The Death And Return Of Superman brought to the teeming masses of comic book nerds and video game geeks attempts to hit on the mass hysteria brought about by the supposed "death" of Superman. The opening screen looks good; a blood soaked Superman emblem, punched through by Doomsday's clawed knuckle gives the game an air of authenticity. But, through its sparse graphics, generic beat 'em up gameplay, and go-nowhere action it simply stalls out. That's not to say The Death And Return Of Superman is an especially bad game. In the vain of Final Fight and the like, The Death And Return Of Superman takes players through several levels of side scrolling action. The one problem however, and this is a major sticking point; Superman dies too easily. A guy with a big gun can kill most any guy without one. But that shouldn't affect Superman. Therein lies the problem of making a Superman game; how do you make Superman powerful enough without making him completely invincible while still giving the enemies a fighting chance? This game doesn't answer that question, relying on the age old conceit of "video game Superman= not as powerful as real Superman" essentially making him as mortal as any other generic action hero.

The enemies kind of suck too; you fight the quintessential generic robots, flying robots, spherical drones (in horrible flying levles, reminiscent of a bad horizontal version of Galaga). The non-robot enemies are even worse; you fight horned creatures named, get this, Rambeau. Get it? That's funny, right? There's also a couple Final Fight rejects; Chainsaw and Molotov, who use, as you may have already guessed, a Chainsaw and a Molotov Cocktail respectively. The only time you have occasion to fight anyone you might actually know from the Superman comics is when you fight Doomsday in the second and last levels.

The game tries to change things up a bit after the second stage, allowing you to play as the Elseworlds Supermen; Superboy, The Cyborg Superman, Henry Irons (aka Steel), and The Metropolis Kid. The problem is, they all tend to play the same. Aside from their moves being graphically different each has the same limitations, strengths, and weaknesses as normal Superman. So in the end any illusion of variety is almost entirely graphical

So, all in all The Death And Return Of Superman isn't an especially great game. For its time it was extremely stock and standard, and it hardly fairs that well now. Give it a try if you dig side scrolling beat 'em ups or Superman. Otherwise, don't bother.

Thumbs In The Middle

Emulator:SEGA GENESIS

ROM:THE DEATH AND RETURN OF SUPERMAN

Cool. Over my years on the Internets, I've always been curious about emulators. Everytime I've asked, people immediately say "they're illegal!! Don't give out details"

I used to love that game. Just because I could watch Superman die over and over again

So, I take it you don't like Superman? :D

I like to watch him die...


I just think he's a character that no longer holds water. He's "flawless," and though it could be done right, in this day and age most writers can't handle characters like that well enough to consider continuing it. You have to attack his moral center, and you can only do that so many times before it becomes boring.

Now all we need is someone to do X-Box Live Arcade and we've got it covered.

I can emulate quite a bit of what XBLA does. Aside from most of the new stuff, obviously.

Sometimes nostalgia really, really sucks......

The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System is fortunately not one of those cases. Sure, its basically a sidescrolling beat 'em up with a default difficulty level most cats can overcome- but its rudimentary gameplay is almost perfect. You get to play as all the Power Rangers, the yellow Asian chick, the black black ranger, the nerdy blue dude, the Lifetime channel movie star pink ranger, and the "leader"- the red ranger through a bunch of stages that vaguely represent locations featured on the show beating up "putties", all of differing color, strength, and weapon variety. Its nothing special, but when you factor in a better than average (for the time) control scheme- featuring individualized attacks and weapons for each ranger- it becomes obvious that Power Rangers had a bit more depth than its contemporaries.

The graphics aren't really anything special. The backgrounds are painfully plain, and the character models aren't especially impressive. The only time the graphics really impressed me were during boss fights. The game featured battles against, um, the skeleton dude, the guy made of eyes, a genie (??), and some commando dude with a samauri sword- each of whom are animated well and are bigger and more complex than any of the human (or humanoid, as it were,) characters. You also have a chance to fight two bigger monsters with the assistance of your Voltron like robot. Everything during these two battles is animated like your average fighting game- down to the health bars in either corner of the screen. Again, not bad, but nothing super-special.

So, in all The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers game for the SNES is shockingly not that bad. Sure its easy- I beat it in one sitting- but, if you're feeling nostalgic for giant robots or kids' TV shows imported over from Japan I say go for it. You could do a lot worse.