Gamer's Kryptonite

1up has a feature, in honor of the excellent Superman Returns, discussing the unfortunate history of Superman licensed games across the many consoles. The worst is, of course, Superman 64. From the article: "Superman 64 isn't completely without redeeming features. It serves as an invaluable object lesson in how not to make a videogame. Try to build your characters with more than three polygons. Do not pad out your game by forcing players to fly through rings at two miles an hour in between each stage. Do not make your superheroes less physically imposing than a one-legged, asthmatic kitten with a concussion."

Comments

Movie Games

[spykemail]

Someone once said "As long as people are willing to accept crap, it will financially profitable to dispense it." This holds true for everything, especially Game Developers.

Re:Blizzard?!

[smbarbour]

I'm not surprised, but I already knew that Blizzard got their start as a B-grade console game developer.

They got lucky with Warcraft. It gave them enough credibility to become a top-notch developer.

Spyro

[hackwrench]

What make's Spyro's courses better than Superman 64's. I haven't played the latter. Also, Pilotwings 64 has a similar gameplay.

You have to empathise with game designers

[spyrochaete]

Superman is one of the most hated superheroes because he has too many powers and is invulnerable to everything but space rocks from a jillion miles away. He's an overpowered flying side of beef with no natural predators. There's tons of room to write stories about such a character, but designing a challenging but sensible premise for a video game is really tough with Superman.

Re:You have to empathise with game designers

[Rachel Lucid]

In a way, Superman's popularity is his own demise, because he is THE clichè superhero. He has a secret identity, he has all the amazing powers you could think of, he has the girl (but not the marriage), and essentially lives akin to a god on earth.

Which of course makes him a game's Deux Ex Machina. You can't start him out as a weak little thing from the beginning, unless you start WAY at the beginning and try to make some sort of RPG starting with Clark in school (perhaps with a Smallville nod), forcing him to grow and develop in the game, allowing him to age, and eventually at the end you get to play the fully-powered adult Superman against Lex Luthor and everything.

But you can't do any proper sequels (at least with that character now that he's an adult), or else you're f*cked.

Re:The problem

[tambo]

How do you make the game a challenge without giving everyone Kryptonite rings?

:shrug: That's the problem with modern games... if you have a man with infinite strength, developers can only imagine games that involve him using it to fight evil.

How about not focusing on the obvious? If feats of strength become uninteresting, then how about basing a game on other challenges - stuff that relies on other skills, or tests even the mettle of a Superman?

For instance:

• Forcing Superman to choose between several simultaneous events. (yeah yeah, Superman III, yeah I know it sucked.) Could lead to some kind of subtle ethics-based character refinement, kind of like Ultima IV.
• Having Superman fight crime indirectly by serving as the leader of a community task force, teaching local citizens how to fight crime. You have to teach them good police skills - the proper balance between ineffectiveness, mob justice, and unnecessary personal risks. You could stop all of the crime by yourself, but the victory is in having your (entirely mortal, and all too human) team members become effective cops.
• Using Superman's skills in an unusual role. For instance: Superman is powerful, but not omniscient; just because he has X-ray vision doesn't know where to look. How about capitalizing on that? Might be fun to see Superman cast as a private detective, clandestinely flying from rooftop to rooftop in order to tail a gangster.

That's ten minutes of brainstorming by one guy. I wonder what all of the talented folks at Blizzard could imagineer together?

- David Stein

Put it this way...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Batman is the Grep Ninja, master of the one-liner Bash script and fitting useful programs into a 1k handcoded assembly-language program. Batman is the clever security vulnerability that figures out the pattern in your random number generator and starts reading your AES-encrypted streams, delicately avoiding your RSA handshake.

Superman is the brute force on a fucking quantum supercomputer.

I like Batman for the depth of the character. I like the tormented, morally-ambiguous superheroes, the Daredevils, the Punishers... I like the dark, edgy shows, and I like the fact that a human being really could become Batman, in just about every real sense, with nothing more than money and determination. I like my superheroes to be real humans that I can relate to, placed in extraordinary circumstances and with extraordinary skill.

I like my superheroes with variety -- I love the X-Men. And I like my superheroes without tights -- Naruto, Bleach, etc.

But Superman is refreshing, unique, and great precisely because of all the reasons you listed. He's invincible. He can fly. Batman may be sneaky, but Superman only needs one clean punch -- hell, even a clear line of sight -- to crush Batman's spine into small splinters, or punch/melt his brain right out of his skull.

He's got relationship issues, he's got real dillemas, but he's got no moral issues whatsoever. He stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. He doesn't need a sidekick, barely even needs a damsel in distress.

You don't really need kryptonite. It makes him a little more believable, but he doesn't need to be believable. He's Superman.