The Death and Rebirth of Superman (SNES)

*breathes in deeply, then exhales*…I don’t generally rage quit games, I really don’t. So when I do, I tend to do a lot of analysis on myself and the game to figure out what went wrong. With that said…The Death and Return of Superman.

...Admittedly, this cover art is AWESOME.

Okay, lemme start from the beginning. The Death and Return of Superman is a beat ’em up style game that takes place during the story arcs of Superman’s death and subsequent return. Throughout the game, you play as Superman, Steel, Superboy, Eradicator, and Cyborg. You can’t choose which ones you play as, but this is done because otherwise it wouldn’t fit the events of the story…even though they make changes to it on occasion anyway. Whoops.

So in the first level, the Underworlders took over a power plant. Now they aren’t exactly supposed to be slouches, and they do get good hits on me, but overall they aren’t presented as being any more or less powerful than they should for the first stage…So why in the flipping hey is it that in the second stage I’m getting my ass handed to me by STREET THUGS??? And these guys are little bitches, too. They have chainsaws that, I’m not kidding here, they shove into my groin! Oh, and it gets better. Because halfway through the stage, you encounter Doomsday, the creature that is famous for, as I guess he does later, killing Superman. So you beat him once, then he retreats into another part of town and you go after him. But guess what? All of that is Stage 2! If you die, you go back to the beginning! Oh, and guess what: There’s no save function! Oh, there’s unlimited continues, but no save function or password. So if you aren’t using save states, in other words playing the game on the SNES which you might wind up doing since this game is ESA protected, you’d have to sit and play it continuously to beat it, and I COULDN’T GET PAST THE SECOND STAGE!

The iconic image of Superman's torn cape

Now I know what you’re thinking: Is it really that bad?…Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I’ll tell you why: Superman’s basic attacks require him to get in close to an opponent. And because these thugs have chainsaws, likely they’re gonna get in a large amount of damage before you get a hit in. Oh, but Superman has his heat vision…which does damn near NOTHING! I’m serious, at best it will do a teensy bit of damage and stun them for a second. THAT IS ALL. He does have a special attack where he flies up and then slams the ground really hard, but you can only do that like 3 or 4 times. And it doesn’t really do that much damage to bosses, and there are some enemies that it won’t kill but only do average to above average damage to. Oh, and before you ask, NO, Superman is not invulnerable at all in this game. The only move that he has that can help you at all is by having him jump and then hit the attack button, causing him to do a downward diagonal punch that’ll hit the first thing in his path. So basically, it teaches you to fight like a pussy…as Superman…Bull.

Okay, I gotta know, who is responsible for this game. It might’ve said during the intro, but I may not have been paying attention…*looks it up*… …Blizzard and Sunsoft?… … …Blizzard and Sunsoft did this game?… …I think my brain just had a critical error…How could Blizzard and Sunsoft possibly be behind the creation of this game? Were they on drugs at the time?

So to players of the game, I gotta ask: Is it just me? Do I just really suck at this? And yeah, I know there are cheats I could’ve used, I chose not to. So lemme know if there’s maybe something I’m doing wrong. Or if you had problems like me, DEFINITELY let me know about that, because something needs to be said about this game.