Atari 2600 - Super Powered Fiction

First Impression/Graphics:
When you pull out the cartridge, you are greeted with colorful artwork. That’s always a sure fire way to pull you into the colorful world of the comic book. Even the instruction manual is in color! Once inserted, I was surprised to see how vibrant the overall look of the game was. It uses nice colors a lot of the time, but some stages sadly opt for more of a drab look. What else can they do if there is not many color choices to pick from. Remember how ugly some of the screens in Missile Command looked? However, the game featured multicolored sprites for the web-slinger himself as well as the Green Goblin, with the latter pulling off his recognizable and memorable pose with his arm up in the air as he balances perfectly on his jet. The fans of the comic no doubt appreciated touches of detail such as that.

Sound:
The game starts out with a little tune which was very nice. But than the sound turns into the average blips and beeps that Atari is known for. When reading the actual Spiderman comic, I’ve never imagined the web making that noise when it comes out of Spidey’s hands!

Gameplay/Challenge:
The game surprisingly incorporates some decent strategy. You can play it safe and go straight up the building with minimal moving from left to right, or you can capture the criminals to not only increase your web fluid, but also to bring in more points. In later levels, you will need that extra fluid. The Green Goblin also has bombs set around the buildings. You can diffuse them for points, with the black ones earning the most. The game is hard. It will likely frustrate new players as it seems all too easy to snap your web on a window, or other obstacles that the web will not stick to. This no doubt has caused many gamers in the 80s to mimic Spider-Man’s web slinging with their controllers, slinging them against their giant, wood grained television sets! But, once the game gets into your muscle memory more, it becomes quite addicting.

Judging from the instruction manual, it sounds like this game might have a final stage. On a system that does not have many games that you can complete (Space Attack, Solaris, Moon Patrol, Adventure, and Pitfall 1 and 2, to name a few), this one gets extra credit. Overall, the game seems to adequately “feel” like you are in Spider-Man’s world, which is surprising coming from an old Atari! For the second superhero game, things don’t seem to be going so bad.

Overall Rating: 7 out of 10

Stay tuned next time for more!

Welcome to our latest column from The Changents writer Darrell Albert. Darrell is going to be our resident super powered game reviewer as he starts a chronicle of super powered games from the very first home consoles. -Nick

To go along with comics, super heroes have made their way into the movies, music (Jimmy Olsen’s Blues by Spin Doctors for example), and video games. Of course, the Metahuman Press Network is famous for putting superheroes into a prose format as well. But to round out the coverage of super-heroes on Super Powered Fiction, it is also important to take a look at how super heroes affected video games, starting at the beginning.

As far as I know, Superman for the Atari 2600 was the first superhero game. It has to be noted that superhero games got a slow start. There have been many great games made since then, including in the anime world. But for now, let’s take a brief look at the first of only two super-hero games from the Atari 2600, shall we?

Say what you will about the game, but Superman for 2600 had great cover art. -Nick

Superman: 5 /10

It looks fairly colorful, with some object sprites being multicolored. At first glance, the game also seems fairly complex, packing in lots of recognizable elements from the comic.

You start in the phone booth as Clark Kent. As you walk to the right, you notice the bridge blow up. When you walk back to the phone booth, you turn into the man of steel himself. Once you take to the skies, you have to find the three broken bridge pieces to rebuild the bridge. Lex Luther has satellites that are sent after you to stop you. If they hit you, you lose the ability to fly, and you have to kiss Lois Lane to be able to fly again. You must also capture all the criminals in the city and carry them to the jail. After that, you go into a phone booth, turn back into Clark and walk to the Daily Planet to win!

It sounds more fun than it is. The game is marred by massive flicker and just isn’t very addicting. This may have been a springboard for the incredible Adventure that would soon follow. But in the end, Superman has not been so super when it comes to video games. Nintendo 64 saw a game titled Superman as well, and it was largely considered one of the worst games of all time.

But things would improve in a hurry. Stay tuned until next time for a review of Spider-Man for Atari 2600!

Check out gameplay footage below! – Nick