Superman is one of the earliest coulda-woulda-shoulda games. A game that you can tell would have been a borderline classic if they just did this or changed this or, in Superman’s case, if it came out a year or two later. Its one of, if not the first, home console games based on an existing IP - I’m still not googling it to see if my assumptions here are right, sorry, contribute to the Patreon I don’t have if you want accurate well researched content piggy - and certainly the first Superman game, so they went real ambitious with it.
You can tell that ambition by how it becomes a quickly flashing graphics cycling mess the minute more than two things are on screen at once. But there really wasn’t anything like this on the Atari yet, not even close. Superman has scrolling continuous maps to go through, each one a little different, there are short cuts you can take, its hard to say its non-linear but its the closest thing to non-linear you get on this console for a little while longer. Its actually closer to the game Adventure than it is to any of the action or arcade games on the 2600.
You are tasked with rebuilding a destroyed bridge, going around and scooping up Luthor’s goons to drop into jail which itself is a fun little distraction, capture Luthor himself, and then get back to the phone booth before anybody realizes your elaborate disguise is a fake. If you get Kryptonited you have to find Lois Lane and make out with her which I’m almost certain was so well animated for the time that some degenerate cartoon pervert rubbed one out to it in these pre-anime days. The goal is to do all these things as quickly as possible and I mean you can bang it all out in about a minute if you know what you are doing, so after that it becomes a paper weight more than a cartridge game, but even with all the shortcomings this was a solid glimpse into where gaming was going and its worth it for that alone.
You can tell that ambition by how it becomes a quickly flashing graphics cycling mess the minute more than two things are on screen at once. But there really wasn’t anything like this on the Atari yet, not even close. Superman has scrolling continuous maps to go through, each one a little different, there are short cuts you can take, its hard to say its non-linear but its the closest thing to non-linear you get on this console for a little while longer. Its actually closer to the game Adventure than it is to any of the action or arcade games on the 2600.
You are tasked with rebuilding a destroyed bridge, going around and scooping up Luthor’s goons to drop into jail which itself is a fun little distraction, capture Luthor himself, and then get back to the phone booth before anybody realizes your elaborate disguise is a fake. If you get Kryptonited you have to find Lois Lane and make out with her which I’m almost certain was so well animated for the time that some degenerate cartoon pervert rubbed one out to it in these pre-anime days. The goal is to do all these things as quickly as possible and I mean you can bang it all out in about a minute if you know what you are doing, so after that it becomes a paper weight more than a cartridge game, but even with all the shortcomings this was a solid glimpse into where gaming was going and its worth it for that alone.