History VideoGame / Superman64

* EasyModeMockery: The best ending is only available if you complete the game on the hardest difficulty.

* DamselInDistress: Lois Lane.

* JamesBondage: Jimmy Olsen and Professor Emil Hamilton.

** The game is notorious for its unbelievable abuse of PassThroughTheRings, 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.

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, [[PassThroughTheRings 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 [[HandWave 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 [[ChronicHeroSyndrome protect the virtual world's inhabitants.]] Oh, and every ring-based level is a TimedMission too.

* BigBad: Lex Luthor, who somehow manages to make ''{{Darkseid}}'' a subordinate.

LexLuthor creates a virtual version of Metropolis and then succeeds in [[DamselInDistress trapping]] ComicBook/LoisLane, ComicBook/JimmyOlsen, and Professor [[DistressedDude Emil Hamilton]] within it. Superman is forced to enter Luthor's virtual world and [[AC:[[MemeticMutation SOLVE HIS MAZE]].]] Other villains in the game include Parasite and Brainiac.

LexLuthor creates a virtual version of Metropolis and then succeeds in [[DamselInDistress trapping]] LoisLane, JimmyOlsen, and Professor [[DistressedDude Emil Hamilton]] within it. Superman is forced to enter Luthor's virtual world and [[AC:[[MemeticMutation SOLVE HIS MAZE]].]] Other villains in the game include Parasite and Brainiac.

* [[TextlessAlbumCover Textless Video Game Cover]]: The North American front cover art simply displays Superman ripping open his shirt to reveal his Superman suit underneath, with the title nowhere to be seen. The PAL version added the title.

** WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd 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 UsefulNotes/{{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?"

** WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd 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?"

->''[[YourDaysAreNumbered In short time your fate will be sealed, Superman.]]''

* TheSmurfettePrinciple: ProtonJon suggests this is why Mala is included.

* FakeDifficulty: In level 6 you must {{escort|Mission}} Lois from the end of the stage to the start. If you get too far away from Lois (i.e., she exits the game's hideously short draw distance) a new enemy spawns next to her and you have 15 seconds to go back to her.

* AllThereInTheManual: 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.

* CheckPointStarvation: the maze levels have no checkpoints whatsoever; die at any point in a maze level and you must start over.
* CowardlyBoss: Brainiac in stage 4, Metallo in Stage 6.
** This may not qualify as a cowardly boss, but Superman villains Jax-Ur and Bizarro appear in the game's tie-in comic and implied to be involved in Lex Luthor's plan. Neither villain appears in the actual game, though a photo has surfaced of Bizarro in level 8; presumably originating from the game's development.

* ExecutiveMeddling: In an email interview with [=LPer=] ProtonJon, the producer of Superman 64 stated that the development of the game might have gone better... if Warner Bros. and DC comics hadn't intervened. Namely having have Superman go into a virtual world and limit his powers for "political reason." They also caused the game to be delayed six months because they had to change certain things for "political reasons". In the end the final product didn't even reflect 10% of what the developers wanted, not because of hardware limitations, but because of problems with licensors.
* FakeDifficulty: In level 6 you must escort Lois from the end of the stage to the start. If you get too far away from Lois (she exits the game's hideously short draw distance) a new enemy spawns next to her and you have 15 seconds to go back to her.
* FissionMailed: It's possible to make it so that [[MemeticMutation Lex Wins]], and then proceed into the next part of the stage. One example shown [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZOWibh__uQ#t=27m50s 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.
* FloorboardFailure: Happens unintentionally sometimes, when Superman suddenly drops through the floor onto the base of the level. And when it does,you have to start the level over, since there's no way to get back up to the "floor"

* GameBreakingBug: In level 6 you must escort Lois to the start of the stage, where she will be ambushed by Metallo. Leave Lois to fight Metallo and- as usual- a Dark Shadow will spawn next to Lois. Normally the level ends when you kill Metallo. If you kill Metallo and a Dark Shadow is still around, the game glitches and the level doesn't end; forcing the player to restart.
** The final level has a time-machine puzzle where Superman must travel through portals to adjust a number to the value 2000. This puzzle is heavily glitched and the player WILL drop dead at complete random. This glitch does not render completion impossible, but it does ''severely complicate'' completing the level.

* ObviousBeta: 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, [[EpicFail ''better than the release product'']]. The producer of Superman 64 primarily blamed it on the [[ExecutiveMeddling 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.
*** With the ROM of the beta now available, the general consensus is that while the controls are only slightly better, the lack of rings and reduced occurrence of flight stopping glitches make the beta FAR more playable than the final product.

* SerendipityWritesThePlot: An infamous example. The poor programing of the game and the capabilities of the aging Nintendo 64 had the creators HandWave the fog for the poor draw distance as Kryptonite Fog.
** [[VoodooShark How Superman is able to breathe, let alone fly, with that amount of Kryptonite Fog]], along with why such an excuse would be required when the game runs in a virtual world, is unexplained.

* SuperTitle64Advance: Despite the game being simply called ''Superman'' (or ''The New Superman [[strike:Adventures]] Aventures'' [sic]), it quickly became known as ''Superman 64'' to distinguish it from other Superman games.

* SuspiciousVideoGameGenerosity: 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 [[SkippableBoss skip Brainiac]] entirely by ignoring him.
* TimedMission: Ride stages are notorious, as are the mini-games between ring tunnels. The first mini-mission has a tight timelimit, which is barely enough time to react. There is also a timed mission where no timer is displayed, where you have to use super breath on three tornadoes.

* ViolationOfCommonSense: One level requires Superman to prevent two cars from crashing into each other. One way that counts as success is to simply destroy both cars (they can't [[ExactWords crash into each other]] if they can't move).

* YouMakeMeSic: "Can't you spell Lex Luthor?" Okay, now you're just trolling us, game.

* ZeroEffortBoss: the final boss of the game- Brainiac- has no AI. He will fire a beam at you if you attack him with heat vision, but otherwise he stands still and allows you to kill him.

''Superman'' (or ''The New Superman Aventures'' [sic]), [[FanNickname unofficially referred to as]] ''[[FanNickname Superman 64]]'', is a video game based on ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'' and released by TitusSoftware 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.

** 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 [[ExecutiveMeddling 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.

[[SelfDemonstratingArticle There's no time to waste!]] Describe this atrocity here.

* ExecutiveMeddling:in an email interview with [=LPer=] ProtonJon, the producer of Superman 64 stated that the development of the game might have gone better... if Warner Bros. and DC comics hadn't intervened. Namely having have Superman go into a virtual world and limit his powers for "political reason." They also caused the game to be delayed six months because they had to change certain things for "political reasons". In the end the final product didn't even reflect 10% of what the developers wanted, not because of hardware limitations, but because of problems with licensors.

* ExecutiveMeddling:in an email interview with LPer ProtonJon, the producer of Superman 64 stated that the development of the game might have gone better... if Warner Bros. and DC comics hadn't intervened. Namely having have Superman go into a virtual world and limit his powers for "political reason." They also caused the game to be delayed six months because they had to change certain things for "political reasons". In the end the final product didn't even reflect 10% of what the developers wanted, not because of hardware limitations, but because of problems with licensors.

* Game-Breaking Bug: In level 6 you must escort Lois to the start of the stage, where she will be ambushed by Metallo. Leave Lois to fight Metallo and- as usual- a Dark Shadow will spawn next to Lois. Normally the level ends when you kill Metallo. If you kill Metallo and a Dark Shadow is still around, the game glitches and the level doesn't end; forcing the player to restart.

* ThatOnePuzzle: In the final level of the game has a puzzle where you travel through portals aboard Brainiac's ship. A number in the middle of the screen changes whenever you go through a portal. The puzzle ends when the number equals 2000. Sound like a simple puzzle? It is... except this portion of the level is heavily glitched so that ''you die at complete random.''
** Using a Gameshark to give yourself infinite health isn't even enough to get around this glitch.

* Useless Item: in stage 6 it is possible to find an X-Ray vision power-up (the game only allows you to use Superman's powers after finding power-ups); as far as players can tell, using X-Ray vision does ''absolutely nothing''.

* ExecutiveMeddling:in an email interview with LPer ProtonJon, the producer of Superman 64 stated that the development of the game might have gone better... if Warner Bros. and DC comics hadn't intervened. Namely having have Superman go into a virtual world and limit his powers. They also caused the game to be delayed six months because they had to change certain things for "political reasons". In the end the final product didn't even reflect 10% of what the developers wanted, not because of hardware limitations, but because of probelms with licensors.

* Bowdlerise: The CEO of Titus Software blames almost anything that the game did poorly on Marvel and DC Comics. Noting that both companies imposed so many restrictions on the game (such as the fact that superman couldn't harm humans, so they created a story in which superman was sent into an alternative universe where he couldn't harm anybody).