The year 2009 saw the release of the phenomenal video game adaptation of the iconic comic book character Batman in Batman: Arkham Asylum.  A beautifully rendered game, it blended elements of atmosphere, stellar game play control, and the Batman mythos to create one of the finest Superhero adapted video games of all time.  And now, with the September 2010, Game Informer hitting shelves and giving us a glimpse at next year’s sequel, Batman: Arkham City, I thought it would be fun to start a weekly column taking a look back at video games adapted from comic books over the years.  Starting at the beginning with the very first comic book adapted game, Superman, for the home console system the Atari 2600.

Released in 1978 to coincide with the Richard Donner film Superman: The Movie, the video game, designed by programmer John Dunn is considered by many not only to be one of the finest Atari games, but one of the most beloved Superhero games.  With a concept incorporating multiple tasks, the game requires the player to start off as Clark Kent, until Lex Luthor steals a bridge, then the player must move Kent into a phone booth where he turns into Superman.  You then control Superman, moving him through Metropolis as he flies.  You can go in all four directions of the screen and into a couple of buildings, including the Daily Planet.  Your job is to find the pieces of the bridge scattered about Metropolis and put them back together in their original place. Then you must nab Luthor and his goons, who are running around, and drop them off in jail, all the while dodging kryptonite that’s floating about.  If you are hit by kryptonite you lose your powers and must find Lois Lane who heals you with a kiss as she also does a leg kick in the process.  After all this is completed, you have to return to the phone booth, switch back into Clark Kent, and return to the Daily Planet.  The game is designed to be played over and over again based on memory and skill in order for you to get the highest score in the fastest amount of time.

Superman is an interesting and unique piece of video game craftsmanship.  Dunn wanted to work upon themes of positive educational reinforcement, and brought this as a slight touch to the game.  This is laid evident by the challenges brought before Superman.  Superman’s main goal in the game is his duty to the city; he must repair a bridge that was destroyed by the enemy.  His secondary goal is to not just to stop the villains, but instead of beating them up he carries them to prison.  Clearly these few tasks are designed with the idea of adding a level of moral engagement to what could have been a simple beat ‘em up action fare.  This video game is also the first game in history to use the Atari’s full programming capacity of 4K ROMs. Before that, only 2K of ROM space was given to programmers for development.

The purpose of video games has been argued much since they were originally created–the main debate seems to be divided over whether video games are for the sheer purpose of playing a game, one that doesn’t further a plot or agenda but provides a continuous objective for the player to overcome, such as Tetris, or Pacman.  Or, the other side of the debate, which favors the purpose of video games to allow the player to assume control of a character, or characters and play out a story based scenario, or plot.  When playing a video game based on a comic book, in particular one that is about perhaps the medium’s most iconic character, it is typically the player’s desire to get the opportunity to take control of the iconic comic book character and role play, if you will, for the duration of the game.

Due to hardware and programming restraints, as well as its timely nature to be the first, Superman, and practically all Atari 2600 games are of a slightly different beast than what we’ve come to expect and know as video games today.  Instead of giving the reigns to players to play as Superman, the game affords the gamer the opportunity to play at being Superman.  As a pixilated character in the game, Superman is hardly recognizable as anything, person or otherwise.  He dons a simple blue uniform and something akin to a cape fluttering behind his back when he flies.  And while the game offers the minor additions of other characters from the Superman universe, like Lois Lane and Lex Luthor neither of which are recognizable to their comic book counterparts, and therefore serve little purpose in transporting the player into the world Superman inhabits.  If not for the inclusion of the Daily Planet during play the game could have just as easily been called something else.

If we look at Superman in the context of the great video game debate, we boil the objective of the game down to a simple framework of accomplishing a few goals around a labyrinth like environment in the quickest amount of time.  In this way, Superman supports the theory of a game that is played for the simple sake of playing a game, an infinite game if you will.  As a video game that allows the player to assume the identity of a character, and then play out a scenario or story giving them the opportunity to be the larger than life icon that a person goes into playing a game based on a Superhero does, then this game can’t help but fail.  The game only offers its players two of all of Superman’s powers to wield, flight, and x-ray vision, which you can use to see the next screen you’ll pass into by flying in that direction off screen.  Hardly something that a person expecting to play as Superman can feel truly meets the requirements of being Superman.

Perhaps due to things mentioned like, programming and hardware restraints, the game inevitably could do nothing to further the experience of being Superman?  Or, perhaps it could have been due to a lack of appropriate inspiration or imagination?  This I can only speculate on.  I can say as a video game player, and a comic book reader, that there have been games that accomplish this goal of fulfilling a comic reader’s fantasy of, playing as, that iconic character far better than the original Superman game.  While the game does not hold up to the standards we have come to apply to video games and the experiences they afford us in today, Superman does remain a true classic in the pantheon of both video games and games adapted from comic books, simply for the fact that it is a fun, repetitive experience that gave us the first chance ever to control, ourselves, that perhaps greatest of all Superheroes.

If you are so inspired, you can play the game online here.

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