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[Phediuk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superman_video_games

That is one shoddy list of games there. 2600 Superman is at least respectable for its gameplay innovations, the Taito arcade and Sunsoft Genesis games are passable. Maybe the Amiga and SNES games too. Maybe.

Everything else, though? Garbage. It's like no one is even trying to make a good Superman game. I don't believe the notion that it's impossible because he's too powerful, because that didn't stop games like Saints Row 4 from being fun. For some reason no one has ever given much of a shit about making a good Superman game. There hasn't even been one made since 2006.

I mean, every other major superhero has at least a couple of standout games under their belt. But Supes always gets the short end of the stick.

 

[Corpsepyre]

Have to stick to the precedent set by the movies, I guess.

 

[Moon_frogger]

I seriously doubt anything from saints row compares to how powerful superman is. Also, what's your pitch for a successful superman game? Id love to hear it.

 

[ReiGun]

Superman Returns had potential. Had it not been a tie in game and actually gotten the dev time and talent it needed, it could have been something.

 

[DedValve]

Have to stick to the precedent set by the movies, I guess.

Does that mean the next one is going to be a dbz character action game ?

 

[Osu 16 Bit]

At least Superman is top tier in Injustice.

 

[entremet]

I had fun with Taito's arcade game.

 

[Nephtes]

Because he's Superman.
If you make him God mode, the game is boring.
If you don't make him God mode, the game isn't faithful to canon.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[DarkFlow]

Superman is OP, and to make a fun game out of that, they have to nerf the fuck out of him. Doing that kinda takes away the fun of being superman in a game.

 

[cheststrongwell]

Superman has got to be one of the most boring superheros ever.

 

[CambriaRising]

Because Superman is bad. Its hard to make a good game around a character who has one weakness that happens to be an incredibly rare resource.

 

[jholmes]

Superman is too powerful and has too many interesting abilities. Developers have no limits with the character and don't know what to focus on. Restrictions breed creativity and Superman has too few.

 

[Aaron-Lagann]

It's both a licensed property and a character that doesn't translate to a medium based largely on the ability to fail.

 

[VeryGooster]

It seems like the challenge lies in creating obstacles and challenges for the player that doesn't compromise Superman's abilities.

The closest to a good Superman game I came across were the arcade game and the Sunsoft Genesis game.

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

He's a boring character.

He's practically invincible, so a game is basically you running around either ridiculously strong and beating everything or every henchman, minor villain and boss has some kyrptonite based weapon to make him "vulnerable" and thus defeats the point of the game in the first place.

 

[Shaanyboi]

Because it's incredibly challenging to represent such an insanely powerful character in a game without just turning it into an Azura's Wrath QTE-fest. People already react to every comicbook problem with "Well why doesn't Superman just do this? Why doesn't he just spin the Earth backwards? I mean he did that in that one movie." Or they post a ridiculous panel from like the 60's and go "Why doesn't he just do this?"

Even when you depower him to more reasonable levels, the amount of shit he can or should be able to do is still insanely difficult to replicate.

Green Lantern suffers from the same problem, in that his powers are only really limited by his imagination. So unless you have the variability of Scribblenauts, you won't be able to do as much as you think you should be able to.


That cancelled Flash game would've been interesting to see in terms of how people would've reacted to it. To see how they approach a very similar problem because, again, the Flash can be an insanely OP character.

 

[Finaika]

The Mega Drive one was cool (awesome music at least).

 

[JordanN]

Because he's Superman.
If you make him God mode, the game is boring.
If you don't make him God mode, the game isn't faithful to canon.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I liked Superman in Justice League Heroes.

Have him upgrade his powers till he's near god-like.

 

[EightBitNate]

I mean we got a fun Hulk game, it honestly wouldn't be incredibly difficult to make.

 

[MisterHero]

No videogame will completely encapsulate the awesome of Superman.

If I were going to do one, I'd base it off Golden Age Superman. His range as a superhero could be limited to protecting 1930s Metropolis.

Unfortunately, modern gamers don't appreciate the classics.

 

[SamuelSupreme]

Superman Returns had potential. Had it not been a tie in game and actually gotten the dev time and talent it needed, it could have been something.

This...a lot of good ideas were in Superman Returns..from the way he flew to the City's condition being Superman's health meter (It's kind of ironic in retrospect when you consider MoS)

 

[Ferrio]

Make a superman game, but you only play as clark kent the whole time.

 

[killatopak]

Just make a story where he is trapped in a planet/galaxy where there are aliens who are at least on par with supes so he doesn't need nerfing. Either that or take him to a place where there's no star so he doesn't power up.

 

[Nephtes]

The closest to a good Superman game I came across were the arcade game and the Sunsoft Genesis game.

No. Ugh. No.
Game was so bad.

I saved $5 allowance a week till I had $50 to buy that game because the back of the box looked cool and it had superman on the front. It had to be good!

It was not.

This was the time before the internet, it was a dark time full of crappy game buying decisions...

 

[ReiGun]

*begins to post villains and challenges that could adequately challenge Superman and make for a fun game; realizes I won't convince anyone and decides against it*

 

[BGMNTS]

Its strange because Hulk Ultimate Destruction is a masterpiece. That kind of game would suit Superman perfectly in my opinion.

 

[ShinMaruku]

Superman is too powerful and has too many interesting abilities. Developers have no limits with the character and don't know what to focus on. Restrictions breed creativity and Superman has too few.

They can put limits in the environment he's in. Part of his whole deal is he has to hold back not to break people and the planet. Of course that's hard to design, but there are ways of doing it.

 

[LlamaJohnson]

I think the reason is the same why the movies and comics suck as well (in my opinion). He's too damn powerful. He can basically do anything. You know at some point some bad guy is going to do something with kryptonite and he's going to struggle. Then he's going to overcome that struggle and kick ass. There's no change. There's no threat. It's boring as hell.

Yeah you can make a game where he flies around and fights bad guys and saves kittens and all that but you have to introduce some kind of mechanism to limit his awesomeness...... And there is none except kryptonite. Also, he can level a city in like 2 minutes.... Where's the replay value? Face it, Superman sucks.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Insufficient vision. In the context of the DCU, Superman isn't OP. There's plenty of characters on a similar level. Some guy earlier in the thread suggested making it like a DBZ character action game, probably as a joke, but it's not a bad idea. Put him up against a horde of foes as powerful as he is, and let the player go to town. Fully destructible environments, massive damage. Set it on some distant planet somewhere. It'd work even better if you gave it the full Arkham treatment and set up a new 'verse from scratch, so you could make sure the power levels are consistent.

In short: making a good Superman game is about building it from the ground up to make the player feel powerful, but challenged.

 

[DarkFlow]

I mean we got a fun Hulk game, it honestly wouldn't be incredibly difficult to make.

Hulk just going around smashing things. That's pretty easy to turn into a game. Superman on the other hand does everything, and nothing can stop his ass.

 

[Phediuk]

Big open world. Have Superman be able to fly around super fast like in fucking Magic Carpet or something. Let Superman blow some shit up and throw cars and stuff. Have him go into space and do battle with Brainiac and Darkseid. Have huge-scale battles in between smaller-scale open world missions in Metropolis.

There, I just designed a bloody Superman game.

 

[adj_noun]

Make a superman game, but you only play as clark kent the whole time.

Clark Kent Typing Trainer

You learn to type by writing Clark's Superman stories as you watch the action unfold in front of you in flashback. Superman's punches and powers and whatnot are affected by your accuracy. Superheroic Typing of the Dead.

I'd...I'd buy that.

 

[VeryGooster]

No. Ugh. No.
Game was so bad.

I saved $5 allowance a week till I had $50 to buy that game because the back of the box looked cool and it had superman on the front. It had to be good!

It was not.

This was the time before the internet, it was a dark time full of crappy game buying decisions...

:lol

I'm sure I'd hate it now. Now that I'm remembering it I barely got to the stages where he actually flew (I remember he mostly leapt before then).

I'd play a Clark Kent game where the goal was to keep the secret identity for as long as possible with a race to the phone booth mini game.

 

[ActuallyHulk]

Use cosmic villains who have beat the hell out of him in the past. Hell maybe they've found a way to cover the Earth with a red sun. There are ways and Superman is weak to more than Kryptonite. It doesn't even have to be set in Earth, but I suppose that would deny people the ability to fly around Metropolis at will.

 

[ZoddGutts]

At least Superman is top tier in Injustice.

But his still in a Injustice game.

 

[cheststrongwell]

Make a superman game, but you only play as clark kent the whole time.

It could be like a Phoenix Wright game, but with reporting instead of lawyering. What does Superman do between villains?

 

[serversurfer]

A better question may be, "Why are Spider-Man games so damned good?" The Spidey games I've played — not all of them, by any means — have all been really good games, but apart from MUA, most superhero games I've played have been kinda lame. /shrug

 

[Gaogaogao]

just play saints row 4 instead

 

[voodoopanda]

Give him all his ridic powers so he can punch anything & destroy it, fly super fast, invincible etc etc but then make the villain Mr. Myxlplyx. Mr. Myxlplyx is basically immune to all of Supermans powers and can only be defeated by making him say his name backwards.

Or just Bayonetta with Superman vs the armies of Darkseid. Bayonetta is pretty much the most powerful I've felt in a game.

 

[adj_noun]

What does Superman do between villains?

Lois Lane.

 

[Aaron-Lagann]

*begins to post villains and challenges that could adequately challenge Superman and make for a fun game; realizes I won't convince anyone and decides against it*

The problem is that the public perception of Superman is pretty much just fly around the city with Lex Luthor there. Nobody even knows who 99% of his villains are and just want an open world flying game. While making a game with his villains that challenge him might be interesting, it has less of a chance than a good Spiderman game.

 

[Zubz]

#CallKamiya

No joke, though, I honestly think that, with a character as OP, do-anything as Supes, Platinum Games'd be able to do him justice in a video game. Besides, he'd still have room to grow; he's not quite the strongest thing in the DC Universe, and would allow for a spectacle for battles. Granted, there's projects I'd rather see them do, like Star Fox or JoJo, but if they did a Superman game, you better believe I'd get hyped.

Although we don't have to reach Platinum-tier fighting, however, where it starts big and gets bigger; on top of Kryptonite, the Big Blue Boy Scout's weak to magic as well. It's not nearly as utilized as it should be, and won't show up in any of the movies so it's a no-go in tie-ins, but just have him fight wizards or magical constructs or something. Luthor's too cliche, anyway; not make the Big Bad Trigon the Terrible instead? Or crossover with Wonder Woman and have Circe/Hades show up in Metropolis? And even though it'd be unsatisfying/unbelievable if every mook had Kryptonite in their pockets, a Kryptonite-powered Lex or Doomsday'd be fun as recurring bosses as well.

 

[Haeralis The BRave]

I mean, every other major superhero has at least a couple of standout games under their belt. But Supes always gets the short end of the stick.

 

[TheFLYINGManga_Ka]

Superman is too damn powerful.

Make a game where he loses his power and his journey is to regain his power little bit at a time and throw in Metroid stuff where each regained power opens new areas.

 

[ZoddGutts]

It could be like a Phoenix Wright game, but with reporting instead of lawyering. What does Superman do between villains?

Stalk Lois Lane.

 

[Felix Lighter]

Maybe they could make the challenge to fight a collection of equally powerful villains while trying to limit collateral damage?

 

[DarkFlow]

He said Major.

 

[jholmes]

Make a superman game, but you only play as clark kent the whole time.

I might play this. An Octodad-esque game where Superman has to pretend to be a bumbling idiot reporter, not sending shopping karts into orbit when he tries to push them down the aisle at the grocery store. Has promise.

They can put limits in the environment he's in. Part of his whole deal is he has to hold back not to break people and the planet. Of course that's hard to design, but there are ways of doing it.

Well, as mentioned in the thread earlier, the standard way to fit Superman in a video game is to give every single enemy access to kryptonite, so clever design hasn't been the forte of teams working on Superman games. I would guess the restrictions of the character and the lack of relevance in modern pop culture probably shoo away a lot of good teams, too.

 

[Spine_Ripper]

He's a boring character.

He's practically invincible, so a game is basically you running around either ridiculously strong and beating everything or every henchman, minor villain and boss has some kyrptonite based weapon to make him "vulnerable" and thus defeats the point of the game in the first place.

You just described the vast majority of 8 and 16 bit games. That's not a very good reason.

 

[Dr Campino]

This used to be said about Batman, no? Just needs the right idea and the right developer.