| Posted By
Csabo
on 2012-08-19
16:35:21
|  Superman is a really bad game
I really can't find any redeeming qualities for this game: Superman. "It's a game of nail-biting strategy and stunning action" claims the cover... If I would have bought this game back then and then loaded it up, I would have been really disappointed.
Let's break it down:
Sound: some beeps and noises, it's ok I guess.
Music: none.
Graphics: pretty bad. The hero portraits are unrecognizable, there's jarring flashing.
Controls: frustratingly bad. Just try and go over one of those reflectors (to turn them). Next to impossible! Even with the smallest tap of a key or movement of the joystick, it jumps too much.
Gameplay: The AI is just random. The point of the game is not explained ANYWHERE, and the game actually only ends when one of the players press "Z" on the keyboard. At this point, the game is evaluated (tells you who wins), and you have to press "A" (but again, this is not mentioned anywhere). It also unclear what the evaluation is based on, but it's not score or the number of diamonds collected...
My opinion: It's just utter crap. I had to review my vote on this one to a zero.
The reason I even looked at it is the "cheat" mission: we're trying to find a cheat for every action game (and this is one of the last 5 or so to be done), but I'm not even sure what a proper cheat for this would be. Maybe "F 0800 4000 0" 
Some of you gave 5s or 7s to this title. Can you explain why? Any other really bad games you want to vent about?
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Posted By
George
on 2012-08-19
17:54:40
 | Re: Superman is a really bad game
The greatest disappointment for me is Yie-ar Kung Fu.
Because at that time i played it first on a C64 and i was thrilled.
I can imagine seeking it for the Plus/4. When i played it after 30 years....oh man, waht a disappointment. Another example...Way of the exploding fist...
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Posted By
Luca
on 2012-08-19
18:30:07
 | Re: Superman is a really bad game
Yes, Superman plays in a very horrible way, especially because there's no use of interrupt.
There are 3 screens, you start from the central one, in the left screen there's a way to let the people escape for your counting, in the rightstand screen there's the pathway to let people escape for your opponent. People follow the path guided by the deflectors on the crossways. The first character who collect 1 or 2 or 3 crystals (depending from the level, 1/2/3) is able to move to his own screen (right for the foe, left for Superman), he will go there to adjust the path in order to let people escape.
The game ends when all the people is saved or captured, or when one of the two characters looses all his energy.
>30f9 a5 unlimited energy (Superman)
>3102 a5 unlimited energy (Darkseid)
See the finals with:
>d0 00 00
>d2 00 00
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-08-19
22:35:32
 | Re: Superman is a really bad game
Your brave for even trying to play Superman.
I have never voted a score for it so not guilty! 
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Posted By
George
on 2012-08-20
03:44:48
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
You have to admit..it has great coverdesign... 6 points for it!
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2012-08-20
09:38:50
 | Re: Superman is a really bad game
hm... How come I've never EVER came across this game?? I mean that it's a commercially released game and I did not know of its existence till now. Strange, even if it's crap, I used to have every games back then that was spreading.
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2012-08-20
16:15:58
 | Re: Superman is a really bad game
Kudos for Csabo for this.
I remember buying Superman in Wembley market, I grew up nearby just a mile or two away. it was right behind the old national stadium. I was really excited to see this and I unfortunately bought it.
The game was so bad that most of it was cut out, as far as I know we only had the first level compared to other versions, It was pretty awful. I haven't played it since then, so I think it deserves a new review from me one day lol.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2012-08-20
12:25:50
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
After reading Luca's writeup, I had to go back and I was astonished to find that you can indeed lose energy. This (like everything else) is done so badly in the game: the bar doesn't decrease for every unit (per pixel), but only after losing 8 units of energy (per character). Since the terrible AI is so bad, in a single player game I simply haven't seen either character lose energy at all. (You can definitely get up and go for a 5 minute coffee break, then come back, and still find your guy healthy.)
So, the scoring is based on number of people "saved". But even at a 2 player game, the "strategy" becomes saving just one person and quickly pressing "Z".
MIK, it's not too late to vote The current score of 2.8 doesn't do it justice.
George, I know what you mean about Yie Ar Kung Fu. Even though it's disappointing compared to the C=64 version, at least they tried. In this game, the inattention to detail is apalling. I can see the programmer going... "Okay, so here's the starting screen. S is Start. L is Level. Now, what key would adjust the "players" value? Why, "N", of course! But let's not put that in the instructions... I'm sure people will just press every letter, one-by-one and find it. Instead I need to come up with a good adjective... "Nail-biting", oh yeah, that's the ticket!"
I hope the 5/7 voters chime in (you know who you are)
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-08-20
14:48:21
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
Thing is you have to remind your self some one put time and effort in to it no matter the quality or coding skills behind it. 9 out of 10 commercial games were done by people below the age of 20 years old, over half I'm sure still at school in their teens. I'm sure even a 14 year old child would of been proud of Super Man if they wrote it, being younger they would of seen it differently to what you do now. It's like Lego Bricks where you can make anything and a kid see's it as something cool even though it looks nothing like the real thing at all. Imagination does the rest... Having said that, the only people you can point the finger at were the adults that said it was good enough to make money out of it!
That's all it is really.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2012-08-20
14:59:08
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
Hmm, okay, that's an interesting though. Do you really think a young person could have coded the game? If so, then my rant is misguded... However, if that's the case, they should have labeled and marketed it as such. Since it's using licensed IP, whoever owns those characters must have "okay"-ed it.
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Posted By
George
on 2012-08-20
15:11:10
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
I totally agree with MIK, because i had the same thought, when reading the topic. But didnt want to say it. I didn'n play the game seriously yet, but it really looks like a kid prooudly programmed this game and went to his Uncle to promote it. Surely he was a great Superman-Fan. On the first look, the graphics aren't so bad, and the most important point is, that Mik said, imagination does the rest. Look at the vast of Atari 2600 and Odyssey games. The best part of most of them, are the wonderful Artwork and manuals. Superman is for me a wonderful historical example for is time. As a collecor a must have for me now...
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-08-20
16:50:31
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
I've never sat down and honestly played it. I loaded it up once and switched it off as I didn't like the look of it. I have the original, I'm sure it's my cover on the site and maybe the tap came from me too... It does look like a younger persons game.
In truth there are as many good commercial games are there are bad. It's a 50/50 right down the middle. You bought one good one to then by an average one. People could do as they pleased and Solar Software is the best example of taking people for a ride when half of his releases would look bad on a Vic20 let alone a C16.
Not all of the Mastertronic range is what I would call GOOD. Some of the later releases are below average.
Tynesoft released many below average games.
Even Anco, Anirog released a small number of average games, Thai Boxing could be the bad egg of that list but lucky for us they did more good than it's even worth worrying about that is bad.
What were Commodore thinking putting text adventures on cartridges?
What were Elite thinking releasing Commando like it was, to then stick the knife in real hard with Ghost'n'Goblins which was even worse. These two are the biggest let downs of all.
It was that area of when everything was free for all and as long as you were in the know with some potential to make money then anything could be knocked out and they could get away with it. 50 games all in basic for a price... Some one will buy it. Even Jeff Minter managed to release Psychedelia at a time when it was all about games.
Superman is just one of those that has made you scratch your head and ask how on earth did they ask money for this... Many more like it, just some are easier to forgive than others. Sometimes it's best to ignore, forget something ever existed, just don't load it up until someday your ready for it. You may even find the answers that were not so obvious first time around at a later date. One such game for me is Runner, I missed the point, bad animation, cheap and nothing special as if I was just robbed of my paper round money! It almost put me off buying Booty because I was looking at the same thing on the back cover! Today I have become fond of Runner just because it's a fun game that offers something a little different in that simple kind of way that I never really took much notice of back in the day. Sure there is little to do in it, but that's half the fun just seeing if you can reach the top and work up a high score. In 1986 having already played and beat Tom Thumb I was blind to what Runner had to offer. Glad I found what it was all about at a later date. Not saying this will happen with Superman, but sometimes you can be a little blind to something when you have played something much better. Not all games can be good on any machine, some one has to take the crown for worst game.
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2012-08-20
16:40:31
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
Pretty sure you meant Ghosts and Goblins Mik, lol.
I wouldn't even put that as Elite trying. It was completely unfinished and just plain unreleasable and in the realms of Green Beret but at least that was finished, kind of. It makes Commando look superb.
Thai Boxing was just bleh too. A mate of mine had it. It was the reason I never bought it
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-08-20
16:49:36
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
lol I have more versions of Ghost'n'Goblins, Ghouls'n'Ghosts & Super Ghouls'n'Ghosts than anything else from C16,C64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST, Megadrive, SNES, Gameboy Advance, Capcom collection Sega Saturn, PSone, XBOX1 and any more I have forgot. That's how easy it is to get them mixed up without thinking what I'm doing.
Only half the game on C64, but a good half and the music is superb!
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Posted By
George
on 2012-08-20
17:24:30
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
LOL... Dont forget, all the cool rich kids of that time had a C64 or better (at least here in Germany where i grew up), where i had to deal with a plus/4 from an outsale in a supermaket ( Aldi). The cool kids played Rambo, Yie-ar Kung-Fu and all the great games of its time, and i played selftyped submarine-games (Machinecode) from the magazines and Thai Boxing... Maybe that experience brought me to the softwarebusiness....
Update: I just played superman...well its not that bad...has some nice ideas in it with the mirrors and the eye-lasers. Reminds me a little of the first GTA ..:)
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-08-20
17:21:43
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
Look at Udo Gertz. He started on Vic20, then C64 and did his best works on C16/Plus4. Practice made perfect and he was a school kid like us!
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Posted By
George
on 2012-08-20
17:33:11
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
Udo Gertz made with Winter Games one of the best and iconic games for the C16 and Plus/4 for me. Still a very good and timeless game, from the Master...
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2012-08-20
20:46:11
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
haha, I had always assumed Udo and Brigitte Gertz were married, I didn't realise they were siblings and still at school. Udo had amazing skills at that age (well, at any age).
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-08-21
04:52:02
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
Yes even I thought Udo was married, much older like a Rob Hubbard and had no idea Brigitte was his sister until Gaia found this below!
Just in case anyone missed it here is: The Story of Kingsoft!
http://plus4world.powweb.com/forum/21933
Indeed Udo is a legend! If I had one wish, Tom Thumb 2 or a port of the C64 version would be just as cool.
One more thing that really makes the C16/Plus4 that people tend to forget is the 127 colours, more so those still talking about the machine in print and class it as a Minority, (Retro Gamer). Same type of game running on our machine looks better because of the colours used be it Tom Thumb to Fire Ant and many more! Some one needs to tell Retro Gamer there is a Plus/4 too! Glad I only browse at it in the shops and don't waste money on it... 
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2012-08-21
05:06:53
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
You're kidding about a port of Tom64 right? It's a fricking horrible game
If anything, Tom16 should be ported to the C64, show them how he got it right
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-08-21
05:19:01
| Re: Superman is a really bad game
Tom64 is a cool game! A very hard game, a very big game, a game you need a lot of patience and practice to get any where with and I like it.
It's a game from that era before C16 & Plus4 and is much like many of that time being coded for C64. The C64 never shined until 1985 when they started doing ports of arcade machines. Before then it was Magic Carpet, 1985 the day after, Sub Hunt which were all nice games from Mastertronic but ones that would run on a C16 easy. Tom64 does nothing wrong, just a victim of the times and why Manic Minor was so talked about!! Without Tom64 there would be no Tom 16, remember that.
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