The Death and Return of Superman (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Sunsoft's 1994 beat 'em up for the Super Nintendo, The Death and Return of Superman.

Superman gets a really bum deal in videogames. His NES game wasn't anything to write home about, and the less that is said about his N64 and Game Boy adventures, the better off everyone is.

There are quite a few people that claim The Death and Return of Superman is one of the best games to feature the man of steel, and unfortunately, it probably is. I prefer the original Genesis Superman game by far, and Justice League Task Force is great (at least on the SNES), but he's only one of several featured characters there. So, yeah. "One of the best." That leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Things start out on a pretty promising note. It plays quite a bit like Final Fight and Streets of Rage, and has an enemy in the first stage named "Rambeau." I lol'ed at that one. You can fly above the enemies, use specials, grapples, fireballs, and sometimes the game even turns into a side-scrolling shoot 'em up. But when you get a bit further the game decides to not play nice anymore with you, and it starts loading the screen with groups of enemies that are infuriatingly cheap to deal with. When the flying guy with a gun, the soldier with a gun, and the soldier with a grappling hook all show up at the same time, you might as well just cry "Uncle!" then and there. Unless you constantly throw or jump attack, you will get utterly destroyed since any of these guys can knock you down by swatting straight through your standard punch combo. I understand the need to increase the challenge over the course of a game, but generally it's better done by changing up enemy attack patterns, movements, and introducing new enemies. Here, you get the swarm of the half-dozen bad guys, palette swapped again and again, doing little but alternating stun and knock down attacks endlessly. It's infuriating, tedious, and not fun at all. So my advice? If you want to play it, have fun with the first few levels and then turn it off.

It does look and sound nice, and the different characters are cool to play as, but at the end of the day, I wouldn't bother. I wish I hadn't.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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