Blog

Oh Titus Software, how you have given us the greatest of all gifts. The true meaning of pain and suffering. The uncharted eighth level of hell. Superman 64.

The Comics Console’s ongoing celebration of comic bookdom’s worst video game moves forward. Last week we put up with Lois Lane’s bunk, showed Metallo who his daddy was and flew through more rings. Unfortunately, the stages that followed are twice as lame. So lets just get this over with.

Stage 7

It’s getting to the point that when I close my eyes I see these damn rings. God help me…so many rings. We have about three and a half minutes to run this set that takes us from beneath the Metropolis river to what I think was supposed to be some kind of bridge, then we have to defeat four evil shadowy henchmen.

At least taking these guys out is quick, if not entertaining. You can literally fly Superman directly into them, assuming you can aim him properly, killing them instantly. Can you imagine if this is how Superman always took out his enemies? Action Comics sales would go through the roof!

Once the shadow goons are all gone, it’s four more minutes of great ring action! These rings like to move a lot and make you screw up and have to re-do it five-hundred billion times. Once the rings are conqured, you have have three Mine Droppers to destroy. These are some of the most useless adversaries. There aren’t any people down below in the city, and nothing gets blown up by their mines. Maybe Luthor just designed them to royally piss off Superman fans. THAT’S IT! Luthor’s evil is transcending the video game itself.

Yes, look on the back of the cartridge! Titus Software didn’t develop this game! Luthor Corp. did! Lex is punishing us for being Superman fans! Evil bald asshole!

Anyway, four more minutes of rings to fly through. YAWN. Then we have hostages to save! You can take out the shadowy goons surrounding them by using Superman like a battering ram. After I did this, the game glitches and Superman suddenly flew upward into the pink sky as far as he could go. Weird.

Then the game glitched again because now we have five minutes of rings to contend with. …oh wait…that’s not a glitch. …son of a bitch.

This set is really tough. As the rings call for Superman to penetrate them, there will suddenly be giant gaps that you’ll have to stop and look around to find where the next ring is. Remember, if you miss too many you’ll have to restart…and you don’t want that.

After the five minutes of rings, we have five Mine Droppers to defeat and two minutes to destroy them all. Usually not a problem, but the Mine Droppers are scattered so far apart, and since the Mine Droppers don’t exist until you get close enough to it for the game to create it, you’ll likely run out of time, forcing you to restart the previous set of rings. Brilliant. Unfortunately you can’t use your battering ram technique on these guys. You have to actually pick them up and throw them and watch them float five feet away, then they blow up.

Next up, six minutes of rings. Christ! Are you kidding me! This is the longest most dull level in the entire game. When do the damn rings end? Who thought this was fun?

Stage 8

The crap cut scene shows Jimmy Olsen standing in a parking garage being guarded by two robots. I’m assuming we’re going to have to save him. God forbid the cut scenes in this game be useful.

We’re dropped into the parking garage where a shadow goon waits for you to clobber him. I used my ice breath to detain him, however, encased in ice, he still continued to move and fire at me, proving that Superman’s ice breath is absolutely meaningless.

We move deeper into the area through a hallway with weird striped walls and come across a parked police car. This car is actually kind of fun to screw around with. when you hit it it will pop into the air and float back down like it’s a balloon instead of a two-ton vehicle. Please take note that the fact that pummeling this police car around the area is fun shows just how lame the rest of the game is. Be careful with the other cars in the garage though, because they will explode.

As you go through the maze of this parking area, you’ll find shadow goons that are easily disposed of by just flying and crashing right into them. Eventually you come across a disc that when picked up asks you to “choose an enemy.” The confusing part about this is that nothing happens next that involves any kind of choosing. This is the second time this disc has appeared and we were asked to choose an enemy, but we were never given any options to choose anything. It’s very strange.

Keep following the hallways and bad guys to a giant room with a weird, red glowing generator type device. Drop down a level and you see an elevator that will take you to another level of another parking area.

In the corner is a door with an ominous black skull and cross bones. Players feeling a bit dangerous will ignore the obvious warning of danger that is beyond this door. For those brave enough to enter, you’ll find a red room with two shadow enemies and absolutely nothing else. Dangerous indeed.

Exit the danger room and follow more hallways down to more parking, but in this area, you’ll see a tank ready to blow you away. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective) this tank is about as powerful as one of the shadow enemies, and flying right into it will destroy it instantly.

As you go further the Kryptonite meter will appear at the bottom of the screen signifying Green K is near by, and you’ll want the meter shifting more to the left to avoid danger.

Continue on to more useless tanks, “choose an enemy” discs where no choosing of any enemies is involved, and skull-and-cross-bone rooms. One skull room actually has health inside of it which would be the exact opposite of the death and danger a skull and cross bones would signify.

Most likely by accident you’ll pass one of the stripped walls and a text box that reads “We’re on the same side now” will appear and the wall will open revealing a corridor that leads to a new room. Inside the room is a shadow enemy and a freeze breath power-up. That’s it.

So basically whoever you’re on the same side with now is not explained. This level is officially the worst level of the game. I thought chasing and saving Lois Lane’s dumb ass every three seconds was annoying, but at least something was happening in that level. This is just nothing. There is nothing here that gives you any idea of what you’re supposed to do or where you’re supposed to go. It’s pretty terrible.

What you must do is find a key card near a car on the first level of the parking garage, and find the brick wall on the third level that leads to Jimmy. If (and that’s a big if) you find these things without going insane or giving up on this game (something you should have done halfway through stage one) then you’ll find some bombs near Jimmy that you must defuse with your super breath, then navigate back to the elevator to find Darkseid.

The fight with Darkseid is absolutely meaningless. More blind flailing of fists until one of you dies first. After the fight you leave Darkseid with the Metropolis PD.

…Because the city police department knows how to handle a demi-god who can destroy them all with a single thought. Makes perfect sense.

Stage 9

Now it’s back to the same old crap. Five minutes of rings followed by twisters that need to be blown away. Another five minutes of pointless rings to fly through followed by two more twisters to blow out.

It’s amazing how quickly this game will wear your spirit and make you lose hope for all that is good in the world.

Five MORE minutes of rings, and I’m wishing for death. Oh, but wait. A change up from the norm. Now we have THREE twisters to blow out with Supes’ super breath. Haha! Things are looking up!

Man. That extra twister is EXACTLY what I needed to get me pumped for the SIX minutes of rings to endure next. After this atrocity, you’re given four RPG packing shadow thugs to destroy, and again, Superman wins the day, and I need a drink.

Finally it’s over…well, for this week anyway. The one good thing that came out of today’s horrid session is that it has brought us to the final stage of the game. Check out The Comics Console next week when we wrap up our celebration of the turd stain on the toilet of the comic book/video game relationship, Superman 64.

Andrew Hurst
andrewhurst@comicattack.net