8 Terrible Mistakes That Almost Ruined Superman For Everyone

6. Literally Every Bad Superman Game Ever

Superman 64
Titus Interactive

Folks will tell you that Superman is a difficult character to build a video game around, thanks mainly to the idea that his powers grant him nigh invulnerable status. Given most action-adventure video games entail some kind of risk for the protagonist - otherwise where would the challenge be? - the general conception is that the Man of Steel just doesn't lend himself well to the medium.

Not that video game studios haven't tried, of course. More-so than Batman, Spider-Man, or any of the other DC and Marvel heroes, Superman has been the subject of some seriously stinky video games. Whereas those aforementioned characters can point towards a select few underwhelming releases, though, Supes' entire gaming library is chockfull of them, with only a few managing to exit the bracket of "bad" or "mediocre", to enter the dizzying heights of, "it's okay, I guess."

By far the most infamous of these terrible Superman games is Superman 64, a title developed in 1999 that was based on the seminal Superman animated series from the 1990s. The entire game just revolves around flying Supes into rings and... nothing else. (Lex Luthor was clearly feeling low on inspiration.)

Subsequent efforts faired only marginally better, with other projects meeting cancellation, but it's still wild that developers haven't been able to crack the character when it comes to video games - probably because publishers have bought into the idea that Superman is simply way too powerful, even though said idea is just plain wrong.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.