YMMV / Superman 64

• Awesome Music: The music in this game is kind of catchy. In particular, the ending music is pretty good, fitting the tone well.
• Badass Decay: Mala, Brainiac, Metallo, and Darkseid are all significant pushovers compared to their canon counterparts.
• Bile Fascination: The game is considered impressively bad, and has attracted lots of negative attention as a result.
  Derek Alexander: I bought this cartridge for a dollar. And let's be honest, for a dollar, you'd buy it too.
• Common Knowledge: One frequent claim made about this game is that you do nothing but fly through rings. The Pass Through the Rings segments do run on long past the point of being any fun, but there are plenty of other things to do in the game, too. This is likely because the first level is flying through rings, and even if you do make it to the second level, it’s not exactly much better, giving little incentive to progress.
• Critic-Proof: Even as widely criticized as it was, it still sold pretty well, being the bestseller of June 1999 and 3rd best selling game for the system — presumably meaning in that calendar year, as the actual third best selling Nintendo 64 game was GoldenEye (1997) — according to Titus. Being based on the then-current cartoon as well as being a Superman game in general probably helped.
• Fan Nickname: This game is actually called The New Superman Aventures (sic). Superman 64 is the Fan Nickname, though the game doesn't help its own (literal) case, because the graphic designer forgot to put the title on the boxart, and the game itself only has "Superman" on the title screen.
• First Installment Wins:
  • The rings are so iconic, and so difficult and frustrating to traverse, that most playthroughs and reviews of the game don't actually go beyond the first level; many people aren't aware that there is more to the game than just flying through rings — not to mention how what comes after the rings is arguably worse. ProtonJon, the person who has arguably done the most to challenge this assumption, has said that this was part of the reason he wanted to do a Let's Play in the first place.
    Proton Jon: The Superman LP has led to edits on the TV Tropes entry for Superman 64. My work here is done.
  • Another YouTuber, DarkLordJadow1, played through the entire game for a three-part review, also covering the tie-in comic for good measure. He also considered the indoor levels far worse than the ring levels.
  • Both have also discussed the game's multiplayer mode. Most players are unaware the game even has a multiplayer mode, as it only appears as an option if the player attempts to start a game with multiple controllers connected to the console.
• Fridge Brilliance: Though probably not intended by the developers, the poor quality of Superman 64 makes tremendous sense once you consider the game's story which involves Superman being trapped in a virtual world by Lex Luthor. Of course the world Lex Luthor traps his Arch-Enemy in would be so poorly programmed and so full of glitches that it's nearly impossible to transverse.
• Good Bad Bugs: Some of the game's bugs can actually make the game easier (such as being able to ignore hostages that you're supposed to save, which allows you to win a level) or significantly more humorous (an enemy shoots at the camera man in the level featuring Metallo, before the stage even starts whilst showing your goal).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • If this game had been released after "Legacy", Professor Hamilton probably wouldn't have been included as one of Superman's "friends" that he has to rescue.
  • The reason the game is set inside a virtual Metropolis is due to concerns from Warner Bros. with Superman acting as a bad person. Years later, the Injustice video game franchise is created where Superman is a fascist tyrant who murders millions of people, which includes innocents.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Remember how the game handwaves away the horrendous draw distance as "Kryptonite fog?" In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, there's an actual kryptonite fog, and it does much more than just make it hard to see.
  • 2023 saw the release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which lets another traditionally red and blue clad superhero essentially fly by gliding inside air currents, depicted as glowing rings.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Then there's no time to waste!"^ExplanationThis is the line that Superman says when starting any stage, and also one of the few voice clips in the game. It's easy to lose stages thanks to the game design, but the legion of glitches that players will encounter causes its own share of restarts, which means this line plays constantly.
  • Pass through the rings!^ExplanationThe game's most infamous feature is the "fly through the rings" challenge. It's not the whole game by any means, but it's the most recognizable part of gameplay. Even mentioning this game usually prompts this line in response.
  • "If you want to save your friends, solve my maze!"^ExplanationLex Luthor's challenge to Superman at the start of each stage... which, again, is seen by players often thanks to the constant restarts.
  • Lex Wins. *Evil Laugh*^ExplanationThe potentially overdramatic message that plays when you lose a challenge, where Lex apparently wins by Superman failing absolutely anything in the simulation.
• Mis-blamed: Believe it or not, Titus, at least as far as complete and total blame is concerned. Sure, they made the game, but Warner Bros. and DC made it extremely difficult to make anything decent. This is backed up by an interview with one of the Caen brothers, done by ProtonJon in his LP of the game.
• Narm:
  • Due to the way Superman's arms wildly wave around, and the bosses barely using their canonical abilities in favor of also wildly waving their arms around, battles can resemble a slap fight.
  • The idea of Darkseid being taken to a regular jail cell in a police station.
• Never Live It Down: Whether deserved or not, this game has become the green, foggy face of Titus. It has also cursed Superman with a reputation of having The Problem with Licensed Games.
• Obvious Beta:
  • 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 arguably better than the release product. The producer of Superman 64 primarily blamed it on the 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.
• Presumed Flop: It's often regarded as the worst Nintendo 64 game ever released, and unlike E.T., the critics have not become kinder to it over time. However, it was a top seller in North America in June 1999, and ended up selling 500,000 copies, making a profit for Titus.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: It's noted to be one of the worst games of all time, due to a rushed schedule and Executive Meddling from Warner Bros. and DC.
• Signature Scene: The first level where you fly through rings. There's actually much more to the game, but this is the part that everyone knows.
• So Bad, It's Good: Depending on how you look at it. In particular, ProtonJon notes that it can be fun to try and discover as many glitches as you can.
• That One Level: The first level, of course, due to the extremely janky controls making going all the way through the "maze" all but impossible. It's so bad that it gave birth to the misconception that the game consists solely of flying through rings, since most players didn't have the patience to complete it and see the rest of the game.
• That One Puzzle: 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. Not even an infinite health cheat will help you here.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The game promised to be a decent Superman game developed by Titus when it was shown at E3 1998, where Superman with "unlimited" powers and decent controls, fly through Metropolis and fight crime and save Lois Lane and Metropolis from Brainiac and Lex Luthor's super-weapon, but however, Executive Meddling by Warner Bros. changed the story and gameplay to a virtual Metropolis setting where Superman must race against time by Lex Luthor to save his friends (because Superman didn't want to hurt "real" people), and limited Superman's powers, make controls worse, and extremely poor green draw distance "kryptonite fog", it was rushed for release in the Spring of 1999 instead of holiday 1999 (because Titus wanted to put out the product before the license expired) and became one of the worst games ever made due to the repetitive gameplay and clunkier controls, despite being commercially successful.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The final puzzle in the game requires Superman to fly through enough rings so that the counter on Braniac's computer reaches 2000, which would crash it and end the game, a clear reference to the Millennium Bug that many people in the late nineties feared would wreak havoc on computer systems worldwide when the year 2000 came around.
  • Professor Hamilton is one of Superman's friends he has to save, as noted under Harsher in Hindsight above, makes it clear the game was made before the airing of "Legacy."

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