∇
troperville

∇
tools

∇
toys

Must be Monday. New podcast! Just click on the fancy logo below.

SubpagesFunny
Main
Trivia
VideoGame
YMMV

main index

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

random

Subpages:

Video Game: Superman 64
aka: Superman Sixty Four

Enjoy this N64 Superman box art. It's far more entertaining than the game

In short time your fate will be sealed, Superman.

Superman (or The New Superman Aventures [sic]), unofficially referred to as Superman 64, is a video game based on Superman The Animated Series and released by Titus Software on May 31, 1999 on the Nintendo 64. It is notorious for the negative reception it received from critics and is considered one of the worst games of all time.

Lex Luthor creates a virtual version of Metropolis and then succeeds in trapping Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Professor Emil Hamilton within it. Superman is forced to enter Luthor's virtual world and SOLVE HIS MAZE. Other villains in the game include Parasite and Brainiac.

The player assumes the role of Superman and is challenged to complete puzzle obstacles throughout the game; usually levels contain similar challenges. In many levels, Superman flies through a series of rings within a time limit (unless the player chooses to play the game on an easy difficulty; the rings then disappear but the timer remains the same). The "virtual Metropolis" is filled with what the developers called "Kryptonite fog" (which was actually the game's inability to render anything more than 10 feet away without being choppier than it already is), supposedly there to slow him down. Other levels feature Superman moving through buildings fighting various enemies and going out of his way to protect the virtual world's inhabitants. Oh, and every ring-based level is a Timed Mission too.

This game exhibits examples of:

A Winner Is You
All There in the Manual: After a fashion. By default, your only hint of a storyline is the single intro screen you see when you start up the game. However, there's a menu option in the pause screen that gives you an extra paragraph of text, and the game came bundled with a comic book that explained the game's backstory in much more detail.
Anti-Frustration Features: The ring levels allow you to miss a few of the rings (equal to the number of rings that are gold). Also, if you fail a challenge after a ring level, you normally have to play the ring level again, but if you've already cleared the ring level 3 times, you can keep retrying the challenge indefinitely.
Big Bad: Lex Luthor, who somehow manages to make Darkseid a subordinate.
Charm Person: The "reprogrammation" (which is French for "reprogramming") ability. This takes a problematic turn, since you're ultimately required to kill every enemy to advance, including the one you just converted.
"We're on the same side now!"
Check Point Starvation
Cowardly Boss: Brainiac in stage 4.
Damsel in Distress: Lois Lane.
Easy Mode Mockery: The best ending is only available if you complete the game on the hardest difficulty.
Fake Difficulty
Fission Mailed: It's possible to make it so that Lex Wins, and then proceed into the next part of the stage. One example shown here (around 27:50) has Superman intentionally fail by hitting a woman with a box, but she still walks to the finish if you wait a few minutes.
Flying Brick: Superman, and he sure controls like one too.
From Bad to Worse:
- The game is notorious for its unbelievable abuse of Pass Through The Rings, but that only covers the odd number levels, or "Ride Stages." What follows afterwards is a set of ridiculously cramped buildings with simply painful fighting mechanics.
- Think the ring stages are bad now? Wait until you get to the ten minute long one. The most of the ten minutes are necessary long one.
- Then there are ring stages where you fly around and literally loop back to where you started from. No, you can't just fly into the last ring either, you have to do it the old fashioned way.
- Starting in the second ride stage, the rings actually start moving. And they eventually move in rapid but small circles, making it even harder to fly through them.
Funny Background Event: Done unintentionally. Cutscenes use the game's engine. As Superman flies out a window into the city and the screen fades to black, you can see him crash into the textured wall that depicts the skyline.
James Bondage: Jimmy Olsen and Professor Emil Hamilton.
Kaizo Trap:
- Under certain circumstances, you can still be killed in the "Superman Wins" end-of-level screen.
- You can also die in the cutscenes. If you're in a room with Kryptonite, your health will keep draining. And draining. Until Lex wins.
Kryptonite Is Everywhere: The game has "Kryptonite fog" in every level, diminishing Superman's powers. Of course, it's just an in-game explaination for the severe distance fog that was supposed to mask the Nintendo 64's poor draw distance.
Let's Play: ProtonJon challenged himself to do one of these. Of course, being ProtonJon, it's not even halfway done yet.
Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: There was a "Collector's Edition" of the game that came with a tie-in comic.
Made of Explodium: Pretty much everything in the game. Including innocent boxes!
Nintendo Hard: Not much of a surprise given how sloppy the game is...
Number of the Beast: The total number of rings in Ride Stage 2 is 616. But this is likely a coincidence.
Obvious Beta: There are so many glitches in this game that, despite its notoriety, no comprehensive list of them even exists.
- Sadly, there's footage on Youtube of an actual beta of the game. And it's actually, if arguably, better than the release product. The producer of Superman 64 primarily blamed it on the licensers digging their hands messily in the development of the game, and that apparently a massive amount of the code and assets had to be redone mere months, if not weeks, before release.
Pass Through The Rings: The "Ride Stage" odd number levels of the game. Believe it or not, these are the tolerable parts of the game.
Sequence Breaking: Thanks to the glitches in the game, some stages are possible to beat very quickly by skipping most of the levels.
Serendipity Writes The Plot: An infamous example. The poor programing of the game and the capabilities of the aging Nintendo 64 had the creators Hand Wave the fog for the poor draw distance as Kryptonite Fog.
- How Superman is able to fly, let alone breathe, with that amount of Kryptonite Fog is unexplained.
Shaggy Dog Story: You defeated Lex in the virtual world... but the real Lex is still out there.
Skippable Boss: It is possible to clear the LexCorp stage by ignoring Brainiac and going straight to reading all the notes on Luthor's desk.
The Smurfette Principle: ProtonJon suggests this is why Mala is included.
Super Title 64 Advance: Despite the game being simply called Superman (or The New Superman ~~Adventures~~ Aventures [sic]), it quickly became known as Superman 64 to distinguish it from other Superman games.
- The Angry Video Game Nerd made a joke about this in his review of the game. Everyone expected him to do this game, but he started the video saying: "Superman...on Commodore 64. Yeah, that's what you mean, right? The Commodore 64? [...] The game came on floppy disks. Remember those: the ones that actually are floppy?"
Suspicious Video Game Generosity: When in LexCorp, you can find a health icon just before you fight Brainiac. This can be completely meaningless, as you can pretty much just skip Brainiac entirely by ignoring him.
Timed Mission
Tyop on the Cover: The New Superman Aventures [sic]
Video Game Cruelty Potential: Exploiting a certain glitch allows you to punch Mala. Endlessly.
Xanatos Gambit: Even if you beat Lex, he's still in the real world. LEX WINS.
You Make Me Sic: "Can't you spell Lex Luthor?" Okay, now you're just trolling us, game.
- The title itself. Aventures is French for Adventures. Titus Software is based in France.