Superman
- Superman (1978 on Atari 2600)
- Superman (1987 on NES)
- Superman (1988 on Arcade)
- Superman (1992 on Genesis)
- Superman (1997 on Game Boy)
Description official descriptions
Lex Luthor pulls off another stunt, this time he and Braniac have developed a virtual reality version of Metropolis to trick the people of the fair city. And Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are the first to be tricked.
It's all to pull in Superman, the world's strongest hero, in order to take him down. But as the man himself, your job is to destroy any and all hopes of the bad guys chances.
Using all of his many powers (including heat vision, flight and x-ray vision), you must fight your way through air, sea, underground and indoor levels of bad guys, bosses and puzzle elements in order to reach Lois and destroy Lex's mission.
4 player multiplayer modes are also included as you take control of the many characters for some beat 'em up action.
The United States release contained an exclusive collector's edition Superman comic book inside the package.
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Credits (Nintendo 64 version)
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[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 31% (based on 32 ratings)
Players
Average score: 0.9 out of 5 (based on 73 ratings with 5 reviews)
The Good
When I was making a purchase at a game store, the clerk told me that if I spend $15 more, Iâd get a free t-shirt. After a short while of looking, I brought to her an N64 game that fit the price requirements. She looked at it, then back at me with concern in her eyes. âWhy?â she asked quietly. The game I had brought was Superman, and her reaction was no doubt due to the gameâs notoriety. Itâs not a rare sight on lists of the very worst games of all time, and it has been sarcastically reviewed and broadcast by many tortured internet personalities. I was so certain that I wasnât going to play more than a few moments of the forbidden game before putting it away that when it asked if I wanted to clear space on my memory card so I could save, I declined. It was after I quickly surmounted two levels of it that I realized that completing the game was actually viable, so I started over with sufficient save space and prepared for the long haul.
The gameâs plot involves Superman trying to save his friends from a virtual version of Metropolis. Itâs a pretty standard framework when you want to throw common sense out the window and set up rules and situations that arenât possible in the real world, but somehow the storyline still manages to make no sense. Youâre pitted against mainstays of the animated series: Parasite, Metallo, Darkseid, Lex Luthor, and Mala (who I recall seeing, but donât remember who she is). The thing is, if this is a virtual world, why is Superman saving people from bombs and tornadoes? Who cares if Lex Luthor is building weapons if none of this is real? Iâm just going to guess that the whole âvirtual worldâ angle was tacked on at the last minute.
Despite what youâve probably heard, Superman 64 is surprisingly playable. I say âsurprisinglyâ because I was led to believe that it was broken beyond all reason, so my expectations were as low as expectations can reasonably be. Gameplay is split between two distinct varieties: traversal or ârideâ missions that have you flying through rings and saving people, and action missions that involve punching and mild, sometimes obtuse, puzzle solving.
The image seared into minds most gamers will be the rings that Superman is forced to fly through, which arenât nearly as difficult as commonly reported. I was able to get through all of them without much trouble. Where I failed most in the ride missions were the crimes that punctuate travelling through fog-ridden Metropolis. After every set of rings, youâre dropped into a situation with very little instruction and must figure things out from there. Some are simply âpunch all the bad guys,â while others force you to pick up a car and hurl it off a bridge or protect citizens from tornadoes. Once you get used to the gameâs demands, the tasks arenât too daunting. If you fail to prevent the crimes three times, youâre started from the beginning of the task itself, rather than the rings that precede it, which is a rather nice concession the game makes. Considering that some of the ring challenges put 5 to 9 minutes on the clock, having to do them over again once is bad enough without being constantly pushed back there.
The action stages more closely resemble an actual super-hero game, but the combat is so laughably horrid that most of the action is just flying into the lesser enemies and occasionally slapping one when there isnât enough room to fly. Supermanâs punches are just so slow, the hit detection is so inaccurate, and the animation is so awkward that itâs almost better to not even bother. I spent most levels ignoring enemies, flying straight by them in a mad search to find whatever the objective was at that time. Itâs thankfully rare that you truly need to fight, such as during boss battles or the slowest escort mission in existence.
The Bad
Donât let the few positive things I have to say about Superman make you think that itâs a passable game. It didnât get its reputation for nothing. Itâs a glitchy, poorly designed mess of a game that should never have been released in the first place. The fact that I was able to get from beginning to end is literally the only positive thing I can think to say about it.
A lot of Supermanâs problems would be solved if the game would just talk to the player more. Youâre often plopped down in a situation with a vague explanation and forced to figure out what to do under a strict time limit. Even when a decent explanation is present, itâs easy to accidentally hit a button and skip it entirely. Other times, you wonât be able to interact with a switch in the environment until youâve triggered an arbitrary piece of dialogue elsewhere. Even if everything was clearly explained, the developers still enjoy hiding things in obscure places. Keycards often appear in areas that have already been searched, and triggers will sometimes open in dusty corners that are often obscured by the gameâs atrocious draw fog. Some keys donât even notify you that youâve picked them up or what effect they had, and sometimes event triggers are placed way back at the beginning of the level, forcing you to backtrack, sometimes repeatedly. It wasnât rare for me to find myself flying in circles, trying to figure out where I had to go to proceed.
After each failure, things get easier since most enemies can be ignored while you go back through the paces. If it werenât for the fact that itâs sometimes a requirement to clear out an area, the cast of villains wouldnât stand much of a chance. The main grunt of Luthorâs army is the shadows; characters in hats and macs bathed entirely in fashionable, slimming black. Their main tactic for taking you down is to stand perfectly still, shooting a handful of bullets in your direction before obsessively reloading. They also have a tendency to shoot each other, which Iâm not sure was intentional, but it is pretty funny. Bosses would provide some variation if it wasnât for the fact that they have the same propensity for slapping that Superman does. Fights with them tend to degenerate into vicious hand waving until one combatant falls based solely on who was favoured by the gameâs temperamental hit detection. That is until heat vision comes into play, allowing Superman to stun-lock bosses until they give up and fall over.
Yet it wasnât the enemies, or the sometimes strict time limits, or the gameâs obtuse guidance that was most responsible for forcing me to play levels over; it was the gameâs poor clipping barriers that frequently allowed me to fall into the level geometry. I lost count of how many times it happened, but I can confidently say that there was only one occasion that I was able to free myself from the abyss, and it was only because I fell into the floor below. Once I got stuck thigh deep in the bottom floor, and I was unable to jump or fly to get free. It would have been almost humourous if it didnât happen right at the end of the level.
What really aggravated me was that the game forces you to play through on the hardest difficulty if you want to finish it. Thereâs nothing quite like working your way through a game, only to have the last couple levels and, indeed, the ending itself gated off unless you start all over on a harder difficulty. If ânormalâ difficulty isnât the normal difficulty setting, why even call it normal? Whatâs worse is that the harder difficulty isnât even all that difficult, itâs just annoying. Enemies have more health, so the shadows take two hits to take down, necessitating more circling around their slow bullets just to slap them again. Slap fights with bosses become even more a matter of luck until you can just stun-lock them into oblivion with heat vision. But flying through rings, the most time consuming portion of the game, is either the exact same or so similar that I didnât notice the difference. I just didnât want to play through the game twice, okay!?
Yet I did it anyway, even after it froze on a dialogue prompt right at the end and forced me to play through the last level again. All that for one of the most abrupt and surreal endings Iâve ever seen in a video game. Spoiler alert: itâs bizarre.
The Bottom Line
I suppose the big question is whether or not Superman 64 is as bad as its reputation suggests, and to be honest, there are worse games out there. In fact, there are worse games on the N64. Itâs the Atari E.T. syndrome; itâs high profile crap, but certainly not the crappiest. Iâm certainly not implying that the game is actually any good, make no mistake, itâs TERRIBLE. Itâs buggy, the combat is terrible, the environments are ugly, the whole thing feels unfinished, but at least itâs playable, if only barely, and there are games out there that canât even claim that. At times, I even found myself enjoying it a little, but thatâs likely due to the sense of danger in playing a game so universally hated. I just have no vitriol for it. Itâs not an entirely soulless game, nor is it a disappointing entry in some long running series that a big named publisher sent out to die, itâs just another crummy licensed game.
Nintendo 64 · by Adzuken (836) · 2015
Games like this deserve to burn!
The Good
Oh my God: these are the first three words I think of when hear the term,"Superman 64". There isn't one single thing that I good in this entire game. To even consider this abomination "entertainment" would be an insult to gaming logic. The only thing that's halfway decent is the menu screen.
The Bad
Lets start with the plot. Lex Luthor has kidnapped three of Superman's friends and trapped them in a virtual world (the plot couldn't have been anymore stupid and simple like this)!
When you begin playing, you realise that you only a few metres away from the Lexcorp building. So you may think that Superman has only to go into the building and beat up Lex, right? Well as a matter of fact, NO! You have to fly through this great big legion of rings, and if you miss at least 2-4 of them; YOU LOSE! And you know what? There's a TIME LIMIT! So, while you are trying to be cautious enough to fly through (note: the controls SUCK) the rings, you also have to keep an eye on the time ticking at the top of the screen! And sometimes, Superman gets stuck very easily, even when he isn't touching anything!
In order to crack this part, you have to do every single thing perfectly. You could be right near the end and just miss a ring and start all over again!
So after you get past the rings, a block of instructions how up for practically a split second; only giving you enough time to read the first few words. In this part, you have to lift two cars and make sure they don't hit civilians. And after you do that, guess what? MORE FREAKING RINGS!!
I never got past this point because of two things:
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The music loops on and on until it practically destroys your eardrums.
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I'd rather kick the man of Steel in the groin rather this playing this garbage.
The Bottom Line
There, you have it. My full description on Superman 64, it took ages to get over the fact that Superman actually had a game based off of him that was this bad!
This is the kind of game you would send to someone you hate as a vengeance present. I mean, thank God they don't make game like this anymore.
And do you know what was missing the most? The official Superman music! That's right, its nowhere to be found in this filth. I've had it with game reviewing for the moment, the next one is going to be a review of a GOOD game.
Nintendo 64 · by Arejarn (7346) · 2008
The Good
Almost nothing. It was very horrible.
The Bad
What DID I like about this game. This game is absolutely horrible. Once, many years after this game came out, I asked my friends what game we thought was the worst game ever made and they all replied Superman 64. And I agree. Now you might think we are really exaggerating, but it is truly the WORST game ever made. We are not joking don't even buy this game, even if your a huge superman fan. Do not ruin a birthday or christmas with this game because it is not worth it. HEED MY WARNING, DO NOT BUY!
The Bottom Line
Ok, first of all is its graphics are absolutely horrible. The city is not even a city. About every 5 min a large building will appear, and you can do nothing with it, only fly to the top. The city is a huge field of roads leading nowhere. There is no one walking anywhere, except when they a part of a mission (rarely). The powers are useless and boring, and cannot be used on anything because there is nothing to the game to use them on. There is no interactivity, because you can only stick to the missions or you fail and must retry. The controls are sloppy. And worst of all, the second level is completely unbeatable.
Nintendo 64 · by Matt Neuteboom (976) · 2005
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Call me crazy. (Because I know you will) | GAMEBOY COLOR! (1990) | Jun 30, 2008 |
Trivia
Graphics
The game's developers could not render any background and as an excuse wrote it off as a "kryptonite fog".
PlayStation version
A PlayStation version was in the works, but was cancelled.
Awards
- Nintendo Power
- Issue #196 - #1 Worst Nintendo Game
- Total! (Germany)
- Issue 01/2000 â Biggest N64 Flop in 1999
Information also contributed by Big John WV and Matt Neueboom
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Related Sites +
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Video review of two Superman games (WARNING: Language)
The Angry Video Game Nerd, James Rolfe, reviews two Superman games, including the Nintendo 64 version of Superman -
Wikipedia: Superman
Information about Superman at Wikipedia
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Kartanym.
Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Pseudo_Intellectual, Andrew Shepard, LepricahnsGold, DreinIX, Patrick Bregger, Koterminus.
Game added May 20, 2003. Last modified May 29, 2024.