Chronogamer

Mmmm... Pop Rocks!

 

Was SuperMan the first game with a female sprite in it? Or at least the first one where the female sprite was kind of hot?

 

I mean... a hot reporter. It's a comment made with all due respect to her journalistic abilities, and isn't meant to be salacious.

 

Although that is a pretty short skirt, y'know.

Great entry!

 

Superman is a brilliant game and among my Top-3 VCS games. Sadly, most reviews I've read woefully underrate it.

 

One other aspect of the game that I think is worth noting is that Superman features a dynamic game world where events continue to occur off-screen. Were there any such games before Superman?

 

The timer was also an inspired addition. It gives the game nearly infinite replay value.

 

I also love the little touches in the game, like the cinematic prelude where you witness the bridge blow up as Clark and then you have to run to the phone booth to change into Superman.

You just made me want to go and play Superman on my 2600!

Christophero Sly said:

One other aspect of the game that I think is worth noting is that Superman features a dynamic game world where events continue to occur off-screen. Were there any such games before Superman?

 

You're right! I forgot about that.

 

Hmmm, that actually makes it a little disturbing to me when I find 'ol Lex and Lois hanging out in the Subway together. Just what "exactly" happens while they're off screen?

 

I like the cinematic touches, too. For some reason, I also like that the you start the game as Superman, witness the trouble as Kent, save the day as Superman, but then have to change back into Kent and go back to work. There's something almost literary there, too, though I'm probably reading too much into it.

 

Nathan Strum said:

Was SuperMan the first game with a female sprite in it? Or at least the first one where the female sprite was kind of hot?

 

Hey, you're right, in fact, she sizzles! I mean, she's probably the first overtly female sprite! Though she isn't the first female in home videogames.

 

Simon Says . . . click here! (EDIT 2021: I have no idea to where that link went back in 2007. I'm guessing it went to Simon Says for the Magnavox Odyssey.)

(though if you find the female to be 'hot' you should probably keep it a secret. )

 

jboypacman said:

You just made me want to go and play Superman on my 2600!

 

Up, up and away! (Well, that's what I say after the quick change in the phone booth.)

Edited April 18, 2021 by Mezrabad

Sadly, most reviews I've read woefully underrate it.

 

I think I'd like the game better if there were some clear logic to the arrangement of the screens. For example, the three exits to each subway could all have different colors, while the four subways could share a shape for each exit (e.g. so the right exit of the red subway would go to a red-sky "two billboards" screen, the right exit of the yellow subway would go to a yellow-sky "two billboards" screen, etc. Alternatively (or perhaps in combination with the idea) the map could be constructed on a grid of six to eight colored streets which would wrap at the left and right edges. Thus, a player who learned the sequence of colors (perhaps ROYGBIV) would be able to tell at a glance which street he was on.

 

Having streets which wrap to themselves at the left and right edges would require having some way for Clark Kent to move north/south, but I don't think it should be a problem to have selected blocks where that's possible.

Sadly, most reviews I've read woefully underrate it.

 

I think I'd like the game better if there were some clear logic to the arrangement of the screens.

 

I don't disagree, there is a lack of elegance to the map layout. As it is, the only way one may improve their time in it seems to be to brute force their way through learning the shortest paths.

 

But hey! Who cares? We get to be Superman! (Woooosh!)

I think I'd like the game better if there were some clear logic to the arrangement of the screens.

I understand what you're saying about the confusing layout of the game world. Likewise, most of the reviews I've read stress this aspect of the game as the primary reason for their negativity. However, I think the non-linearity of the game is one of its greatest strengths. Requiring the player to construct a mental map that accounts for the all the geographic peculiarities of the game makes the game world feel much larger than it would if the player could simply rely on their instinctual sense of 2-d navigation. Remember, it's a timed game and learning to navigate the complex geography of the game with temporal efficiency adds an additional level of depth to the gameplay. If the game world was linear and one could simply rely on an instinctual sense navigation, a significant and challenging element of the gameplay would be completely lost.

 

One other aspect of the game that I want to mention is that the player actually has two separate tasks in the game:

 

1. Capture Lex and his gang of hoodlums and place them in jail.

2. Gather and reassemble the three pieces of the bridge.

 

However, these two tasks actually work at cross purposes to one another because if you spend your time rounding up Lex and his gang, the helicopter has an opportunity to rearrange the location of the bridge pieces. If you concentrate on rebuilding the bridge, Lex and his gang have time to disperse to the far corners of the city. A gameplay element of this type being present in a 4K game from 1979 is nothing short of astonishing.

Double post.

However, I think the non-linearity of the game is one of its greatest strengths. Requiring the player to construct a mental map that accounts for the all the geographic peculiarities of the game makes the game world feel much larger than it would if the player could simply rely on their instinctual sense of 2-d navigation.

 

I agree that the game probably would be rather dull if it were a 6x6 grid with one subway entrance on the third block of each row and subway exits that always went to the second, forth, and sixth blocks. But my feeling is that the game should have some regularity in how the city graphics relate to either the main map or the subway. I also tend to dislike games where for no logical reason going in one direction and then back leaves you in some other spot. Having irregularities for the phone booth and bridge rooms is probably okay, but I would think that the north/south links from those rooms should then point to each other, though perhaps Joe Dunn was trying to hasten the dispersal of the villains from the bridge room.

Holy crap! This is the BEST of the BEST Chronogamer articles I have ever read! OMG! OMG! OMG! Thanks you! I love reading pieces that aren't really reviews but a tribute to the writer's favorite things. You gave life to this game that no other review could give no matter how well written. This article does an excellant job of explaining to gamers why we love video games so much.

 

What made the article, of course, was this line:

 

" I'm one of those writers that hates to edit because I'd rather spend a lifetime wincing at what I've written."

 

I played Superman a couple of months back, and I was very excited. From the screenshots, I immediately knew this represented something remarkable. Some of the things you mentioned were very clear even before playing it: first game with multiple screens and first game with a proper story and role for the player. I was on for an adventure!

 

But then I played it and all I could think of was how such a missed opportunity this was. Seems like they wanted to do so much with this game (and they did!) that none of the things worked very well independently when compared to other games. The graphics are OK for the most part, but some rooms/sections are very weak and there's all that flickering, the gameplay is good but suffers a lot from the navigation department (as supercat nicely put), and we're back to a game with sound annoying as hell, which is so 1978 now.

 

I must point out as well what supercat said: it's ultra weird that if you go up on a screen and down on the next, you don't end up where you started. Strike that out, it's not weird. It's bad. I'm flying around and in the confusion sometimes I switch screens and can't get back to where I was. It's so annoying, particularly if I had just spotted a piece of the bridge or a baddie. Drove me insane, really.

 

But I study videogames and so I value all the things this game accomplished and I respect it for those reasons. I just wish I liked the game more. :-/