Product description:
Based on the DC Comics/Kids WB
animated series, the game's story has Lex Luthor
trapping Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Professor Emil
Hamilton in a Kryptonite fogbound virtual world.
All-American hero that he is, the Man of Steel flies
to the rescue in seven major missions that take him
from the streets of Metropolis to Braniac's space
ship.
Using all of his many powers (including heat vision,
flight and x-ray vision), you must fight your way
through air, sea, underground and indoor levels of
bad guys, bosses and puzzle elements in order to
reach Lois and destroy Lex's mission.
Historical Insight:
In 1998, BlueSky Software began working with French
developer Titus to bring Superman,
based on the WB animated
series, to the PlayStation. At that time Titus had
almost finished work on the N64 version of the game
in France with their own team. Originally, the plan
was to take the N64 game and port it over to the
PlayStation. All that was to be done was to take the
art and reformat it to run in a PlayStation engine.
Then the Superman N64 game was released. One
reviewer stated "This game exists for the sole
purpose of firmly establishing the bottom of the
barrel”.
A decision was made to retool Superman for the
PlayStation to be a better game than the N64 with a
new story and new gameplay. Unfortunately, it was
soon realized that this was a game that, due to
technical limitations of the time, could not be done
to reflect what was happening in the animated TV
show. The PlayStation at the time could not draw
very far, so flying outside through a city was
nearly impossible. Additionally all of the large
scale combat and physical feats that made the
animated TV series so exciting were limited on the
system (ie. destructible objects, physics,
characters being thrown and or carried, etc.) To
account for these limitations, the story changed so
that Metropolis was covered with a green kryptonite
fog. Thus in the end, Superman did most of his
flying indoors.
After about a year of development, Superman was
again re-designed. In April of 1999, the Columbine
shooting happened and was a big blow to the industry
as the media were using video games as a
contributing factor for the shootings. Scuttlebutt
has it that Titus suddenly changed the game from
fighting Lex Luthor’s henchman to fighting robots.
Supposedly the developer was not allowed to have
shootings of human beings anymore or realistic
looking weapons in the game. This changed a lot of
what the gameplay was going to be into a more switch
pulling, puzzle based game which was very different
from the animated show and the N64 version.
Unfortunately the license from Warner Brothers had
expired. Essentially, Superman continued to be
developed with no assistance from DC comics or
Warner Brothers. The plan was to surprise everybody
with a finished product. After almost 2 years of
development, Superman reached a milestone: it
received approval for release from Sony and issued a
product code of SLUS-00712. Many retail outlets were
accepting pre-orders for the game and advertisements
were created (see below). By the time the game was
completed, Titus was unable to secure the license.
Superman for the PlayStation was officially laid to
rest. |
