Superman is a fantastic game that I still play EVERY time I fire up my Atari. Unlike Pitfall!, which is long, tedious, and repetitive, Superman is a game you attempt to win as quickly as possible. Catch each bad guy, throw them in jail, rebuild the bridge, turn back into Clark Kent and get to work at the Daily Planet for the win. And Lois? She shows up to take the Kryptonite from around Superman's neck, just like Ms. Techbocker did in the movie. Okay, that's a stretch, since these Kryptonite necklaces are invisible and placed by a satellite, but still... The map lays out like city streets, where going East/West take you down a street and going north and south move you to other streets. Sure, the city folds in upon itself like an M. C. Escher painting, but repeat play and your X-Ray vision helps to orient you anytime you get lost. This game requires a bit of patience to learn, but it's FUN once you get the swing of it, and that is what is most important. You CANNOT die, so the only way you lose is if you give up. So hang in there, get used to it, and enjoy one of the best Atari 2600 games based on a movie!
My only complaint is that Superman only had one game variation, and they didn't make a Superman II cart. It's funny, I just learned that Atari made the computer simulation for _Superman III_ which is why they used the sounds from Atari 2600 Pac-Man. They might have planned to release another Superman game, but with the Crash of 1983, scrapped it.
Superman holds together so well. I think the bonkers mapping system is a big part of what makes the game so fun even today. I think it would be boring if the city was easy to memorise. Brilliant game, and excellent video. Looking forward to the next one.
I didn't memorize it as a kid other than the few screens next to the jail and bridge. If I had memorized the fastest way to the bridge pieces and where they go, I might have been able to beat 1'30" at age 11 or 12, which I can do easily now.
Atari's 1st superhero licensed game; E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial became the second; both games based on a Hollywood motion picture; coincidentally, both cannot be sold today because of licensing rights.
Yup, this game is definitely better than the NES one. Having played Adventure, I'd probably enjoy this game if I ever had the chance to play it. Dunn definitely got this one right for the reasons you show in the video. If only more Superman games were this good.
Never really understood it as a kid, but a few years ago I finally read the manual and had a good time finishing a run through it in a few minutes. It's really impressive how much Superman lore is included despite being such an early game. It captures more of the character than attempts on more advanced systems.
The sound design makes a lot more sense now given Dunn's background (and what he did later), for me best sound design for the 2600. Love the bit about Simcock (sp?) and his artsy threat. Great find re: Robinett's involvement. Interesting to compare Superman and Adventure now. Same very limited tech, same genre games, created at same time. Superman with arguably better sound and better graphics, yet Adventure seems to get the accolades.
To me, Adventure and Superman clearly have the same foundations but excel at different aspects. Superman has the visuals and the storytelling on lock, while Adventure has the varied environments and exploration. They're complementary games for sure - I feel like folks who try one should really give the other a go.
@@AtariArchive true about the storytelling, that's something I never even paid attention to with Adventure. Agree 100% about Adventure and exploration, and interesting now to consider the seemingly subtle gameplay elements that contributed to that and captured my imagination as a kid (vs. Superman). As someone mentioned in the comments, appreciation for Superman undoubtedly suffers when you don't have the manual, and maybe that has lessened its popularity.
@@AtariArchive Too bad they didn't use the same foundation for Haunted House, so it could have a screen for each room (24) instead it only had 4 screens with 6 rooms each. A couple years later I played Voodoo Castle, a Scott Adams text-adventure game that has a similar haunted house theme. After learning that Adventure was based on a text game (and sold 1 million), I wondered why they didn't make more like that. Raiders and Swordquest just didn't cut the mustard.
When I was little, my brother and I could never rebuild the bridge. We'd capture the Luthor Gang and move all the pieces of the bridge to the right place, but they'd just sit at the bottom of the screen. We eventually managed to beat the game by pausing and waiting for the world to cycle all the way around on the pause screen, then move when it came back to the bridge screen. Years later when I played it again via emu, I never had that problem and never figured out what I was doing wrong.
I have to admit that as a 5 year old in 1980 this game never made sense to me and I thought it stank at the time. I either never had the manual or threw it away before reading it (if I was even old enough to read and comprehend it at that point) so that's probably a big factor. Thanks to your video I now understand what the player's goal is and appreciate what the game accomplished for the time. Thank you.
I'm catching up on your wonderful videos Kevin, thanks so much for doing them. This was one of my favorites as a kid and I still play it regularly. My wife hates it because it's so noisy, but to me that's one of its charms. I was not aware that John Dunn had passed away, I was sorry to hear that. I did an email interview with him a few years ago that I hopefully can get off my old computer to post on Archive.org. Thanks again!
Did you ever manage to post this? I'd love to check it out. (I had a very brief email conversation with him myself, which you can see in the Superman video on my channel.)
@@cbake76 apparently I need to submerge my old iMac in dry ice for it to work for more than 5 minutes. Hopefully sometime this winter. I will check out your video, thank you!
@@Atari2600GamebyGamePodcast Hello. Did you have any luck thawing your old iMac? Would be great to read that interview and have it preserved still if possible. Thanks.
@@heyhonpuds thanks for the kick in the butt. I have I think all the interviews extracted from the Mac now, I will work on getting them out. I hope I didn't build it up too much
I was really looking forward to this one. This game has always confounded me, and I was hoping to gain a better understanding of how it works through this video. I'm sorry to report I still don't totally understand it, but it was a very interesting video nonetheless. I don't think I'll ever spend the time nor the brain power to completely comprehend the map system. But it's interesting how, of all superheroes, Superman once had the most impressively advanced video game on the market. My, how times changed. I really enjoy this series. It's my favorite Atari themed UA-cam channel. The research is impeccable, and I especially love the old newspaper ads. Keep up the fantastic work!👍👍
The map is really confusing, I agree - I played it with the map image from Atariage pulled up on my computer screen, and still routinely got lost. Eventually I started to recognize some of the background skylines and that helped me get a better sense of place, but it's certainly the trickiest part to get a handle on.
@@AtariArchive The map wraps around through every outdoor screen going either left or right. The Daily Planet entrance (which is the endgame objective) puts you inside a room that looks like the subways (and connects to all 4 subways which also connect to each other by going straight up). Subways are also accessible via the 4 subway entrances. However, moving up or down (when Superman can fly) jumps you several screens to the left or right, and you can't access the bridge and phone booth screens that way.
Another game I inherited from my cousin used (without the manual). I didn't appreciate the technical level of this game as a child as I do now, nor did I ever realize how forward-thinking this game was for it's time. Sadly, this was one of the games I could maybe play one or two rounds of before getting bored and switching back to Pacman or Space Invaders. Not sure why this game didn't hold my attention that much, then again it took me a while to figure out what to do in the game at first. Great review!
This was one of those which I picked up as a loose cart at some point - and even though by that point I certainly was not a kid, it's one in which I felt the map certainly left me feeling quite lost indeed. It's the mark of a great video that makes you reevaluate a game you'd written off and want to give it another try sometime. At least with a manual (or map) to hand!
Manuals are now available online for download or saving as a picture file. I wasn't able to get the treasure in Mountain King until I read that, but I still couldn't jump high enough to get out of the mountain, so still haven't won it.
This was great! I really loved seeing all the old ads you dug up. The release date for it will always be something I'm never really sure about -- if you check out my channel, you'll see my own video on the game from about a year ago, and I actually have a 2015 email from John Dunn saying it came out with the movie at the end of 1978. Maybe it got some sort of limited test release that way? Anyway...great work!
There does generally seem to be confusion from old developers on when their games actually came out - Warren Robinett was certain Adventure came out in 1979, for example, but it definitely didn't make it out until 1980. Atari was also prone to sitting on releases until they felt like it was a reasonable time to start selling it, something Bob Whitehead told me (and bears out with Robinett's Basic Programming, which doesn't appear to have been sold until 1980 despite showing up briefly in ads in 1979). Superman was certainly written in 1978, and while its plausible that there was a small run, none of Atari's product announcements or advertising that I've come across suggests it got out into stores until 79. Barring anything more concrete, I'm standing by my September release info!
@@AtariArchive Speaking of ads, one of your ads has the Superman box with the slogan or banner "Special Edition." I can't find anyone who has an explanation other than it was a marketing ploy to get people's attention. Do you think this had something to do with the 4K ROM cart?
Going back to my original file, it looks like I had the volume mix wrong for that section of video. Unfortunately youtube doesn't allow me to fix an upload without entirely removing the old file, but I did go ahead and fix the error for when this goes up on the Internet Archive.
Superman is impressive, but it's hardly the "most important game of 1980," since a certain arcade port would come out that year to really sell VCS units.
It's a visual nightmare. I get it's revolutionary but hell if I can look at it. The look-ahead mechanic is painful. (Thank you for playing these so I don't need to). Interesting note about the alternate future co-op mode...I love hearing about stuff like that.
The blue Atari Logbook challenge: Put all the crooks behind bars, rebuild the bridge, change back to Clark Kent and return to the Daily Planet. No difficulty switches are indicated. I assume both b. Pro: "You've Impressed LOIS LANE": 7 mins., Master: "Honorary Hero": 5 mins., Wizard: "SUPERMAN": 3 mins. Superman didn't appear in the green Atari Logbook, but I like calling the levels Pro, Master and Wizard. However, Video Chess is the last one not yet reviewed by episode 29 to appear. In January 1983, (probably after we got my Atari repaired), I was able to beat 3 minutes on difficulty B, no problem, scoring 1'47" without "cheating" and 1'01" doing so, without having to repair the bridge. It's possible to beat 3 minutes on difficulty A, either left or right or both, but if you do the A difficulty without Lois showing up, you mustn't hit a Kryptonite satellite, or you won't find her to heal you and win in the time allotted.
In case anyone ever reads this, the logbook challenges are pretty easy to make if you've learned to play this game reasonably well. One cheat has you start the game and put Clark in the center screen then wait for the screensaver mode to come on and cycle through screens until you get to the Daily Planet. Then tap the joystick and you've won! This can occur in about 5 minutes, so Pro and Master can be accomplished without doing anything! My suggestions: Super-Pro is 3 minutes Super-Master is 2 minutes (I can beat that nearly every time I play now that I know where the bridge pieces are) Super-Wizard is 1'30" (I can do that most times I play. My best is 1'02" which I duplicated today.) Super-cheater is 1'00" (If at the start of the game you fly off without becoming Clark Kent, the bridge won't explode and you can win with just capturing the bad guys. My best is 48'.) Next try: left difficulty B, right difficulty A (fast enemies. My best using the bridge cheat is 0'50"), left difficulty B, right difficulty A (fast enemies, not cheating my best is 1'05"), left difficulty A, right difficulty B (slow enemies, no Lois Lane, so don't hit the Kryptonite. My best is 1'06"), left difficulty A, right difficulty A (fast enemies, no Lois Lane. My best is 1'08" without cheating, of course).
There's a little glitch with regard to the subway entrances: the bad guys can enter the subway opposite the normal subway entrance through a secret entrance, but Superman/Clark can't. Also sometimes they like to stand on the visible entrance without entering. People don't seem to complain about the helicopter as much as they do the bat in Adventure. It's more like a dog that gets your slippers: sometimes it brings a bridge piece to you and sometimes it hides one; other times it grabs a Kryptonite. If you have two pieces of the bridge in place, sometimes it will bring the third and fix the bridge for you; you can hear the "it's fixed" sound when you're offscreen!
This was one of my favorites. Still have it today.
Superman is a fantastic game that I still play EVERY time I fire up my Atari. Unlike Pitfall!, which is long, tedious, and repetitive, Superman is a game you attempt to win as quickly as possible. Catch each bad guy, throw them in jail, rebuild the bridge, turn back into Clark Kent and get to work at the Daily Planet for the win. And Lois? She shows up to take the Kryptonite from around Superman's neck, just like Ms. Techbocker did in the movie. Okay, that's a stretch, since these Kryptonite necklaces are invisible and placed by a satellite, but still...
The map lays out like city streets, where going East/West take you down a street and going north and south move you to other streets. Sure, the city folds in upon itself like an M. C. Escher painting, but repeat play and your X-Ray vision helps to orient you anytime you get lost.
This game requires a bit of patience to learn, but it's FUN once you get the swing of it, and that is what is most important. You CANNOT die, so the only way you lose is if you give up. So hang in there, get used to it, and enjoy one of the best Atari 2600 games based on a movie!
One of the best VCS games, hands down. This, Haunted House and Adventure were my go-to games.
My only complaint is that Superman only had one game variation, and they didn't make a Superman II cart. It's funny, I just learned that Atari made the computer simulation for _Superman III_ which is why they used the sounds from Atari 2600 Pac-Man. They might have planned to release another Superman game, but with the Crash of 1983, scrapped it.
Superman holds together so well. I think the bonkers mapping system is a big part of what makes the game so fun even today. I think it would be boring if the city was easy to memorise. Brilliant game, and excellent video. Looking forward to the next one.
I didn't memorize it as a kid other than the few screens next to the jail and bridge. If I had memorized the fastest way to the bridge pieces and where they go, I might have been able to beat 1'30" at age 11 or 12, which I can do easily now.
The very first commercially-released, real-time game with an environment spanning more than one screen, I believe.
Atari's 1st superhero licensed game; E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial became the second; both games based on a Hollywood motion picture; coincidentally, both cannot be sold today because of licensing rights.
Yup, this game is definitely better than the NES one. Having played Adventure, I'd probably enjoy this game if I ever had the chance to play it. Dunn definitely got this one right for the reasons you show in the video. If only more Superman games were this good.
Never really understood it as a kid, but a few years ago I finally read the manual and had a good time finishing a run through it in a few minutes. It's really impressive how much Superman lore is included despite being such an early game. It captures more of the character than attempts on more advanced systems.
Ya this is another game where you need the manual. To figure it out.
The sound design makes a lot more sense now given Dunn's background (and what he did later), for me best sound design for the 2600. Love the bit about Simcock (sp?) and his artsy threat.
Great find re: Robinett's involvement. Interesting to compare Superman and Adventure now. Same very limited tech, same genre games, created at same time. Superman with arguably better sound and better graphics, yet Adventure seems to get the accolades.
To me, Adventure and Superman clearly have the same foundations but excel at different aspects. Superman has the visuals and the storytelling on lock, while Adventure has the varied environments and exploration. They're complementary games for sure - I feel like folks who try one should really give the other a go.
@@AtariArchive true about the storytelling, that's something I never even paid attention to with Adventure. Agree 100% about Adventure and exploration, and interesting now to consider the seemingly subtle gameplay elements that contributed to that and captured my imagination as a kid (vs. Superman). As someone mentioned in the comments, appreciation for Superman undoubtedly suffers when you don't have the manual, and maybe that has lessened its popularity.
@@AtariArchive Too bad they didn't use the same foundation for Haunted House, so it could have a screen for each room (24) instead it only had 4 screens with 6 rooms each. A couple years later I played Voodoo Castle, a Scott Adams text-adventure game that has a similar haunted house theme. After learning that Adventure was based on a text game (and sold 1 million), I wondered why they didn't make more like that. Raiders and Swordquest just didn't cut the mustard.
One of my all time favorites. I still play it today.
When I was little, my brother and I could never rebuild the bridge. We'd capture the Luthor Gang and move all the pieces of the bridge to the right place, but they'd just sit at the bottom of the screen. We eventually managed to beat the game by pausing and waiting for the world to cycle all the way around on the pause screen, then move when it came back to the bridge screen. Years later when I played it again via emu, I never had that problem and never figured out what I was doing wrong.
I have to admit that as a 5 year old in 1980 this game never made sense to me and I thought it stank at the time. I either never had the manual or threw it away before reading it (if I was even old enough to read and comprehend it at that point) so that's probably a big factor. Thanks to your video I now understand what the player's goal is and appreciate what the game accomplished for the time. Thank you.
Does anybody know any Atari television commercial of this game? Please! 🙏 Thanks for the very nice video!
I'm catching up on your wonderful videos Kevin, thanks so much for doing them. This was one of my favorites as a kid and I still play it regularly. My wife hates it because it's so noisy, but to me that's one of its charms. I was not aware that John Dunn had passed away, I was sorry to hear that. I did an email interview with him a few years ago that I hopefully can get off my old computer to post on Archive.org. Thanks again!
Did you ever manage to post this? I'd love to check it out. (I had a very brief email conversation with him myself, which you can see in the Superman video on my channel.)
@@cbake76 apparently I need to submerge my old iMac in dry ice for it to work for more than 5 minutes. Hopefully sometime this winter. I will check out your video, thank you!
@@Atari2600GamebyGamePodcast Ha... No pressure on either...
@@Atari2600GamebyGamePodcast Hello. Did you have any luck thawing your old iMac? Would be great to read that interview and have it preserved still if possible. Thanks.
@@heyhonpuds thanks for the kick in the butt. I have I think all the interviews extracted from the Mac now, I will work on getting them out. I hope I didn't build it up too much
I was really looking forward to this one. This game has always confounded me, and I was hoping to gain a better understanding of how it works through this video. I'm sorry to report I still don't totally understand it, but it was a very interesting video nonetheless. I don't think I'll ever spend the time nor the brain power to completely comprehend the map system. But it's interesting how, of all superheroes, Superman once had the most impressively advanced video game on the market. My, how times changed.
I really enjoy this series. It's my favorite Atari themed UA-cam channel. The research is impeccable, and I especially love the old newspaper ads. Keep up the fantastic work!👍👍
The map is really confusing, I agree - I played it with the map image from Atariage pulled up on my computer screen, and still routinely got lost. Eventually I started to recognize some of the background skylines and that helped me get a better sense of place, but it's certainly the trickiest part to get a handle on.
@@AtariArchive The map wraps around through every outdoor screen going either left or right. The Daily Planet entrance (which is the endgame objective) puts you inside a room that looks like the subways (and connects to all 4 subways which also connect to each other by going straight up). Subways are also accessible via the 4 subway entrances. However, moving up or down (when Superman can fly) jumps you several screens to the left or right, and you can't access the bridge and phone booth screens that way.
Another game I inherited from my cousin used (without the manual). I didn't appreciate the technical level of this game as a child as I do now, nor did I ever realize how forward-thinking this game was for it's time. Sadly, this was one of the games I could maybe play one or two rounds of before getting bored and switching back to Pacman or Space Invaders. Not sure why this game didn't hold my attention that much, then again it took me a while to figure out what to do in the game at first. Great review!
Heh. I remember carrying Lois Lane into the phone booth so she could see Clark and Superman were the same person. Good times.
Yeah, I did that, as well as get hit by Kryptonite outside the Daily Planet so the game could end with them kissing.
This was one of those which I picked up as a loose cart at some point - and even though by that point I certainly was not a kid, it's one in which I felt the map certainly left me feeling quite lost indeed.
It's the mark of a great video that makes you reevaluate a game you'd written off and want to give it another try sometime. At least with a manual (or map) to hand!
I owned this cart for years having no clue what I am supposed to do or how to win the game until I cam across a copy of the manual.
Manuals are now available online for download or saving as a picture file. I wasn't able to get the treasure in Mountain King until I read that, but I still couldn't jump high enough to get out of the mountain, so still haven't won it.
This was great! I really loved seeing all the old ads you dug up. The release date for it will always be something I'm never really sure about -- if you check out my channel, you'll see my own video on the game from about a year ago, and I actually have a 2015 email from John Dunn saying it came out with the movie at the end of 1978. Maybe it got some sort of limited test release that way? Anyway...great work!
There does generally seem to be confusion from old developers on when their games actually came out - Warren Robinett was certain Adventure came out in 1979, for example, but it definitely didn't make it out until 1980. Atari was also prone to sitting on releases until they felt like it was a reasonable time to start selling it, something Bob Whitehead told me (and bears out with Robinett's Basic Programming, which doesn't appear to have been sold until 1980 despite showing up briefly in ads in 1979). Superman was certainly written in 1978, and while its plausible that there was a small run, none of Atari's product announcements or advertising that I've come across suggests it got out into stores until 79. Barring anything more concrete, I'm standing by my September release info!
Fair enough! 😀
@@AtariArchive Speaking of ads, one of your ads has the Superman box with the slogan or banner "Special Edition." I can't find anyone who has an explanation other than it was a marketing ploy to get people's attention. Do you think this had something to do with the 4K ROM cart?
At 12:01, the audio is messed up. I can hardly hear what you're saying over the gameplay.
Going back to my original file, it looks like I had the volume mix wrong for that section of video. Unfortunately youtube doesn't allow me to fix an upload without entirely removing the old file, but I did go ahead and fix the error for when this goes up on the Internet Archive.
Superman is impressive, but it's hardly the "most important game of 1980," since a certain arcade port would come out that year to really sell VCS units.
Oh we will get to that one, don't worry
'Superman' is important because it is the 1st superhero licensed character video game.
Is the screen switching THAT OFTEN part of normal gameplay? Geez that's hard to look at and follow.
It's a visual nightmare. I get it's revolutionary but hell if I can look at it. The look-ahead mechanic is painful. (Thank you for playing these so I don't need to).
Interesting note about the alternate future co-op mode...I love hearing about stuff like that.
su... per... man...
The blue Atari Logbook challenge: Put all the crooks behind bars, rebuild the bridge, change back to Clark Kent and return to the Daily Planet. No difficulty switches are indicated. I assume both b.
Pro: "You've Impressed LOIS LANE": 7 mins.,
Master: "Honorary Hero": 5 mins.,
Wizard: "SUPERMAN": 3 mins.
Superman didn't appear in the green Atari Logbook, but I like calling the levels Pro, Master and Wizard. However, Video Chess is the last one not yet reviewed by episode 29 to appear.
In January 1983, (probably after we got my Atari repaired), I was able to beat 3 minutes on difficulty B, no problem, scoring 1'47" without "cheating" and 1'01" doing so, without having to repair the bridge. It's possible to beat 3 minutes on difficulty A, either left or right or both, but if you do the A difficulty without Lois showing up, you mustn't hit a Kryptonite satellite, or you won't find her to heal you and win in the time allotted.
In case anyone ever reads this, the logbook challenges are pretty easy to make if you've learned to play this game reasonably well. One cheat has you start the game and put Clark in the center screen then wait for the screensaver mode to come on and cycle through screens until you get to the Daily Planet. Then tap the joystick and you've won! This can occur in about 5 minutes, so Pro and Master can be accomplished without doing anything!
My suggestions:
Super-Pro is 3 minutes
Super-Master is 2 minutes (I can beat that nearly every time I play now that I know where the bridge pieces are)
Super-Wizard is 1'30" (I can do that most times I play. My best is 1'02" which I duplicated today.)
Super-cheater is 1'00" (If at the start of the game you fly off without becoming Clark Kent, the bridge won't explode and you can win with just capturing the bad guys. My best is 48'.)
Next try:
left difficulty B, right difficulty A (fast enemies. My best using the bridge cheat is 0'50"),
left difficulty B, right difficulty A (fast enemies, not cheating my best is 1'05"),
left difficulty A, right difficulty B (slow enemies, no Lois Lane, so don't hit the Kryptonite. My best is 1'06"),
left difficulty A, right difficulty A (fast enemies, no Lois Lane. My best is 1'08" without cheating, of course).
There's a little glitch with regard to the subway entrances: the bad guys can enter the subway opposite the normal subway entrance through a secret entrance, but Superman/Clark can't. Also sometimes they like to stand on the visible entrance without entering.
People don't seem to complain about the helicopter as much as they do the bat in Adventure. It's more like a dog that gets your slippers: sometimes it brings a bridge piece to you and sometimes it hides one; other times it grabs a Kryptonite. If you have two pieces of the bridge in place, sometimes it will bring the third and fix the bridge for you; you can hear the "it's fixed" sound when you're offscreen!
better than the N64 game haha. however, absolute worst idea for co-op imaginable
I hate this game