[Playing…] Superman (1988)

It is true that Superman is not a character that has had much luck when it comes to video games, since there are quite a few regular and even bad games that have been made taking advantage of his name, the most remembered being, superman for Nintendo 64.

Quite a long time ago I talked about Death and Return of Superman, a game about the famous superhero that was released for Super Nintendo and Mega Drive and that, honestly, without being horrible, it wasn't very remarkable either. Although I recognize that the mix between game type Double Dragon and Ship Shooter (for the phases where the characters flew and shot at their enemies) is a good combination to represent the powers of this character and those similar to it.

That idea was already used many years ago, in an arcade game released in 1988 by Taito, known as superman (although it is often called Superman The Arcade Game, so as not to confuse it with other games called simply superman).

I recently dedicated a few hours to this game and the truth is that despite its flaws it is quite striking and I think it is interesting to make it known a little more.

The first thing that caught my attention about the game is not its graphics (quite good for the time), nor its animations (generally good, except when Superman kicks) but the fact that at the beginning of the game we see Clark Kent taking off his clothes and we hear the John Williams theme created for the 1978 Superman movie. That melody will accompany us at the beginning of the game and will then be repeated in some levels and the truth is, the mere pleasure of being able to hear that theme in the video game compensates for its repetition. amply.

The second thing that caught my attention was that this game is for two players. Who will be the character controlled by the second player? Supergirl? Power Girl? Well no, the chosen character is red Superman. For some reason Taito "did a Luigi" by repeating the character, but the funny thing about this is that the result is a Superman with colors similar to those of the Captain Marvel (the original, Wiz Comics from the 40s), who was his biggest rival in sales during those years, until his publisher disappeared and this character was acquired by DC Comics.

Perhaps the younger ones know him by the name Shazam, since DC decided to change his name to avoid confusion with Marvel and its dozen characters called Captain Marvel (in addition, Marvel had patented the name and DC could not release a collection with that name, so the change became a necessity). If you are curious about that story and in the process know the origin of Captain Marvel (Shazam), I explained it in more detail in this article.

Curiosities aside, I have to applaud the fact that they decided to repeat the character to allow a 2-player mode, these types of games are always more fun when enjoyed with another player. Also, if for some reason you need the justification of seeing two Supermen together to enjoy the game, that's okay, since they appeared in old comics.

And now, back to the Arcade Superman game. As I said, this game combines beat'em up phases with shoot'em up phases, thus slightly alternating the controls, although these are very simple: We move Superman freely with the joystick and we have two attack buttons that vary slightly depending on the type of phase we play.

In the normal phases (beat'em up style) we will have a button to punch, if we press it for a few seconds we will launch an energy ball (I don't remember that Superman could do that...) that will go through several enemies, and a kick button, which will be useful to hit some small enemies. During these phases we can destroy scenery elements to obtain items (yellow allows us to launch an energy ball, blue fills us with life and red eliminates enemies from the screen) and very occasionally we will find objects that Superman can use as weapons (cars, drums...).

In the shooting phases, we will keep the punch/energy ball button, but the kick button will be used for Superman to fire his heat vision (which is a faster and weaker attack than the energy ball).

Normally the levels are divided into two beat'em up phases (one horizontal and one vertical) and one shoot'em up where we will have to eliminate enemies (missiles, stones, helicopters) and avoid dangers.

Each level has a couple of final enemies, who can take a life from us in seconds (although we can also crush them if we hit them quickly). Coincidentally, the enemies section is one of the weakest in the game, since both the common enemies and the bosses are repeated quite a bit (changing the color). It is also very disappointing not to encounter enemies like Lex Luthor, Bizarro, Toyman or Mr. Mxyzptlk. If I'm honest, I don't even know who the final enemy is, it reminds me of Brainiac (with the green skin design) but in the intro of the game they don't explain anything to you and seeing that the rest of the enemies in the game are quite strange and don't seem to come from the comics (at least, I don't know them) well, I wouldn't be surprised if it were a completely new one... similar to Brainiac.

This game is not very long and can be completed in half an hour or so, but its difficulty is not exactly low. At first we can enjoy Superman's strength (common enemies die on first impact and fly off the screen) but little by little more annoying enemies begin to appear that will weaken us. The final bosses of the beat'em up part are very damaging and can eliminate a life in seconds (although we can also destroy them with punches and finish them off quickly) while the bosses of the shoot'em up part require a little more time and a lot of skill dodging attacks.

Being an arcade game, its short duration and high difficulty (remember, planned so that players would leave coins) are within expectations.

So I have to say, although this game is not the best within the two genres it encompasses, it is satisfactory enough for me to consider it one of the best Superman games I have seen.