I insist on giving the benefit of the doubt. I don't just jump on bandwagons when it comes to hating on something. When I reviewed both
Pac-Man and
E.T. on the Atari 2600, two games that often show up on lists of the worst games ever, I found that their reputations were worse than the games themselves (though the games were still pretty bad). I approached the infamous Superman on the Nintendo 64 with that history in mind. However, unlike those other examples, this game's reputation is 100% justified.
Commonly referred to as "Superman 64", this game is based on the animated series that was on TV at the time. The plot at least tries to give an explanation for the boneheaded crap players would see in the game. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen were trapped in a virtual recreation of Metropolis by Lex Luthor, and Superman has to go in to save them. As this virtual world was designed by Luthor, Kal-El is forced to play by his rules. That is one of the dumbest ideas I had ever seen for a video game plot. I've seen terrible movies that handled a virtual reality concept better than this game.
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That concept ends up being used as an excuse for the outright broken design that is evident right from the first second. You're dropped into an open world recreation of Metropolis which, two years before the release of Grand Theft Auto 3, was very ambitious. However, the moment you start moving, the problems show up. The draw distance is absolutely terrible. Whole buildings pop up right in your face about three seconds before you hit them. Funny enough, the manual tries to explain that away as "kryptonite fog programmed by Luthor". Even with the terrible draw distance, the framerate is still awful, turning into a slideshow frequently, especially when projectiles are on screen. The framerate issues make the multiplayer mode virtually unplayable. The framerate improves for the stages inside enclosed buildings, but those locations are boring mazes. The animation is abysmal as well. Superman's running animation looks like he crapped his pants. In every way, the game looks like it was released unfinished.
The problems reach their zenith in the actual gameplay. Everyone bitches the most about the parts where Kal-El flies through rings, but I won't because, surprisingly, those were the most functional parts of the game! The flight controls are solid enough; the problems there come from the terrible framerate which can throw off your sense of direction. The flying through rings parts aren't good, and there are too many of them. However, the other segments are a thousand times worse! The fighting is so stiff that you'd be lucky if you nailed anything. The automatic picking-up of objects is so finicky that I often had to fly at least three passes before I finally grabbed the object. He has a few of his super powers, but pick-ups had to be found before he could start using them. The power meters don't even start full! Finally, there are the arbitrary time limits all over the place, some limits less than ten seconds. Add in the lack of checkpoints, and you have a game that deserves to be hurled into the sun.
Superman on the Nintendo 64 is every bit as bad as its reputation suggests. It was clearly a game that was shoved out the door too early in an attempt to rip off fans of the character. While I could muster a defense for E.T., this one is not worth the effort. This waste of plastic deserves to be banished to the Phantom Zone to torture Zod.
