Superman

As I mentioned when I reviewed his Atari 2600 game years ago, Superman is one of the hardest characters to get right in video games. The difficulty that comes from trying to make an interesting game revolving around a near-immortal demi-god results in games that either get too easy or royally screw up the character. However, even with those inherent difficulties, there should still be some gameplay standards, and the Superman game on the Nintendo Entertainment System doesn't even come close to those standards.

The plot is bare-bones; it's more a set-up than a plot. Lex Luthor and General Zod are causing trouble, and Superman has to stop them. The stages are very random leading up to the big boss fights near the end. There is as little a narrative point to the game as the 2600 game.

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The game plays as a standard side-scrolling action game. There are some decent ideas sprinkled throughout. Each of Superman's famous powers from heat vision to frost breath has its own energy meter similar to the Mega Man games. There are adventure elements involving finding items and solving some extremely basic puzzles to proceed. The controls are serviceable even though the jumping is very floaty (even when he's supposed to be Clark Kent). Even the background visuals are decent by NES standards with smooth flight animation and a nice color palette.

While it has a few decent ideas, this Superman game really blows it on the execution of those ideas and even on the bare essentials. The meters for the super powers drain WAY too fast. I was only able to take down two enemies before heat vision was drained. That's right, just two. Even Superman's health bar drains too fast while health pick-ups barely help at all. The minute-to-minute gameplay becomes very frustrating as a result. The adventure elements provide too few clues, leading to too much time aimlessly wandering around unable to proceed. I had to look up walkthroughs way too much just to move on. Don't count on the NPCs telling you anything important; I got more important info talking to characters in Simon's Quest and Zelda 2! Speaking of the characters, the outright hideous character sprites clash terribly with the very pleasant background graphics. I could forgive the lack of the famous John Williams theme (which was apparently in the Japanese version) if the music that was there was acceptable. Unfortunately, it sounded like a broken merry-go-round rather than a superhero game.

Superman on the NES made the 2600 game look like a masterwork. The few neat ideas Kemco brought in don't come anywhere close to making up for the major deficiencies. Not even the most rabid fan of Kal-El can find any real enjoyment from this moldy-oldy. Throw this one in a pile of kryptonite and leave it there.