Superman - Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Who can tell...
SUPERMAN: THE GAME
(Telecomsoft)
You have to feel a degree of sympathy perhaps for Superman. Super he may be, but he's never been cool. He could easily crush Batman without even trying, but he's too nice to do it. Except when he went all wrong in that film, which is easily the most interesting he's ever been. His movies have never been viewed as classics, although the one with Zod and his mates in wasn't bad I guess. He's all about the powers, but not the charisma sadly. And in the Lego universe, the uber-cool Lego Batman downright despises him, labelling him an "entitled alien" in a lovely rap he did.
Ever 'twas it thus, and never more so than in the world of Spectrum (TM), as it were. Ocean milked their Batman licence for all it was worth (a tenner) and somehow produced three great games starring the Dark Knight. Other superheroes tended to be confined to user-unfriendly adventure games, though we did witness an original Speccy hero of our very own in Redhawk. But poor Supes didn't see much more action than his Supergran, confined to a ropey looking Tynesoft game in '87 and this one. U.S. Gold also promised us another Superman game, but they lied. Well well.
So here's Superman: The Game, in case you mistook it for a doorstop. It was advertised with great pomp for quite a while, but never made it out of its Fortress of Solitude until everyone had forgotten all about it. Beyond's short-lived Monolith offshoot were going to release it, well either them or Beyond themselves, they were trying to deny all knowledge between them, it seems. But such was the delay and, erm, other factors, that it ended up appearing as a budget game (for shame) released by Telecomsoft, who didn't even exist. Firebird were B.T.'s software label of course, but clearly they didn't want to be associated with this hot (super) potato either.
But why? This game came via the U.S. of A, from First Star Software, famous mostly, if not solely, for introducing us to Boulder Dash, which was a huge hit. But Superman: The Cash-In wasn't made by Peter Liepa of B.D. fame, but rather Fernando Herrera and Jim Mangano, whose track records probably speak for themselves in some quarters. Well, nothing terrible ever came out of America, so how wrong could it possibly go?
Time to super-skim the super-plot. The self-styled arch enemy of mankind, Darkseid (who?) is hankering after the Anti-Life Formula, which is imprinted on the minds of certain humans supposedly, because why not? Supes has to save humanity from this nefarious w... hankerer before things turn ugly, and the Hulk appears. The battle for hearts and minds takes place on the streets, in the skies and down in the sewers (urgh) of mighty Metropolis.
People wander the streets like the mindless lemmings they are, and Supes must lead them to safety by moving deflectors in a useful direction, while Darkseid lures them to his lair with tea and choccy biccies. There's a lot of ineffectual milling around on these bits, but you can fire lasers at the enemy to liven things up. These lasers too can be deflected to go around corners. Sounds fun until you notice that you can only ever take a small part of the enemy's health bar away before it stops reducing, then after that nothing more happens. Hope you like games that never end!
In between these bits, the inlay promises exciting combat zone mini-games. They sound alright, flying through canyons, avoiding deadly fireballs, escaping radioactive traps... But these would appear to apply only to other computers' versions of the game. The poor Speccy gets just the paltry one mini-game, where Superman has to punch away bombs dropped by Darkseid's jet (the rich git), which will otherwise smite many a Metropolitan person down below. So this bit comes up a lot and P.S., it's actually super-impossible.
If it all gets too much on the city bits, and it will, you can leave the screen, but only once you have collected a number of "mysterious, yet important objects" before the other guy does. Not that he actually tries to. Then it's onto the one flying sub-game once more. Or you can actually choose not to bother with the flying bit by disabling it on the menu screen. Halves the pain, you see. Skill levels can also be tweaked there between -1 and -3, as that makes total sense.
Now a word on the graphics. Well, an acronym really. W.T.A.F.? It's like this was programmed on a ZX80 and they couldn't be bothered upgrading it. Surely some of the worst sprites ever seen on the computer, the flying Superman one being particularly incompetent. They look suited to a type-in for the Oric or BBC Micro perhaps, they're so chunky, hideous and ill-defined. There's really no excuse - they make Boulder Dash look like Boulder Dash 3.
I don't know if my version of the game is bugged, but it never seems to end or go anywhere. You can't die, which seems apt for superheroes but doesn't make for a fun time. You might manage to usher some humans to safety by deflecting them off the screen occasionally (lucky beggars), and absolutely the most fun moment is when you shoot your laser and deflect it round a corner or two at the enemy. But for what? It doesn't seem to achieve anything.
Before summing up, surely some of the mags of the day must have had a nosey at this title, if not the big three, hence their inclusion in this The Games That Time Forgot malarkey. Surely someone else must have shared in the suffering? Let's see... plenty of news articles trumpeting the upcoming game, a few adverts and precisely zilch in the way of actual reviews. This really is unusual, as the mags were normally only too happy to slag bad games off, but I guess no-one could be bothered even doing that by the time this one came out. Not many Youtubers have even bothered, and they'll happily review their own breakfast and tell everyone about it at great length. Unsubscribe!
So to sum up, the graphics are appalling, on a level with E.T. on the old wooden Atari. Colour is at least reasonably colouful, and sound is almost entirely absent incredibly, no parpy beeps or nothing. No nice loading screen or even a badly scribbled caricature of ol' red undies himself. The bright yellow cover artwork in double size format is the best thing about this whole sorry package, and even that's bang average and probably took up unnecessary shelf space in those little old computer shops we used to love.
Oh woe, this truly is a contender for the worst thing ever to be associated with our beloved Specco. For shame, fine people of Beyond, for having any connection at all with this. You did Shadowfire, Spy Vs. Spy... Lords Of Midnight for pity's sake! Hang your heads in despair, all those who venture here, especially me - the only stupid b****rd who has dared to play and review it. The joke is truly on me!
Yeah, it's not very good.
SUPER-SCORE
17%
THE GAMES THAT TIME FORGOT: 1985 EDITION
5th place!
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