Superman 64 - What Happened?

[Music] look up in the sky it's a bird it's a plane it's a cliche Superman reference no it's a new episode of what happened the show that dives deep in some of the entertainment industry's most deliriously damaging debacles first off thanks to the members of the flop house of VIP patron who voted for today's topic in a Mass Effect Andromeda you might have escaped this time don't know don't you worry you'll be dragged kicking and screaming onto our stage soon enough all right so real talk comic book and comic book characters have had a rough history with in the Phantom Zone of video games Batman Beyond everything with the Fantastic Four his name on it that one Hulk game spider-man revenge of the sinister six spawn eternal Iron Man XO Man O'War in heavy metal you get the points however the last Son of Krypton stands on top of them all with the distinction of being the only major hero without even a single great game to their credit yeah there's been one or two titles that were kind of maybe okay but unlike his contemporaries Bruce Peter Logan or Bruce Clark can't never really broke through that barrier of bad or mediocre let's say baddie ogre quality games now the story of the most infamous of these attempts at video Kingdom has a unique cast of characters there's of course DC Comics the company that publishes The Adventures of the Man of Steel Warner Brothers who came into acquisition of DC 1989 and routinely attempts to spin-off their heroes into other media and last but not least is Titus a French company that first cut their teeth in the world of 8 and 16-bit äj-- they'd kicked off the fifth generation in you could call it style with things like virtual chess 64 roadsters and automobile Lamborghini in their earlier days they had also worked with such licensed IPS as Dick Tracy and the Blues Brothers and the founder of Titus when Eric Conn saw a similar opportunity in late 1996 Warner Brothers had seen massive success with the Bruce Timm helmed Batman series and wanted the same treatment for Superman his cartoons started later that same year and was part of a big push across a variety of mediums to hopefully make people forget about well of all of this Eric Conn felt if they could score the license to the Man of Steel it would potentially be the biggest game Titus would ever work on certainly in terms of character marketability I had heard from her LA office that Warner Brothers was preparing a new animated TV series around Superman so I contacted WB licensing in order to obtain the video game rights they asked me three times if I was serious about making the game no one else was interested enough in Superman to do a video game about him at that time faster than a speeding bullet both Titus and the Warner Brothers licensing team quickly struck up a strong business relationship as the devised a three-pronged plan for Supes this would kick off with a Game Boy title followed up by an n64 iteration which would be Superman's big 3d debut and finally close out with a PlayStation version Eric Conn envisioned a fully open-world game taking place within a square mile in the trough list for Superman would have free rein and flying around enemy's saving citizens and just being Superman instead kal-el found himself banging into walls humping the ground flying through rings picking up cars flying through rings flying through rings having his vision obscured by the thick soup known as kryptonite fog all contained within one of the most infamously bad video games of all time so what happened as mentioned the gameboy release came to market first in early 1997 and while it was certainly inoffensive it like the majority of third-party titles released on Nintendo's handheld went largely unnoticed especially since the original GB model was being phased out also this is as good a time as any to clarify Superman on the n64 is not called Superman 64 and it never was in no place within the game itself or the instruction manual does it contain the number 64 held the [ __ ] box the box doesn't even have a normal logo it's just Clark ripping up his shirt daring you to look at the big ass on his chest on my world it means hope that being said I'm still gonna call it Superman 64 you can't stop me now things start to go awry between Warner Brothers and Titus pretty early on because while the gameboy title is considered an afterthought the console version had higher stakes attached to it the Warner licensing team was let go only a few weeks after a deal was inked the new people in charge hated us and our project they believed the major company like EA games would have paid more for the license and created a better title thus started a years-long campaign of Warner Brothers doing everything they could to hamper and delay Titus's work since this new licensing team felt the French company was not an appropriate developer to handle their marquee character as I suppose they lacked experience or notoriety whatever you want to call it WB said about altering the game to their specifications Eric Conn explains in every way they tried to stop its development they asked us to change it from an action-adventure to a sim city light game our Superman would be like the mayor of Metropolis that was honestly pathetic when Titus fought against this mandate and insisted to remain in action title they noticed that WB's interference and ire started to escalate not only was communication between both companies already complicated as Titus's Parish studio was nine hours ahead of WB in California the frequency and communication was also kept deliberately slowed when both companies would finally get to discuss the game and its structure WB would challenge just about every decision Titus would make with one of the major sticking points being the idea of destructible elements within Metropolis that seems a little backwards for Superman doesn't it he's Superman destroying [ __ ] is what he's good at regardless Warner Brothers was opposed to Superman laying a finger on chest about everything we developed the 3d world to have significant destructible aspects like walls and floors that could tear away when struck but they were totally against that arguing that Superman could not act as a bad person boy that escalated quickly I mean that really got out of hand fast this edict incredibly also spilled over into attacking enemies as well as Warner Brothers was apparently concerned that punching NPCs would be out of character for the Man of Steel to alleviate this and the issue of Metropolis based mayhem Titus proposed at the game take place in a virtual recreation of Superman's iconic City so all that nasty fighting and explosions would be confined within the Digi verse this idea will be solidified with Lex Luthor kidnapping Teri Hatcher and that guy that got shot in the opening of Batman V Superman in this virtual prison was Supes having to rescue each one working with WB was described as agonizing according to Eric Conn with the game having to go under an oppressive microscope it took us months to get every single character approved they also argued against any decision we made in the game under the pretext that Superman would never do that for example we had to prove this Superman could go underwater because they had doubts it would be acceptable in terms of legacy we had tons of documentation and had to go through it all in order to tell them something like in the October 1957 issue on page whatever you totally see Superman underwater because of all these production delays Titus couldn't really work on say the metallo boss fight if they didn't even have metallo approved yet this of course had a staggered effect on the entire project which left very little time to actually optimize the game to run on the n64 in the first place this was especially detrimental since it was Titus's first 3d act well it's true that virtual chess 64 predated Superman in terms of scope and ambition it was the company's most complicated for rain to 3d ever they needed the time to work out the kinks and the gameplay issues not make sure that Lois's pink power suit was up to WB standards having to restructure their vision to fit all these demands Eric Conn admits that the rest of the game suffered for it we lost so much time answering Warner Brothers and DC's concerns and weird ideas but more time to focus on the game's development and its playability instead of the surrounding circus we could have improved the controls and the collision and have made a better game in the end one of the major things of the team struggled to deal with was getting the n64 to display the open environment with decent performance even though it was released in 1999 the later half of the system's life a stinky green fog was employed to mask the short draw distance which was present pretty much everywhere just a year prior games like Tarak 2 and Rogue Squadron were able to produce great visuals on the hardware and increase the draw distances which was something tightest neither had the time nor experience to solve they knew the problem was so in-your-face that in early press interviews before the virtual metropolis changes were implemented claim that the green hue division of screen weather effect was kryptonite fog which Lex Luthor released in order to weaken the pesky mane of super this was then retcon with the final v-tail version which really didn't acknowledge what the green fog even was I guess the wizard did it nevertheless Titus forged on bowing to pretty much all of Warner Brothers machinations which resulted in delivering the game six months later than the original targeted release date now this was 1999 and online websites were not yet the dominating percentage of game coverage so despite all of the things working against it Superman 64 went on to be a sales success cracking the NDP top ten in its debut month and eventually selling over half a million copies in total sales were big so we didn't use any money on Nintendo 64 or Game Boy games but Warner Brothers blocked the PSX version from coming out and that was a heartbreaker it was 90% completed and we had a half million units in fact order claims mr. Conn write the PlayStation version even without x-ray vision Titus could see they wouldn't get that port done in a timely manner thus they contracted out one of their latest acquisitions blue sky software developers of vector man to tackle said port fortunately since Titus had already gone through the gauntlet of weird and creepy Warner Brothers guidelines and restrictions blue sky were able to navigate them in record time and reportedly got the game to an almost finished state before the plug was unceremoniously pulled due to the six-month delay again the n64 version of the Thor this accelerated the time frame in which Titus's Superman license was valid until now despite it selling and in case you thought I stuttered 500,000 copies Warner Brothers opted not to extend the working relationship with Titus this effectively canceled the PSX version which by all accounts was shaping up to be a massive improvement and without the project to sustain them nice-guy software closed the very next year Eric Conn believe this to be an act of sabotage I think they're trying to stall us and we had heard that WB were even preparing to pay out a huge litigation settlement because they forced us to kill that PlayStation version but we never wound up actually suing them while certainly Superman the 64th was kneecapped by a meddling partner the third generation of consoles was notoriously problematic for superheroes in general aside from the Capcom fighting games and Neversoft spider-man most couldn't really be done justice with a political power the PlayStation and 64 or Sega Saturn the technology just they're 16-bit Hardware could render the powers in worlds of superheroes in a illustrative and arcade-like way but early 3d was just ill-equipped to properly represent SuperSpeed and vulnerability or just being edgy so even if WB had kept their smelly dicks out of the project there's more than good chance that Superman wouldn't have snagged any Game of the Year awards in 1999 anyhow with that said I'm gonna have to level with y'all after having done all this research on Superman as well as capturing footage off my own cartridge I gotta say as a game if you thought I was gonna say something positive woman you're probably running for office on Planet wrong it's only gotten worse with age I literally can't think of anything positive to say about this curse piece of software if you ever meet anyone that says yeah Superman 64 wasn't that but have them arrested now this is traditionally the point in the video where I tell you that Titus went out of business following Superman's release but due to that half million units in sales they're able to soldier on for a few more kind of shaky years they went on to publish a number of enjoyable Arina fighters from the makers of bio freaks sapphire entertainment until the release of Robocop for the Xbox and PC in 2003 at that point had been nearly 15 years since the last Robocop movie hit theaters so not exactly sure what they were on when they sign that hot property maybe nuke today Eric Conn no longer works in the gaming industry but instead at turbo a company that I can't really ask through tain what they do he had previously found a job working at interplay during their short-lived and fruitless revival in the mid arts but seemed just as happy to move on to something else despite everything he seemingly doesn't begrudge the game that caused so much aggravation for himself in his studio some too decades ago i coded designed or produced over 100 games in my life so Superman is just one of that 100 that being said it is in my top 10 in terms of sales and it's probably also the one that people still talk about almost 20 years later as for Warner Brothers they moved on from being a simple licensure to a full-fledged publisher working their employees to the bone and ruining games with tons of microtransactions and predatory DLC practices oh and they also eventually caught their wish because they broke her to deal with themselves and Electronic Arts in 2008 to finally make that fantastic Superman game loved and remembered by all continuing the great tradition of the character Wow so if you know of any other incredible spectacular uncanny video game slash movie fustercluck s-- smash your way into the flop house of VAP patreon or use your heat vision on the comments below to X your nominations into what we'll tackle next see you next time metropolis ian's and thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 712,237

Keywords: Superman 64, Let's Play Superman 64, Superman Video Games, Wha Happun?, What Happened?, Video Game Disasters, Video Game Documentaries, Matt McMuscles, Super Hero Video Games, DC Comics, Man of Steel, Batman

Id: ZuE7fFMxPc4

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 29 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/NorrisOBE]

Man, Superman 64 was worse than that time Superman teamed up with a known child predator

[u/ExDSG]

Don't want to fully jump in the EA BAD train, but I find it funny, they kind of indirectly helped create this mess because they would "have paid more for the license and created a better game" which caused WB to become meddling assholes.

[u/javierich0]

Wait, I could've sworn I've already seen this.

[u/ScottPilgrim2013]

ProtonJon's videos on this game gave me a new perspective on it. Before, I just thought it was some shitty licensed game cashing in on Superman and that the majority of the game was going through rings. While the final product is a glitchy mess, it did seem kinda ambitious and might of actually been decent if it wasn't for the publishers rushing the dev team.

[u/alexandrecau]

I had death and return of superman on snes, it took a fucking while to beat

[u/arciks92]

One lil nitpick i have with this video is how Matt mentioned how Turok 2 put on impressive visuals and extended draw distance on N64.

Although it did that, it came at the cost of performance. It ran worse than Turok 1, which atleast hit 30 Fps more often.

[u/The_Draigg]

The most pressing issue I want to know about this game is why they decided to call a flying through rings challenge a maze.

[u/Kekkersboy]

I will say one thing about this game it has a fun 4 player versus mode.

[u/ManlyPlant]

Man i don't know what you're talking about Superman 64 runs great! ....

When you change the screen size to 20%