Commentary on the AVGN review of Superman 64

This is quite an old review to make a commentary on, but it’s still great and deserves an in-depth look. In this game, the Angry Video Game Nerd reviews what is considered one of the worst games of all time – Superman on the N64, or as it’s most commonly known, Superman 64.

You can view the episode here on his website

Now onto the Superman 64 commentary:

So first a bit of backstory: everyone and their mum was asking the AVGN to review Superman 64. Being that it’s widely considered to be one of the worst games of all time, it seemed like a perfect match. He prefaced this episode by having a look at a Superman game on the NES and Atari VCS. However, that’s not too relevant to this episode so I won’t dive into that diarrhoea.

00:00 – 00:49 Credits and theme song. He uses a techno remix of the song; I’m not really a fan of it, but it’s not too distracting so not much to talk about here.

avgn superman 64 1

00:57 Ohshi- Fuck it, let’s just go through this part quickly. Superman on the Commodore 64 by the looks of it seems like a pretty okay game. His main complaint is all the crap that comes with playing a game on an 80’s computer. Namely massive load times and copyright protection codesheets.

avgn superman 64 2

03:19 The review of Superman 64 (not C64) starts.

03:26-30 “Cuz I like ya a lot” Well, thank you! “Now don’t take that too serious” Oh okay…

03:33-39 Titus. Oh shit Titus. These are the makers of the worst games on the Nintendo 64, this one here is the most infamous of all.

avgn superman 64 3

03:50-04:00 The title screen music really is quite terrible, it’s extremely bland and you probably could replace it with anything else and nobody would notice.

04:00-07:18 Flying through rings. Ho boy this part really sucks. I mean the game, not the actual episode. One big thing that the AVGN complains about is that every other phase in the game is a flying through rings level. However if you pay close attention to what the game says, you’ll find that not to be the case. In reality, the rings are the first part of each level. Yeah, the first part of the game is divided into different missions and the rings act as a way of getting from point A to point B. Why you can’t just go directly without having to jump through hoops (hehe), I’ll never know. It’s still a stupid design decision.

avgn superman 64 4

07:18-30 The bit with the cars is really annoying and I agree wholeheartedly; it tells you to go get the cars without really telling you how to do it, and it doesn’t give you any leeway to experiment before you fail and it sends you back to the beginning.

07:30-08:55 More about the bleeding rings. One thing to note here is that the rings that appear in the review are from all phases in level 1, while he makes it seem as though that’s all before the ‘rescue car event’. To be frank, these ring stages aren’t really that difficult. All you need to do is let go of the A button to decelerate or press B to hit the brakes on superman and you can get perfect accuracy pretty easily.

avgn superman 64 5

08:55-09:57 He comments on the cycle of rings and car stages. Again, the rings are the prelude to each of the mission objectives you have and they’re not that difficult.

09:57-10:36 He throws the Superman 64 cartridge into the sun. A fun scene that compliments the nerd well. Not much to say here.

avgn superman 64 6

Conclusion

Overall this is an okay episode. The main issue that I had with it is that he’s really bad at the ring stages and that he doesn’t go through any more than the first couple of phases in the first level of Superman 64. He misses the terrible phase with the ice breath and the whole indoor facility level. It doesn’t really take that long to get there, especially if you figure out that you need to decelerate on the ring stages.

Could’ve used a bit more effort when it came to playing Superman 64. But to be fair he probably spent most of the episode’s production time just waiting for the bloody Commodore 64 to load.

Images used in this post were taken from the AVGN review on cinemassacre.com.

Articles across the web

N64 Squid has a look at the Angry Video Game Nerd's 2008 review of Superman 64 and gives a commentary on the episode.
Article published on N64 Squid

Search

Subscribe to the mailing list

Follow N64 Squid

  • RSS Feed
  • YouTube

Random featured posts

Leave a Reply

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Website

Your Message