Superman: The New Superman Adventures
NA release: 28th May 1999
PAL release: 23rd July 1999
Superman: The New Superman Adventures (or The New Superman Aventures, according to the back of the US box) is commonly referred to as just Superman 64, and is one of the worst games of all time, according to everything I’ve ever read about the game – all because of broken flying and flying through rings.
The developers, Titus, were dealt a rotten hand. After they got the license, Warner Bros became a nuisance to deal with. The developer’s plans for the game were constantly overturned, including the main idea of an open world that Superman would protect, allowing for him to damage buildings, which would affect the city. The developers were told that Superman couldn’t hurt anyone or damage anything, so the virtual world idea had to be made, and so much time was waiting for approval that there was little time to develop.
Everyone talks about the rings and the flying controls, so I’ll begin with that. And, frankly, I think most people trying out the game are trying to make it seem worse. If you hold down the accelerate button, you’ll travel too fast to turn well, but with regular taps, I found flying to work rather well, and I actually began enjoying the ring stages once I got used to it. Press the R button and you’ll very quickly stop and if you press up/down while not moving forward, you’ll move directly up or down. I actually think they did a decent job of capturing Superman’s movement – it’s just a shame the flying isn’t used for much more than the rings. N64 magazine said that that there was no way to stop flying, and I have no idea what they’re talking about.
The big problems with the ring levels are how many there are (with some taking upwards of 6-7 minutes) and how checkpoints work in the game. After each ring segment is a short action sequence – stop cars, beat up baddies, destroy robots, stop tornadoes – but it starts immediately, and the timer (which can be as short as 20 seconds) starts counting down as soon as the text appears. This wouldn’t be too bad if you just restarted form there – but you have to go back to the previous ring segment and do that again (save states really help).
Sadly, the immense amount of fog really makes the world empty, so there’s not much to look at. It’s a shame because there is a single open world, and some of the building designs do look quite interesting – the game is based on Superman: The Animated Series so uses that style – but you can’t see them from further than 5 metres away. Still, the rings and objectives are only half of the game, the rest are actual levels, with a set of challenges in between each one.
The controls for Superman on-foot are rather slow and clunky, with tank-based controls to make it more of a pain. The first level is quite simple, but you do have to return to the start after getting a key for no good reason. The boss fight in this level is probably the toughest in the game, and you have to rescue some workers from an underwater tunnel.
The Lexcorp level is one where just just keep going forward, pushing buttons and getting keycards. The enemies in the game are either “dark shadows” (presumably a restriction so Superman isn’t hitting people that look too human). There are some rooms with nice reflections and others that look dreadful.
Then its off to a warehouse to rescue Lois Lane. I spent ages flying around because I coudn’t find where to use a keycard – turns out it was hidden in an alcove, hidden by the black fog that indoor areas have. After you rescue Lois Lane, she walks around a corner and gets captured – and this happens multiple times until you can finally escort her. She starts off running and then slows down when enemies start appearing – and if you get too far away, one will spawn next to her. If either one of you die, the game’s checkpoint system rears its ugly head again and you have to start from the very beginning of the level.
The Daily Planet’s underground car park is by far the worst level. It’s a colossal maze (much harder than the “Solve My Maze” rings) and so much of it look the same, so it’s incredibly easy to get lost. I found myself spending most of the time flying around the same corridors again and again, and it definitely didn’t help when I picked up a tank and was thrust out of the game’s map into another section.
You have to find Jimmy, grab a keycard (which isn’t there if you look before finding Jimmy), go back to Jimmy and then find a bomb. Then it’s off to find Darkseid. Incidentally, I got so lost on the way to Darkseid that I approached him from behind and used laser eyes to take him down before he could do anything.
Star Labs, on the other hand, is fairly straightforward in terms of structure. You need to find a scientist, stop water from rising and trap Parasite in a forcefield (a Superman villain I am unfamiliar with, but seemingly Superman can’t harm him). There’s a long corridor that’s makes going back and forth a pain, but this level is alright.
After some more rings, Lex traps Superman in a subway tunnel. This is a very long tunnel, with a lot of enemies. Turns out you can ignore most enemies as the objective is to fly all the way to the end of the tunnel where an explosion will trap Superman. So you have to fly all the way to the start where another explosion will happen. You then have to fly to a station (which is near the other end of the tunnel) and beat up some enemies to escape. Although this level has one intriguing oddity.
On the way back to the station after the second explosion, Superman will encounter an old man who says he knows the way out, and says you can freeze him to protect him when needed. It’s a big pain to protect him and he walks extremely slow (you can push him from behind). When you get to the station, a cutscene will happen and – as the camera has moved away from the man, an enemy will spawn and attack him while you can’t do anything.
Using save states I managed to time it so I could rescue him, and he just casually walks through the “Exit” doors (that Superman can’t use). When he gets round the corner, an enemy spawns and kills him. I can only guess that this was the original method of finishing the level, then the developers thought it was to annoying, changed it but forgot to remove him.
The final level is on Brainiac’s ship. This game does the annoying thing where it locks the final level away from lower difficulties (luckily, there’s a skip level cheat to skip to it). The objective is to collect a load of data discs These discs are oddly extremely highly detailed and look higher detailed than most 2D objects in 3D N64 games (or, indeed, any of the graphics in this game). Getting around the level isn’t too bad, although the discs only appear on at a time, some open doors and other doors require you pushing buttons, so progressing is just flying where you previously were.
After breaking the virtual world and pushing some ice cubes of your friends across a lightning generator, then finding some bombs to blow up the ship. The end of the level is a window that literally says “the end”. You then get a cutscene saying that you escaped the virtual world, but Lex is still out there in the real world.
And that’s Superman 64. It’s definitely a bad game, but it really doesn’t deserve its reputation as the worst game ever. The flying is pretty good once you get used to it, and it really isn’t as buggy as I was expecting. The checkpoint system is atrocious, but then it was a pretty normal thing for games back then.
Superman 64 has some interesting elements, it attempts to do what it can with the license, even with severe restrictions. I honestly prefer a game that’s a little bit wonky to one that’s just flat out boring. In the end, I found myself both enjoying the game because I was laughing at it, and at times genuinely having fun with the game. And isn’t enjoyment all that matters in the end?
There’s only a select band of games that can stagger you into silence with their utter ineptitude and Superman is one of them. From promising beginnings (i.e. there’s no spelling mistakes on the title screen), the game quickly descends into astonishing crapness with a first level amalgamation of Pilotwings’ ring contest, and three mind-blowingly awful sub games.
- Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #31
It will never happen, but a remaster with fog removed and things smoothed out would actually be interesting to see.
Official ways to get the game.
There is no official way to get Superman: The New Adventures
