The Death and Return of Superman (Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis, 1994)
The Death and Return of Superman (Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis, 1994)
In 1994, Blizzard Entertainment of Warcraft fame released a video game adaptation of Superman's most exciting storyline: the one where he makes a porno with Big Barda. Wait, no, "Death of Superman". Only it's more like DEATHS of Superman, because I keep dying every five seconds in this game. I never saw past the third stage as a kid but, through the magic of cheating, I've just played through the entire game and I'm here to tell you about it.
LEVEL 1: SIEGE OF THE UNDERWORLDERS
Like all the "Death of Superman" collections, this game starts with a mostly unrelated story about the time some ugly mutants living in the sewers caused a massive blackout in Metropolis to try to take over the city.
"Now that we cut off the lights, no one will know we're ugly!"
It's up to Superman to solve this crisis via punching. Technically you can also shoot heat vision blasts, but all they do is stun the enemies for like 20 milliseconds, so they’re pretty useless. The first level features several Underworlders from the comics as enemies, like Rambeau, another Rambeau who's red, and several more Rambeaus who were always standing outside of frame in every issue, apparently. (To be fair, the Underworlders were originally created by Dabney Donovan's cloning experiments at Project Cadmus, so I guess it makes sense that each one would have several spares.)
The hardest enemies in the level, however, are the boulders that occasionally fall on you out of nowhere. They instantly knock Superman down, so they must be full of kryptonite or simply magical. Forget Doomsday, I want Superman to fight the dickhead wizard who keeps teleporting boulders over his head.
Then comes the first boss, Clawster from the Underworlders, who's a big wuss in this game. The fact that he looks a lot like Doomsday (both are big monsters with bony protrusions all over their bodies) must have been confusing to non-comic book readers. I bet a lot of people thought he was Doomsday's little brother, thus explaining why Doomsday is so upset at Superman.
I wonder how many kids thought Clawster WAS Doomsday, assumed they’d just beaten the game, and returned it to Blockbuster. Considering how hard this thing is about to get, that might have been for the best.
LEVEL 2: DOOMSDAY IN METROPOLIS
A WLEX presenter informs us that “not even the Justice League" has been able to stop Doomsday's march to Metropolis. Damn, if even the likes of Blue Beetle, Ice, and Bloodwynd couldn’t stop him, this must be a job for Superman.
As the level starts, you’re assaulted by Doomsday’s classic henchmen: Chainsaw (a punk rocker with a chainsaw) and Molotov (a punk rocker who throws Molotov cocktails). Okay, they’re not actually in the comic, but they SHOULD be. They spend the whole level beating the crap out of Superman, making them more powerful and effective than 90% of DC supervillains.
If you somehow manage to get past these superpowered punkers, you finally reach Doomsday, and he’s tough as hell. But, if you try hard enough and beat him, you get to… die anyway. This leads to what has to be the saddest "LEVEL COMPLETE” screen in all of gaming:
“GOOD JOB! YOU'RE DEAD!"
LEVEL 3: ASSAULT ON CADMUS
After a beautiful 16-bit rendition of Jon Bogdanove’s cover for the first "Death of Superman” collection…
…that WLEX presenter from before tells us that four mysterious Supermen have popped up in Metropolis. We are briefly introduced to each one, and then you get to play as the Cyborg Superman as he barges into Project Cadmus to steal Doomsday’s body. These flying levels are my favorite part of the game, because they are very easy, and I'm very lazy.
Unfortunately, you then go into Cadmus and have to fight those stupid flying guards of theirs (the same ones who tried to help Superman during his fight against Doomsday in the comics). They keep shooting lasers at you from above, making it impossible to fight any other enemies while they're up there, but they're also hard to reach and will immediately fly back up when you knock them down. Also, there's a crapload of them, so this gets pretty annoying. I’m surprised Doomsday didn’t ragequit the fight halfway through Superman #75.
This level’s boss is some weird floating robot that I’ve never seen in any Superman comics, and I’ve read like all of them (someone correct me if I’m wrong). They could have used Cadmus' Guardian, Dubbilex, Director Westfield in a robot armor, or even the Newsboy Legion, but no, they went with this:
On the other hand, that background with all the clones is kinda neat. You can even kill the clones by throwing guards at the wall! The Cyborg’s mass-murdering career had to start somewhere.
LEVEL 4: THE LAST SON OF KRYPTON
This is where the developers straight up ran out of ideas and started recycling stuff. The setting for this one is the same as level 2 (only it’s night now) and the enemies are once again Chainsaw and Molotov, who are probably just distraught over the death of their good friend and mentor, Doomsday. The only fun part is that, since you’re playing as the Eradicator and he has no regard for human life, you can toss these punks off buildings now.
(Actually, you could probably do this while playing as Superman too, I just didn’t think to try it.)
Oh yeah, the Eradicator's special move is kinda cool too. Specials are limited attacks that get rid of all enemies on screen. Superman punches the ground at super-speed and the Cyborg just throws some bomb, while the Eradicator does THIS and apparently scares everyone around him to death:
This level’s boss is… Steel? Presumably the idea is to recreate the Eradicator/Steel fight from Man of Steel #24, but without the context, it looks like they just ran into each other on the street and started fighting.
After you beat him, Steel is all like "no, no, fighting is bad" and the Eradicator agrees, even saying they should “watch over Metropolis” together. That lasts like two seconds, because then this happens:
I didn't cut anything, that's the entire sequence. I’m glad the death of millions of people was depicted with such nuance and sensitivity.
And then… a lot more stuff happens, but this post is getting too long and I don't wanna flood everyone's dashboards, so click "keep reading" to keep reading (ALSO, NOTE: The next parts include some GIFs with flashing lights.)
LEVEL 5: AMBUSH AT COAST CITY
In this level you play as the Eradicator again as he flies through the ruins of Coast City, fighting the robot orbs from the Cadmus level, for some reason. Is the U.S. government lending their top secret technology to alien invaders?
Lending credence to this theory is the fact that you later fight Cadmus' freaking flying guards again, only this time they’re called “Warworlders”. They're just as annoying, though. (See if you can spot the cameos by Hal Jordan's middle school teacher and second cousin below!)
That bug-like enemy up there is also recycled, in this case from the Underworld level… but that actually makes sense. See, that particular character first appeared in the comics as a Warworld alien who stayed on Earth after the botched invasion in “Panic in the Sky!”, then he and his pals hooked up with the Underworlders, united in their ugliness. So maybe the ones in this level are his relatives who came to Earth because they missed him?
The level’s boss is the Cyborg, and it’s another “win to lose” situation: after winning, the Eradicator does a cool pose and stays like that for a long time, giving the Cyborg plenty of time to get up again and shoot him.
I could see Superboy losing a fight that way, but you’d think a 200,000 year old artificial intelligence from ancient Krypton would know better. Speaking of which…
LEVEL 6: THE METROPOLIS KID
At last, some variety! You finally get to play as Superboy… in the same city level as before, against the same punkers. It’s not the EXACT same level, though: this time it’s just a short portion of the city on a loop, like in a Tom & Jerry cartoon.
But then, halfway through the stage, Superboy declares that “the streets of Metropolis are safe” and heads to Coast City, and it’s literally just level 5 again, with the same re-recycled enemies and the same boss, the Cyborg. Guess what happens when you beat him.
Okay, this time I can buy it. Dumbass kid.
In a cutscene, the Cyborg explains his plan to blow up Metropolis next, so Superboy decides to escape Coast/Engine City to warn everyone. What follows is another short flying sequence, but at least this time they bothered to change the orb enemies into some vaguely Brainiac-looking things (that I forgot to took a screenshot of, and I can't be arsed right now).
LEVEL 7: STEEL REIGN
A fifth Superman has appeared! And he doesn't believe in haircuts.
But the level is actually about Steel, because oh right, he’s also in this game. We're told that the Man in Black, Superboy, and Steel have flown to Engine City to stop the Cyborg, and then you take control of the latter as he goes around the giant engine fighting the annoying Cadmus guards and an ALL-NEW* enemy called "Warbot" (*actually a color swap of another enemy we’d already seen).
Even Steel’s special move is recycled: it’s Superman’s ground-punching move again, but with a hammer. After thirteen damn minutes (or that’s how long it took me) of fighting the same four enemies over and over, the level just ends without a boss, because the developers are as tired of this as you are. Or they couldn't think of any characters to fight. My suggestion: Jeb Friedman. Everything else would be worth it if this game allowed you to hit Jeb in the face with a hammer.
LEVEL 8: METROPOLIS: GROUND ZERO
The Cyborg shoots a missile at Metropolis, and Superboy must stop it! Fortunately, it’s a flying level, so it’s extremely easy. And short, too. I beat this one in almost exactly one minute. The difficulty in this game is so well balanced.
Who would have guessed that this dramatic scene from the comic would end up being the closest thing this game has to a bonus stage?
LEVEL 9: THE ENGINE CORE
A floating (not flying) level about Steel going into Engine City’s core, where he must avoid some kryptonite-flavored Cheeto balls…
…and destroy these eggs that inexplicably look like the original Eradicator artifact. I guess the developers saw it on the comic, liked the design, and didn't bother looking up what it was, or whether it had evolved into any characters who also appear in this game.
The boss is a big Cyborg face that shoots out pool balls. He’s way easier than “a big Cyborg face that shoots out pool balls” sounds. (Seriously, Doomsday on level 2 gave me a lot more trouble than this guy, the next to last boss.)
And once you beat him, we finally get to…
LEVEL 10: THE RETURN OF SUPERMAN
The final level! And guess what: you get to fight the Cadmus flyboys again. At least the moment when the Eradicator restores Superman’s powers is pretty well done, and perhaps even more elegantly told than in the comic.
The boss, for the fourth time in this game, is the Cyborg, except now he can use his special move and take a quarter of your energy without any way to avoid it. The special move makes it more challenging, but as far as final bosses go, this is pretty lazy. They could have given him the kryptonite hose from the comic, or added Mongul to the fight, or something. I have to admit that uppercutting this guy so hard that he explodes is pretty satisfying, though.
And that’s it! The game ends with the same speech Superman gives at the end of the Death/Return saga:
(Little did he know that “what comes next” would be Superman 64.)
Anyway, Death and Return of Superman isn’t a bad game. The graphics are very cool, and this is definitely the most faithful adaptation of this storyline in any medium. I’m grateful that they didn’t make up a story involving, say, Lex Luthor’s piss jar or something. The problem is that it’s insanely repetitive and gets so tedious that I’m convinced most kids, like me, never even got to play as all the characters. This could have been solved with a fighting mode where you could just pick any of the characters from the start, including Chainsaw and Molotov, of course. And Jeb, just so I could pick him and let the other characters punch him over and over. Man, fuck that guy.