6) Superman 64 – 1999
Diabolical. Simply diabolical.
No, not Lex Luthor’s plans for world domination, but rather the careless and frankly putrid game that N64 owners like myself had to endure in the late 90s. It was completely and utterly awful, there’s no doubt about it, though it would have been exactly 0% better had it actually worked. If you bought this game as a young man desperate to live out your Superman fantasies, you were in for a rude surprise.
Unless, of course, you fantasized not about saving the world, but about flying through misty grey air, or into dull grey buildings, or picking up indistinct grey cars – but I’m sure you didn’t, because you’re a normal human being.
The game also had the unnecessarily nasty habit of throwing you in at the deep end, giving you no time to learn the controls before hastily flashing your objectives up on the screen like they were subliminal advertising. It couldn’t have made you feel less super, in fact, and endlessly getting your tights snagged on bits of scenery is pretty much the last straw for any superhero wannabe.
Developer Titus, it seemed, actually hated us. The kind of strong, borderline irrational hate that you or I would feel if we looked at a photo of Paris Hilton for too long. Or played Superman 64. Which is surprising, because it wasn’t a few years earlier that they actually delivered some rad old Amiga 500 games such as Prehistorik and Fire and Forget.
OK, they weren’t that great either…
