Motivational Monday: Not so Superman

We understand it is hard to write for the Man of Steal. The character of Superman can go from being able to break a mountain in half to having issues lifting a truck. We also understand that when it comes to video games there must be playability and risk which is why even Superman can receive a beat down. The problem is imagination. Even the Superman video games that were overall well done lacked imagination when it came to why Superman could get curb stomped liked Kick Ass. Unfortunately for some games it was way worse than just Superman’s lack of invulnerability.

Superman Arcade (1988)

This is one of those cases where the game was fun to play and overall well done. However, the issue was how easily Superman could be hurt and even “killed” by the bad guys. I can understand some of the bosses or special enemies, but you could take major damage by being hit by a trashcan. Oh if you thought that was bad I died a little inside when the lady in the pink bunny suit kicked me and took me out.

What was great about this game was it looked really good for the time and the original music from the first Superman movies really added to the game. I also really liked picking the red Superman for some reason. Maybe it made his beat downs hurt less because I pretended it was a weaker clone.

Superman 64

I almost don’t need to type anything because when you see the name of this game you should already know it sucks major ass. Everyone knows this game was painfully bad. Superman 64 had horrible graphics, terrible animation and the worst gameplay since… damn.

The game was made by Titus and was based on the animated Superman show of the late 90’s, but believe me it does not even come close to the show. Lex Luthor has created a virtual Metropolis and trapped Superman’s friends in there and for some demented reason wants Superman to spend most of his time flying through rings with an unreasonable time limit. Perhaps this would be reasonable if the flight controls were good and it wasn’t over done, but on both counts they failed. It was incredibly hard to control Superman’s flight. One minute he flies like he is drunk and the next it’s like he is on crack. Then add in the short unforgiving time limit and the fact that you spend more than half the game flying through rings and you have only scratched the surface of why this game blew chunks.

Superman NES

Oh Lord, can you see a pattern here. In this version of the Superman universe everyone looks like kids for some reason and you get your mission instructions from a talking Statue of Liberty. The game starts off looking kind of like Zelda 2 except with short, plump, children-like characters that Clark Kent talks to for information. Once you have where to go you go outside and discover that the bad guys either knows Clark Kent is Superman or just hates his writing. Here again we get an example of Superman being depowered because apparently bullets can hurt him and he has to jump over them Mario Bros. style.

You had super powers in this game if you could call them that, but they worked more like items that depleted than real powers. You would select the power you wished to use and it only had a limited amount of uses indicated by the energy bar on the top of the screen. Sadly some of the power ups did nothing to even the rank and file bad guys and you had to collect more power ups and health from the bad guys. So let me get this straight, I beat a bad guy who drops my own powers? Well, it’s still better than Superman 64.

Super OWNED

This video is dedicated to the horrible Superman games and the lack of Superness that Superman showed in them. Now there have been a few good Superman games, but like the movies they are far and few between. So until next time enjoy Superman getting owned.

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