Why has there never been a good ‘Superman’ game?

wegotthiscovered.com:

Batman has the incredible Arkham trilogy, Spidey has Marvel’s Spider-Man, and a dizzying amount of Marvel heroes are faithfully depicted in Midnight Suns. So, where’s the blockbuster video game starring the greatest superhero of all, Superman?

You would think Superman would be a home run in gaming. His powers of flight, heat vision, x-ray vision, and super strength have all already been present in other games. Exploring an open-world Metropolis sounds like a blast, and kinetic and explosive third-person combat is tricky to get right, but eminently possible. Beyond all that, video games offer a power fantasy to players, and what bigger power fantasy is there than strapping on the red cape and taking to the skies?

It’s not like some developers haven’t tried, though let’s just say that not one of them managed to achieve lift-off…

Superman’s first foray into 3D gaming is notorious for all the wrong reasons. Titus Interactive’s 1999 Nintendo 64 game Superman: The New Superman Adventures (usually known as Superman 64) is commonly (and rightly!) regarded as one of the worst games of all time. Flying Supes around feels like pushing a grocery store trolley with a broken wheel, the empty world is full of “Kryptonite fog” to hide the limited draw distance, and the game infamously features a bunch of hovering rings to fly through.

Some of this wasn’t necessarily Titus’ fault. It was inundated with bizarre requests from Warner Bros. and DC about what Superman was and wasn’t allowed to do, with edicts that Superman couldn’t go underwater, that there was to be no property damage and — most bizarrely — that it rework the project to ditch all action in favor of “a Sim City-like game, where Superman would be like the mayor of Metropolis“.