Superman

The now-defunct French software publisher Titus and licensed properties go together like peanut butter and escargot. Properties that should've yielded gold like RoboCop and Top Gun only provided coal. However, the license they royally botched was Superman. Even with the lousy track record with video games the character already had by the late 1990s, Titus still managed to bury him deeper with the much maligned Nintendo 64 game. If you were hoping that the much more low-key Game Boy game that they released would salvage things, you can just forget about it.

There have been earlier Superman games that had a set-up but no plot. This one doesn't even bother to have a set-up. You are thrown into a collection of stages with absolutely no rhyme or reason. Even the Atari 2600 game gave something of a premise!

Click For the Full Picture Archive
The gameplay itself is equally as pointless. Every stage revolves around collecting keys and reaching the exit. It's just as uninspired as the Crazy Castle games. Some of the keys are in the open to be picked up while others are held by enemies to be eliminated. Superman can punch and fly, and those are all he needs to get through the game. While he can't take much punishment, a well-timed punch can deflect bullets. As there are no time limits, you can be cautious and take all the time needed to complete the levels.

The lack of a point isn't the only problem with this Superman game. The game is painfully sluggish. This is the slowest I had ever seen the character. While deflecting bullets is easy on the ground, it's a pain in the ass in the air. In fact, the flying itself is very problematic. Flying in this game is a lot like swimming in other side-scrollers in that you have to keep pushing the jump button to keep from falling. The stages that take place entirely in the air become very irritating as a result. Also, the presentation is awful. The music and sounds are piercing; they actually hurt to hear. While the graphics are decent for a Game Boy game, if you play it on the Super Game Boy or Game Boy Color, everything gets tinted a very ugly shade of green.

This is easily the laziest Superman game I've played. It has no plot, not even a bare minimum of a premise, gameplay that, while barely functional, doesn't fit Superman, and aesthetics that are mediocre at best. It's absolutely not worth your time. It's pretty sad that the best thing I can say about it is that, at least, it's not Superman 64.