Planet Bob - Playing Superman (C64)

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Hi there!

 

Not to be confused with the First Star game, this ones the 1989 game from Tynesoft:

 

http://home.arcor.de/cybergoth/xype/superman.gif

 

If you remember Tynesoft like me, you'll probably mostly think of them as Epyx Wannabies, with their Summer/Winter Olympiad, Circus Games and their Buffallo Bill western game. Those games usually had better graphics and music than the Epyx ones, but played a lot worse.

 

What's funny now, is that Superman basically follows that game design pattern precisely. It's virtually "Superman Games": A collection of 6 good looking and sounding mini games, framed into a very cool presentation that mimics reading a Superman Comic.

 

Of the 6 disciplines missions always two are similar. The 1st and the 5th together play like a level + endboss of Space Harrier, there's 2 vertical scrolling escort missions and two horizontal scrolling attack missions.

 

Superman can use some of his powers depending on the mission, mostly heat vision, but he can also occasionally use super-breath or even x-ray vision. They're nice mini games, but only run for ~3 minutes each.

 

Of course he's also invulnerable, so maybe that's why I managed to beat the game on normal difficulty on my first try

 

http://home.arcor.de/cybergoth/xype/superman_x.gif

 

Well, it's a nice game to kill half an hour and the graphics are pretty good once again, especially when compared to some of the C64 games I recently wrote about in this series

 

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see another DC license game in the form of "Batman", but first it'll continue with something else.

 

Greetings,

Manuel

 

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