This is quite possibly my maybe second favorite C64 game. It’s funny, I have fond memories of long hours playing this game. As I watch through this long play I quickly lose patience with the repetitive and irritating game play. I reckon either I had more patience as a preadolescent nerd or perhaps I was frustrated and have simply forgotten. Either way, I do recall completing this game and I quickly recount my joy at playing this game to anyone when discussing retro gaming. So I guess it wasn’t all bad.
The game starts off with some groovy chip tune John Williams music. A super fancy comic book story intro and straight into the first stage of game play.
In this level you fight through a field full of demons hurtling themselves whimsically at Superman. Obviously not knowing who he is or that he can literally eye beam them back to the ethereal plane from which they came. A few minutes of pew pew pew eye beaming and it’s off to the next stage. Apparently they were Darkseid’s evil minions.
The next mission involves escorting a space shuttle through an asteroid field. You have a choice of various styles of fighting such as eye beams, flip kicking and breathing hard. Apparently Superman moves with such great force that he causes asteroids to slide back and for the in a weird sort of parallax. Once you successfully navigate the asteroid field you arrive at the satellite-lab-space-station-thing.
Superman and the Prof realize that the Star Labs space station’s security droids think you’re baddies and thus the premise is set for the next mission. And by premise I mean you fly down a hallway getting knocked way, WAY back by the security droids again and again until the mission completes.
Watching the long play I can’t really tell if there is actually a goal here or if it truly is just a long stinkin’ jaunt down a corridor of doom. Either way, several minutes later the Prof gets his stuff together and oh wait… more asteroids!
Back outside Superman escorts the satellite through the oncoming asteroid field. This is just like the last asteroid field you went through. So second verse, same as the first.
The prof tells you he’s located the source of all of the crazy nonsense that has befallen the earth and sends you to the coordinates of the ‘source’. As you approach it turns out that, big surprise, the source is a giant ‘Lex Corp’ space station. I recall this mission with fondness, contrary to the way the long player played this mission (which seems to have simply been to wait for the clock to run out) you’re supposed to punch holes through the shield and then blow up components on the space station. Eventually you would normally do enough damage to advance to the next mission. This poor chap sat for 5 minutes and dodged things until the station just gave up… presumably from exhaustion.
Back on the satellite the Prof tells you there is a super computer aboard the now exhausted space station and you have another hallway gauntlet ahead of you! Yay! This time there is a goal and that goal is to destroy the computer at the end of the hallway. Assuming you can make it past the blasted droids. That knock back is infuriating and I wasn’t even playing it! Once you pwn the computer satisfyingly quickly (Side note, I hate in games with super heroes where you have to fight something and your ‘super powers’ take forever to kill it where in reality you’d one shot it… I mean I guess that makes games more challenging and fun. I digress.) you complete this mission and, suddenly, the game.
After this exercise in tedium the game auto completes with Superman confronting Lex Luthor. This time he manages to sneak in the back entrance and I won’t wonder why he didn’t simply do that to the other places. The game finishes with a rousing repeat of the beautiful Superman theme in chip tune. A super well drawn series of end slides and superman on a throne in his fortress of solitude proudly display your score. That’s it, game over. Phew… I’m tired just watching!
So the occasion I had to play this game was that it was one of the games I had available to me while my mom, sisters and I stayed with my grandmother during her chemo treatments. I had access to a C64 portable, the closest thing to a laptop you (or I guess I) could find in those days.
Long days/nights, in a town about 45 minutes from where we lived; were spent laying on the floor gaming my heart out. I wasn’t really old enough to understand why we were there except that my grandmother was sick. At the time she still looked pretty good and got around alright and I had no inkling what was going on. Eventually she would come live with us and it would still be many years before she passed away.
Her house felt old, and it was always so weird to be there at night. Most of our Sunday visits were during the daytime so it was odd to see her lights on after dark.
Star Wars came on TV fairly frequently then so I would lay in the floor and watch it while playing this and a couple of other games. To quote from The Office:
“I wish there was a way to know you were in the good ol’ days before you’ve actually left them.” – Andy Bernard
Sorry for taking the train off the tracks there, watching this game again brought up some fond old memories. It’s definitely a good game worthy of taking the time to play. The skill you need the most in this game is patience, so bring a big ol’ boat load of that along and you’ll do fine.
Thanks for reading, you take care of yourself!
-NG
