Superman 64 | Hacker News Reader

Superman 64

en.wikipedia.org

42 pointsluu24 comments

The Cutting Room Floor has an entry about a prototype version of the game from before Warner Bros started messing with its development. It covers some of the differences between the prototype and the production game and provides a download link for the prototype ROM.

https://tcrf.net/Proto:Superman_(Nintendo_64)

As a kid during the N64 years, my dad was excited to rent this game from Blockbuster for us to try. We both recoiled in horror after a few minutes when it became evident it was a disaster.

I remember playing the game as kid with a friend whose mom rented it for him. We were so disappointed. What stuck in my mind very much is that the character had now shadow whatsoever so it was imposible to determine the distance to the floor, super annoying in a game where you can fly...

I remember being on the USS Denver, in the top bunk sitting up, watching another Marine play emulated N64 games on his laptop. I told him to give Superman 64 a shot and I nearly died laughing. It was better that he didn't know what he was in for and went in totally blind. I also saw him snort coke that he bought in either Subic Bay or Pattaya.

info about deployed life is always so odd. i love the juxtaposition of playing n64 and doing coke. not related, but still a great window into what you chose to remember of that dude

For me that juxtaposition was called college

How was the quality of the coke in relation to the game?

on edit: meaning in relation to game quality, I know the events were not coterminous.

Not really a good idea to snort coke you buy from random places. Unless you have a trusted seller, better stay away.

For anyone interested, here is a speed run, the game indeed is terrible.

https://youtu.be/iQ2UzTpXfpU

Omg, the patience the speedrunner had to have to slog through that whole thing. I'm always impressed by speed runs but this blew me away. The game is truly awful

Off topic, but I just learned that the author of Watchmen (Alan moore) wrote some superman stories. The one I’m trying to track down right now is “for the man who has everything.” He described his writing process for it in detail in his great, short book on comic writing

https://youtu.be/1dJXgJ1c4vY

It would be useful to provide some context for the uninitiated - this is an Angry Video Game Nerd review of Superman 64. Viewer discretion is advised, as this particular reviewer likes to use elaborate expletives to describe downsides of reviewed games. It's pretty entertaining, though. PS. the actual review of Superman 64 for Nintendo 64 starts at 3:30.

Also, some context for the game itself, from the article itself:

> critical reviews were extremely negative, claiming it to be one of the worst video games ever made and panning its unresponsive controls, technical flaws, repetitive gameplay, overuse of distance fog, and poor graphics

It's interesting how this game came to be, because Titus Interactive was a pretty well known studio that had a decent track record until that point. I would be interested to read more about how exactly it happened that they've released this monstrocity.

Exactly. This comment's [0] link to a description -- and download! -- of a build of a much, much better game made me desire a writeup from some knowledgeable insider. I played the game in my misspent youth; the description of the shelved build is amazing, and saddening.

Makes me think of the recently released Duke Nukem Forever 2001 build [1]. Everyone surely knows of the turkey DNF became, but back in 2001 it really looked [2] awesome.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32274895

[1] https://www.moddb.com/games/duke-nukem-forever-2001

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDlB2P1leRM

The “development” section of this Wikipedia article gives a pretty good overview of it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_64#Development

All the footnotes next to the quotes lead to interviews with the head of Titus on the subject of Superman.

.... why?

Perhaps inspired by a recent submission of an interview with the creator of E.T.?

E.T. wasn't that bad. I remember playing it when it came out and enjoying it. But this Superman thing... I hope somebody got blacklisted for that.

Right, E.T isn't a stand out classic, it's a bit rushed, the game isn't a great fit to the movie (but it's far from the worst in that era), but what stands out in people's memories is mostly that it wasn't what they expected. Which somewhat tells us about that era of video games more than about ET.

In an era with Goose Game, Paper's Please and Unpacking, people understand that just because this is a video game doesn't mean it needs to fit into a handful of pre-existing niches - games can do whatever they want, but ET pre-dates that era.

I expect if you had shot a found footage mockumentary movie in 1940 (before even Citizen Kane was shown) audiences wouldn't even have understood what you were trying to do. It wouldn't matter whether you did a good job or not, reviews are going to say it's a bad movie because the reviewer does not have a framework in which to assess it.

I just found out that Papers Please is coming to mobile on August 5th!

From the account in the linked article, it seems that a large part of the blame can be laid at the feet of the licensing folks at WB, who ate up a ton of the development time by constantly demanding changes. They probably didn't lose their jobs.

Are Superman games still cursed to be awful? I got the NES game in a yard sale ages ago and remember looking it up on the early web and finding others who also thought it was atrocious.

I think it is a particularly hard character to build a game around. Danger/conflict for Superman boils down to a binary question - is kryptonite present or not? I think a later Superman game (for the XBox or XBox 360 generation, I believe) tried to use the health of Metropolis in lieu of a health gauge for Superman himself, which I thought was a novel idea.

There's also a lot of individual mechanics for Superman (flight, speed, strength, laser vision, etc.) that are probably challenging to get right. It's easier to work with more limited heroes.

> Danger/conflict for Superman boils down to a binary question - is kryptonite present or not?

Perhaps, but given that Superman is not from Earth it could go the Dragon Ball route.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com