contract studio for Kemco, who were a very hit-and-miss publisher to begin with. The game is a shoddy, buggy mess, complete shovelware with little in its favor except for the license. There’s 5 missions, and in each one, you have to wander through the side-scrolling open-world of Metropolis and find out what the fuck you’re supposed to do. The game is always infuriatingly cryptic, and the frustration is compounded by your inability to explore Metropolis without swarms of enemies attacking you wherever you go. Combat is complete ass—we’re talking barely functional collision detection here--so you’ll be avoiding as many enemies as possible, hoping you can find whatever you’re supposed to find before you die. Both the visuals and the music are quite poor too. Also, Superman has to take the subway quite often in this game, despite being able to, you know, fly. It does have a bit of camp value, though, namely in the chibi-style graphics and the talking Statue of Liberty (whoops, excuse me, the “Statue of Freedom”
at the start and end of the game. And for what it’s worth, the game even includes the Daily Planet in gameplay, as well as Clark Kent, both of which would be omitted in most subsequent games.
Just one review listed for this game:
Superman
1988
Arcade
Developer: Taito | Publisher: Taito
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0l6f3bmiGU
This game is one of the two most frequently cited for the title of “best Superman game”, along with Shadow of Apokolips. It’s easy to see why it’s more highly regarded than the rest: it’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s got some flash, there’s nothing broken about it, it generally feels as if someone actually gave a shit while making it, and it’s still arguably the best-looking Superman game. But it’s also the first of a line of games that treat Superman as if he were any other video game character. Rather than rethinking the gameplay to suit an invincible, flying character, Taito mostly ignored his powers and opted for a standard walk-to-the-right-and-punch-guys game. Sometimes, the game switches to flight mode, and then you punch and shoot guys in the air. The game has a two-player co-op mode, and the second player, weirdly, plays as a palette-swapped, second Superman, with no justification at all. I really wonder how this game would have turned out if, say, Konami had been at the helm, rather than Taito. It might’ve been a classic along the lines of TMNT or the Simpsons. As it is, a decent game, but a bit bland.
Again, just one review:
Superman: The Man of Steel
1989
Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amiga, Atari ST
Developer: Tynesoft | Publisher: Tynesoft (PAL), Capstone (NA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPNfRq1lBsE
The main draw of this game are the flying levels, which draw inspiration from (translation: completely rip off) Space Harrier. The Amiga version, in particular, looks quite nice in the flight segments; probably the best-looking sprite-scaler game available for it at the time. It’s also one of the few Superman games that takes inertia into account; when Superman is hit in midair during the side-scrolling levels, he jerks back through the air and must charge at his foe again. Most other games just have him do a canned animation where he blinks or whatever. In addition to the sprite-scaling and side-scrolling levels, you’ll destroy some asteroids from an overhead perspective, and then the game switches again to the behind-the-back view so you can fight a sentient space station, which serves as the boss. Another notable feature is that the game tells its story through comic-book-style interludes, which look pretty good too. All in all, one of the better Superman games, if a bit bare-bones mechanically. It’s just shooting things from a few different perspectives, but there’s nothing glaringly wrong with it (some may object to the lack of in-game music, but that’s the Amiga for you), and I’d say it’s well above the cut for an Euro-computer action game from this era.
Reviews:
Superman
1992
Genesis, Master System, Game Gear
Developer: Sunsoft (Genesis), Graftgold (SMS, GG) | Publisher: Sunsoft (Genesis), Virgin (SMS, GG)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWEKXUntL18
Remember when Brainiac had a beard? This game does. He’s the main villain this time, in a game that exists for no apparent reason other than for Sunsoft to use the DC license some more while they still had it. Sunsoft has followed a similar design to the earlier Taito game, with Superman progressing through some basic side-scrolling platformer/beat-‘em-up levels and occasionally taking flight for some shmup action. There’s nothing really wrong with the game. It’s mechanically sound, and it avoids the worst pitfalls of classic game design. However, it’s also games like this demonstrate why Sunsoft went bankrupt a few years later; it’s uninspired. Their whole 16-bit output was way below their brilliant work on the NES, and this game is emblematic of the unimaginative, assembly-line feel to their 4th-gen games. Nothing about this really feels like a Superman game; it’s just a reasonably inoffensive platformer that happens to have Superman in it. I mean, why the fuck does Superman have to walk anywhere? Why can’t he use heat vision whenever he wants? Why can some no-name mook kill him? It’s all too conventional for Superman. The game’s real saving grace is its excellent soundtrack, which might be the best thing, period, from any Superman game. The Stage 5 track, for instance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBuBaPTCGL4
P.S. Although the Master System/Game Gear versions are listed by some sources as a different game, they are pretty much straight ports of the Genesis version, and quite bad ones at that.
Reviews:
The Death and Return of Superman
1994
SNES, Genesis
Developer: Blizzard | Publisher: Sunsoft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yka30n1D6L0
A competent beat-‘em-up from Blizzard, from the days when they were still focused on consoles. Unfortunately, “competent” is the highest praise I can give it; while there’s nothing really wrong with it, you could put just about any other character in Superman’s place and the game would not be much affected—it’s a bog-standard belt-scroller that makes only token attempts to be a Superman game. Superman can be beaten up by common thugs, he requires multiple punches to knock out even the lowliest bad guys, and he can use powers like flight and heat vision only at specified times. Also, the game feels padded, with the level themes repeated a few times, and some of the bosses recycled too. The shmup levels, which seem to exist only to fill out the bullet points on the back of the box, are boring as fuck and will quickly have you wishing to get back to the punching parts.
Reviews:
Superman: The Mysterious Mr. Mist
1996
Windows, Macintosh
Developer: Inverse Ink | Publisher: Inverse Ink
It’s just an interactive comic book, but hey, the ESRB still rated it, so I should probably mention it. The storylines all taken directly from the 60s Batman/Superman Hour cartoon, as are the included video clips. I’m not really sure who was itching to relive these ancient, terrible episodes, but since this was in development just before the 90s Superman cartoon started, I guess there wasn’t much else to choose from. Couldn’t find any screenshots or footage of this, so the cover art is all you get.
Superman
1997
Game Boy
Developer: Titus | Publisher: Titus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSZ1uqJ1mSU
Here’s a really shitty Superman side-scroller from the folks who would, soon after, make the hallowed Superman 64. The game is, put simply, trash. Your only powers are flight and punching. All you do is hunt for keys, and the only enemies are some guys in coats with guns. When you get all the keys in a level, you touch some flashing blocks and the game says “WELL DONE SUPERMAN”. Then it’s off to the next level. The game is literally 10 minutes long. The sprites are ugly, the music quickly becomes grating, and even the still image of Superman that serves as the game’s ending is poorly-drawn. It’s embarrassing that this rubbish was allowed to be sold on store shelves.
No reviews here.
Superman Activity Center
1998
Windows, Macintosh
Developer: Knowledge Adventure Inc. | Publisher: Knowledge Adventure Inc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw46KJ9BgP0
A multimedia suite featuring Superman, typical of 90s CD-ROM software. Click on stuff, hear some voiceovers, look at some animations. In the days before Youtube, kids may have been entertained by this. BTW, the only gameplay video I could find was an LP; sorry.
Superman
1999
N64
Developer: Titus | Publisher: Titus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ2UzTpXfpU
Here’s a game that needs no introduction. Aside from ET, it might be the most famous bad game of all time. Sure, it’s both a terrible game and a very poor representation of Superman also, but I think several other factors have led to its particular infamy: first comes the notoriety of the license, and being based on a very well-received cartoon; second, the small size of the N64’s library and the infrequency with which games were released made bad ones stand out a lot more; and third, it released just as games media was starting to become a big deal, and review outlets were becoming more numerous, making its unanimous critical thrashing especially noticeable for people who were following games at the time; and fourth, the game actually sold pretty well at first, meaning a fair number of people got to play it. Whatever the reasons, Titus quickly became a joke after the game’s release and went bust a few years later.
Reviews:
The Multipath Adventures of Superman: Menace of Metallo
2000
Windows, Macintosh
Developer: Brilliant Digital Entertainment| Publisher: Brilliant Digital Entertainment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r9Y__-NYqk
Less a game than an interactive movie. It’s like the precursor to Telltale’s games, where you pretty much just watch a story unfold and occasionally make a decision. Not terribly exciting nowadays, but hey, at least it works.
Superman: Shadow of Apokolips
2002
PS2, Gamecube
Developer: Sheffield House | Publisher: Atari
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu-MSE8Qob8
This might be the best Superman game. While I don’t think it’s the best game here in a general sense, I do think it is the most successful at being simultaneously not-shit and true to Superman, which earned it a 64 on Metacritic, currently the all-time high for the franchise. It excels (or at least, avoids sucking) in several ways: while not truly open-world, it does in several levels allow the player to freely fly around Metropolis, which has an impressive sense of scale; it includes the whole supporting cast as well as numerous classic villains; it continually presents the player new kinds of objectives that all feel appropriate to the character (rather than padding itself out with inane shit); it grants Superman his whole repertoire of powers; and it nails the aesthetic of the 90s Superman cartoon, even getting the voice actors to reprise their roles. The music is also on-point. However, the game has numerous flaws: the control scheme is way too complex, with seemingly every function requiring double-taps or holding one button while tapping another; the camera is abominable, almost constantly stuck at useless angles; you have to sit through long load times whenever you die; there’s way too many of the robot enemies (though they do at least make more sense as a threat to Superman than the street punks from other games); and your X-ray vision can barely see through anything (I guess all of Metropolis is made of lead.) It’s vastly better than the Xbox game that came out at the same time, but still a bit half-baked.
Reviews:
(continued in next post, please wait a minute)
The most common explanation is that Superman is simply a boring character. His popularity and relevance have faded in recent years, and devs accordingly regard him a second-string character who is, at best, an afterthought compared to Batman, who is the real prize when obtaining the rights to DC characters. While this explanation may have merit, I also think it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: devs treat Superman as a boring character not worthy of their time, and so we get boring, half-assed games.
I think that, perhaps, an even bigger problem is that it’s difficult to apply Superman’s abilities to conventional game design. As I see it, there are two major problems that Superman, the character, presents to any would-be developer:
1. He’s invincible (Kryptonite and magic notwithstanding.) The usual way to make a game is to threaten the player with hostile enemies; the play must always stay on their toes to avoid being shot, stabbed, eaten, etc., by the various bad guys populating the world. But these guys shouldn’t be a threat to Superman at all. In fact, combat shouldn’t even be the focus of a Superman game, unless it’s involving some cosmic-level menace. Superman’s self-preservation should not be in doubt; instead, the challenge should revolve around his ability to prevent collateral damage. Superman is a character who concerns himself with the big picture; he single-handedly averts disasters as they happen. Civilian casualties should be the main thing to avoid, not damage to Superman himself.
2. He can fly. A standard, linear, level-based game just doesn’t make sense for Superman. One of his defining features is that he can go anywhere, whenever he wants, in a very short time. Open-world is the obvious fit for him, but most open-world games, particularly those set in cities, don’t give you unrestricted flight abilities—Saints Row 4 being somewhat of an exception (though full flight is only granted in the expansion.) After all, a whole lot more things can break when the player can move in three dimensions at will.
Many developers can’t be arsed to think outside the box to make a game suiting Superman’s abilities, so they just shove him into a standard action game where he can be punched to death and can’t fly (or, at least, can only fly when the game says so.) Let’s take a look at the history of Superman games to see how various devs have responded to the challenges that Superman poses to conventional game design. You probably know where this is going, but let’s look at each game anyway.
Superman
1979
Atari 2600
Developer: Atari | Publisher: Atari
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USwj5LfUTPw
In his video game debut, Superman’s goals are twofold: repair the bridge that Lex’s henchmen blow up, and then carry the henchmen to jail. The game is, in several respects, truer to the Superman mythos than many of the games that followed: Superman can fly to any location in the gameworld at any time; the gameplay emphasizes disaster-management over combat; it includes both the Superman and Clark Kent identities in gameplay; and, since the only enemies are a few street goons, Superman cannot die or be damaged in any way. Now, I won’t oversell the game’s appeal for you: it came out in 1979, and is boring, primitive garbage today. It is definitely not the best Superman game. But on the other hand, if we’re talking about the most important Superman game, this one wins by a landslide. It lays claim to a spate of firsts in video game history:
-First console game based on a non-video-game property.
-First game of any kind based on a comic book character.
-First game in which you can freely explore an environment spanning more than one screen, in real time. It is arguably the first open-world game.
-First game in which the player can pick up and carry objects in real time.
-First game to feature a scripted narrative event during gameplay (Lex’s henchmen blowing up the bridge.) That’s right: it did the Half-Life thing 19 years before Half-Life.
-First game with a pause function (using a switch on the 2600 console.)
-Lastly, the game was based on early code for Adventure, which came out a bit later; therefore, Superman should rightly be considered the first action-adventure game.
Reviews:
Superman: The Game
1985
Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, ZX Spectrum
Developer: First Star Software | Publisher: First Star Software
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K2rRB0B7NE
Superman never actually walks in this game; he is always in flight. This is a remarkably varied game for its era, featuring six gameplay modes: a top-down static-screen view, in which you fly around and rescue civilians; a vertical scroller that scrolls down, in which you shoot through barriers to hit Darkseid at the bottom of the screen (similar to Gorf); a pseudo-3D view in which Superman rotates around the screen and must shoot a core off in the distance (much like Tempest or Gyruss); a 3D rail sequence where Darkseid throws a barrage of obstacles that Superman must avoid (pretty much the inverse of Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom); a side-scrolling level in which Superman is chased by Darkseid and must activate various switches and force fields to stop him (almost the inverse of Laser Gates on the 2600); and a side-view section where Superman must block fireballs from reaching the cities at the bottom of the screen (like Kaboom on the 2600.) Also, the intercutting between the overhead map and the action stages brings to mind David Crane’s Ghostbusters game, released on C64 the previous year. Although it’s a pretty well-made game, there’s not much reason to play it now unless you absolutely must play every Superman game, since the various segments, though numerous, are all very simple.
Oddly, this game isn’t listed on Mobygames yet, so I wasn’t able to retrieve reviews for it, though I know several magazines did review it.
Superman
1987
NES
Developer: Koboyuki Systems | Publisher: Kemco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-sOFozn5-8
The first truly terrible Superman game, this NES turd was produced quickly and cheaply by a contract studio for Kemco, who were a very hit-and-miss publisher to begin with. The game is a shoddy, buggy mess, complete shovelware with little in its favor except for the license. There’s 5 missions, and in each one, you have to wander through the side-scrolling open-world of Metropolis and find out what the fuck you’re supposed to do. The game is always infuriatingly cryptic, and the frustration is compounded by your inability to explore Metropolis without swarms of enemies attacking you wherever you go. Combat is complete ass—we’re talking barely functional collision detection here--so you’ll be avoiding as many enemies as possible, hoping you can find whatever you’re supposed to find before you die. Both the visuals and the music are quite poor too. Also, Superman has to take the subway quite often in this game, despite being able to, you know, fly. It does have a bit of camp value, though, namely in the chibi-style graphics and the talking Statue of Liberty (whoops, excuse me, the “Statue of Freedom”
at the start and end of the game. And for what it’s worth, the game even includes the Daily Planet in gameplay, as well as Clark Kent, both of which would be omitted in most subsequent games.Just one review listed for this game:
Superman
1988
Arcade
Developer: Taito | Publisher: Taito
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0l6f3bmiGU
This game is one of the two most frequently cited for the title of “best Superman game”, along with Shadow of Apokolips. It’s easy to see why it’s more highly regarded than the rest: it’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s got some flash, there’s nothing broken about it, it generally feels as if someone actually gave a shit while making it, and it’s still arguably the best-looking Superman game. But it’s also the first of a line of games that treat Superman as if he were any other video game character. Rather than rethinking the gameplay to suit an invincible, flying character, Taito mostly ignored his powers and opted for a standard walk-to-the-right-and-punch-guys game. Sometimes, the game switches to flight mode, and then you punch and shoot guys in the air. The game has a two-player co-op mode, and the second player, weirdly, plays as a palette-swapped, second Superman, with no justification at all. I really wonder how this game would have turned out if, say, Konami had been at the helm, rather than Taito. It might’ve been a classic along the lines of TMNT or the Simpsons. As it is, a decent game, but a bit bland.
Again, just one review:
Superman: The Man of Steel
1989
Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amiga, Atari ST
Developer: Tynesoft | Publisher: Tynesoft (PAL), Capstone (NA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPNfRq1lBsE
The main draw of this game are the flying levels, which draw inspiration from (translation: completely rip off) Space Harrier. The Amiga version, in particular, looks quite nice in the flight segments; probably the best-looking sprite-scaler game available for it at the time. It’s also one of the few Superman games that takes inertia into account; when Superman is hit in midair during the side-scrolling levels, he jerks back through the air and must charge at his foe again. Most other games just have him do a canned animation where he blinks or whatever. In addition to the sprite-scaling and side-scrolling levels, you’ll destroy some asteroids from an overhead perspective, and then the game switches again to the behind-the-back view so you can fight a sentient space station, which serves as the boss. Another notable feature is that the game tells its story through comic-book-style interludes, which look pretty good too. All in all, one of the better Superman games, if a bit bare-bones mechanically. It’s just shooting things from a few different perspectives, but there’s nothing glaringly wrong with it (some may object to the lack of in-game music, but that’s the Amiga for you), and I’d say it’s well above the cut for an Euro-computer action game from this era.
Reviews:
Superman
1992
Genesis, Master System, Game Gear
Developer: Sunsoft (Genesis), Graftgold (SMS, GG) | Publisher: Sunsoft (Genesis), Virgin (SMS, GG)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWEKXUntL18
Remember when Brainiac had a beard? This game does. He’s the main villain this time, in a game that exists for no apparent reason other than for Sunsoft to use the DC license some more while they still had it. Sunsoft has followed a similar design to the earlier Taito game, with Superman progressing through some basic side-scrolling platformer/beat-‘em-up levels and occasionally taking flight for some shmup action. There’s nothing really wrong with the game. It’s mechanically sound, and it avoids the worst pitfalls of classic game design. However, it’s also games like this demonstrate why Sunsoft went bankrupt a few years later; it’s uninspired. Their whole 16-bit output was way below their brilliant work on the NES, and this game is emblematic of the unimaginative, assembly-line feel to their 4th-gen games. Nothing about this really feels like a Superman game; it’s just a reasonably inoffensive platformer that happens to have Superman in it. I mean, why the fuck does Superman have to walk anywhere? Why can’t he use heat vision whenever he wants? Why can some no-name mook kill him? It’s all too conventional for Superman. The game’s real saving grace is its excellent soundtrack, which might be the best thing, period, from any Superman game. The Stage 5 track, for instance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBuBaPTCGL4
P.S. Although the Master System/Game Gear versions are listed by some sources as a different game, they are pretty much straight ports of the Genesis version, and quite bad ones at that.
Reviews:
The Death and Return of Superman
1994
SNES, Genesis
Developer: Blizzard | Publisher: Sunsoft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yka30n1D6L0
A competent beat-‘em-up from Blizzard, from the days when they were still focused on consoles. Unfortunately, “competent” is the highest praise I can give it; while there’s nothing really wrong with it, you could put just about any other character in Superman’s place and the game would not be much affected—it’s a bog-standard belt-scroller that makes only token attempts to be a Superman game. Superman can be beaten up by common thugs, he requires multiple punches to knock out even the lowliest bad guys, and he can use powers like flight and heat vision only at specified times. Also, the game feels padded, with the level themes repeated a few times, and some of the bosses recycled too. The shmup levels, which seem to exist only to fill out the bullet points on the back of the box, are boring as fuck and will quickly have you wishing to get back to the punching parts.
Reviews:
Superman: The Mysterious Mr. Mist
1996
Windows, Macintosh
Developer: Inverse Ink | Publisher: Inverse Ink
It’s just an interactive comic book, but hey, the ESRB still rated it, so I should probably mention it. The storylines all taken directly from the 60s Batman/Superman Hour cartoon, as are the included video clips. I’m not really sure who was itching to relive these ancient, terrible episodes, but since this was in development just before the 90s Superman cartoon started, I guess there wasn’t much else to choose from. Couldn’t find any screenshots or footage of this, so the cover art is all you get.
Superman
1997
Game Boy
Developer: Titus | Publisher: Titus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSZ1uqJ1mSU
Here’s a really shitty Superman side-scroller from the folks who would, soon after, make the hallowed Superman 64. The game is, put simply, trash. Your only powers are flight and punching. All you do is hunt for keys, and the only enemies are some guys in coats with guns. When you get all the keys in a level, you touch some flashing blocks and the game says “WELL DONE SUPERMAN”. Then it’s off to the next level. The game is literally 10 minutes long. The sprites are ugly, the music quickly becomes grating, and even the still image of Superman that serves as the game’s ending is poorly-drawn. It’s embarrassing that this rubbish was allowed to be sold on store shelves.
No reviews here.
Superman Activity Center
1998
Windows, Macintosh
Developer: Knowledge Adventure Inc. | Publisher: Knowledge Adventure Inc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw46KJ9BgP0
A multimedia suite featuring Superman, typical of 90s CD-ROM software. Click on stuff, hear some voiceovers, look at some animations. In the days before Youtube, kids may have been entertained by this. BTW, the only gameplay video I could find was an LP; sorry.
Superman
1999
N64
Developer: Titus | Publisher: Titus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ2UzTpXfpU
Here’s a game that needs no introduction. Aside from ET, it might be the most famous bad game of all time. Sure, it’s both a terrible game and a very poor representation of Superman also, but I think several other factors have led to its particular infamy: first comes the notoriety of the license, and being based on a very well-received cartoon; second, the small size of the N64’s library and the infrequency with which games were released made bad ones stand out a lot more; and third, it released just as games media was starting to become a big deal, and review outlets were becoming more numerous, making its unanimous critical thrashing especially noticeable for people who were following games at the time; and fourth, the game actually sold pretty well at first, meaning a fair number of people got to play it. Whatever the reasons, Titus quickly became a joke after the game’s release and went bust a few years later.
Reviews:
The Multipath Adventures of Superman: Menace of Metallo
2000
Windows, Macintosh
Developer: Brilliant Digital Entertainment| Publisher: Brilliant Digital Entertainment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r9Y__-NYqk
Less a game than an interactive movie. It’s like the precursor to Telltale’s games, where you pretty much just watch a story unfold and occasionally make a decision. Not terribly exciting nowadays, but hey, at least it works.
Superman: Shadow of Apokolips
2002
PS2, Gamecube
Developer: Sheffield House | Publisher: Atari
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu-MSE8Qob8
This might be the best Superman game. While I don’t think it’s the best game here in a general sense, I do think it is the most successful at being simultaneously not-shit and true to Superman, which earned it a 64 on Metacritic, currently the all-time high for the franchise. It excels (or at least, avoids sucking) in several ways: while not truly open-world, it does in several levels allow the player to freely fly around Metropolis, which has an impressive sense of scale; it includes the whole supporting cast as well as numerous classic villains; it continually presents the player new kinds of objectives that all feel appropriate to the character (rather than padding itself out with inane shit); it grants Superman his whole repertoire of powers; and it nails the aesthetic of the 90s Superman cartoon, even getting the voice actors to reprise their roles. The music is also on-point. However, the game has numerous flaws: the control scheme is way too complex, with seemingly every function requiring double-taps or holding one button while tapping another; the camera is abominable, almost constantly stuck at useless angles; you have to sit through long load times whenever you die; there’s way too many of the robot enemies (though they do at least make more sense as a threat to Superman than the street punks from other games); and your X-ray vision can barely see through anything (I guess all of Metropolis is made of lead.) It’s vastly better than the Xbox game that came out at the same time, but still a bit half-baked.
Reviews:
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