To properly explain the impact this game had on me, I need to take you back to the olden days of 1999. The N64 is running the market. Batman, Batman Beyond and Superman all have popular television series.
Suddenly, a game appears, taking the popularity of DC and of Nintendo, blending them into one unstoppable superstar of a game. Magazines talk about using all of Superman's powers in 3D for the first time to foil Lex Luthor's nefarious plots. The game commercials show Superman fighting a variety of Supervillains with his incredible powers to save the kidnapped Jimmy and Lois. The box art talks about fighting Metallo, Lex Luthor, The Parasite and even Darkseid in a variety of fully interactible levels. This game sounds incredible.
In those days, I was but a wee child, so I begged my mom to take us to Blockbuster. In our family, renting a game at Blockbuster was a treat we got once per month. There are a lot of good games this year, but my brother and I decided to rent what sounded like it could be game of the year in a year full of classics like the original Smash Brothers, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Age of Empires 2. On top of that it boasted multiplayer, which was ideal since the decision of what to rent was one we had to make together.
I remember reading the back of the box and the manual as we drove home, impatient to try the game. I want it made ABUNDANTLY clear that nothing from the commercials to the manual have mentioned flying through rings even once. They all mention combat with exciting enemies using an array of powers.
Now dear reader of 2023 or beyond, you already know what child me did not: Everything marketed about this abomination of a game was a lie.
My brother and I got home and saw what we assumed was the tutorial level to fly through rings. Unfortunately, this was much, MUCH easier said than done thanks to the horrendous controls. We were stuck here for a long time. To entertain ourselves we started looking for how to use Superman's powers, but other than awkward punches none of his advertised powers seemed to be in the game. In fact, the only power he seemed to have other than controlling like a lubed bathtub was the power to phase into walls and get stuck there. Needless to say, we were not having fun.
A very long time later, we finally beat it and got to the second level. There we had a 3 second countdown. To this day I still don't know what we were supposed to do, but apparently we didn't do it. Game Over.
Back to the starting rings stage. That's right, this game didn't seem to have any sort of progression mechanic, and a single failure on a 3 second check of something made us start all over.
This was when we stopped playing. I can't remember if there was no multiplayer or if it was so bad that I scrubbed it from my mind, but in any case we both decided this game wasn't it.
My brother and I were children at this time and so it did occasionally happen that if we were having a lot of fun with a game and hadn't finished it, we'd "forget" to remind our mom to take it back. She would obviously be mad and there would be consequences, but we usually got to finish the game.
For Superman 64 we showed up same night asking if we could return it right away to make sure we wouldn't somehow forget and have our mom mad at us over such a bad game.
Long story short, this game is horrendous. It caused me inconvenience and disappointment I shall hold against it for the rest of my days. To my knowledge, no one got sued for false advertising on this game and that is unbelievable to me because this game isn't even in the same cosmos as the product they advertised.
Suddenly, a game appears, taking the popularity of DC and of Nintendo, blending them into one unstoppable superstar of a game. Magazines talk about using all of Superman's powers in 3D for the first time to foil Lex Luthor's nefarious plots. The game commercials show Superman fighting a variety of Supervillains with his incredible powers to save the kidnapped Jimmy and Lois. The box art talks about fighting Metallo, Lex Luthor, The Parasite and even Darkseid in a variety of fully interactible levels. This game sounds incredible.
In those days, I was but a wee child, so I begged my mom to take us to Blockbuster. In our family, renting a game at Blockbuster was a treat we got once per month. There are a lot of good games this year, but my brother and I decided to rent what sounded like it could be game of the year in a year full of classics like the original Smash Brothers, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Age of Empires 2. On top of that it boasted multiplayer, which was ideal since the decision of what to rent was one we had to make together.
I remember reading the back of the box and the manual as we drove home, impatient to try the game. I want it made ABUNDANTLY clear that nothing from the commercials to the manual have mentioned flying through rings even once. They all mention combat with exciting enemies using an array of powers.
Now dear reader of 2023 or beyond, you already know what child me did not: Everything marketed about this abomination of a game was a lie.
My brother and I got home and saw what we assumed was the tutorial level to fly through rings. Unfortunately, this was much, MUCH easier said than done thanks to the horrendous controls. We were stuck here for a long time. To entertain ourselves we started looking for how to use Superman's powers, but other than awkward punches none of his advertised powers seemed to be in the game. In fact, the only power he seemed to have other than controlling like a lubed bathtub was the power to phase into walls and get stuck there. Needless to say, we were not having fun.
A very long time later, we finally beat it and got to the second level. There we had a 3 second countdown. To this day I still don't know what we were supposed to do, but apparently we didn't do it. Game Over.
Back to the starting rings stage. That's right, this game didn't seem to have any sort of progression mechanic, and a single failure on a 3 second check of something made us start all over.
This was when we stopped playing. I can't remember if there was no multiplayer or if it was so bad that I scrubbed it from my mind, but in any case we both decided this game wasn't it.
My brother and I were children at this time and so it did occasionally happen that if we were having a lot of fun with a game and hadn't finished it, we'd "forget" to remind our mom to take it back. She would obviously be mad and there would be consequences, but we usually got to finish the game.
For Superman 64 we showed up same night asking if we could return it right away to make sure we wouldn't somehow forget and have our mom mad at us over such a bad game.
Long story short, this game is horrendous. It caused me inconvenience and disappointment I shall hold against it for the rest of my days. To my knowledge, no one got sued for false advertising on this game and that is unbelievable to me because this game isn't even in the same cosmos as the product they advertised.