Superman (1979 video game)

Superman is an action-adventure video game programmed by John Dunn for the Atari Video Computer System

and released in 1979 by Atari, Inc. The player controls Superman, whose quest is to explore an open-ended environment to find three pieces of a bridge that was destroyed by Lex Luthor, capture Luthor and his criminal gang, and return to the Daily Planet building. The game world is populated by antagonists such as a helicopter that re-arranges the bridge pieces and roving kryptonite satellites that cause Superman to revert into Clark Kent.

At the time of the game's release, Atari was owned by Warner Communications, which was also the parent company of Superman publisher DC Comics. Following the financial success of the film Superman (1978), Atari asked programmer Warren Robinett to adapt his prototype of Adventure (1980) into a Superman game. Robinett was not interested, but gave some of his code to Dunn, who agreed to do the game if he could have four kilobytes of space for the cartridge as opposed to the usual two kilobytes.

Superman received positive reviews on its release from the publications Video and The Space Gamer, who proclaimed it as one of the best games from Atari while noting its high quality graphics and unique gameplay. Some retrospective reviews lamented that the game only used the character of Superman for his more action-oriented abilities, while others continued to praise the game's gameplay and graphics.

Gameplay

Superman is a video game in which the player controls Clark Kent and his superhero alias Superman. On hearing about a bomb scare in Metropolis, Kent examines the situation and finds Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor leaving the scene as the waterfront bridge explodes.