This game is not only bad, but it made me feel like a dick when I got it as a surprise gift. Here's a little story...
Getting on with the story...
It must have been the year this dreaded game was released to the general public. I was at the park, alone (I was eleven or twelve years old at the time), while my mom was coming home from work. Seeing as the park was less than a block away from my house made the idea of a preteen son walking alone to the park a little more bearable for my mother. Anyways, she tells me over the phone that she is going to be a little late "getting something" from the store today, and to just hang out at the park until she gets there. After amusing myself for about a half hour, I see the familiar sight of my mother's compact car pull into the lot, followed immediately by her smiling face and holding a bag of.. something. The astute reader already knows what this bag contains.
"What's that you got there, Mom?" I had asked her.
"Open it up and find out, honey!" She was literally going to burst with joy at this point.
There was no special occasion to warrant this act of random generosity; my birthday had passed, Christmas was not even close to approaching... this was my mother doing something nice for me out of the sheer kindness of her heart, and that was that. So, as I reached into the little baggie that contained the surprise gift, you could imagine the giddiness she must have felt when she saw me pull it out.
"Superman? I think I heard of this game," I told her.
"Yeah, I saw it on TV and thought it looked pretty cool, and I had some extra cash when I went through the mall, so... here we are!" She was still on the brink of exploding.
So we go home, and she practically SHOVES me downstairs to my room to try it out... not that I'm arguing at this point. I just got a surprise video game, what more could I ask for? I take out my cartridge of Pokemon Stadium (and you just shut your little pie-hole right now) and pop in Superman. Now... I have always been pretty open-ended when it comes to video games. Typically, even through Gamespot's ridiculous scoring standards for reviews, I can enjoy a game that gets a 6.0 and above and not even have to think about any of the flaws it has (I liked Quest 64. That convincing enough?) That said, at the time of my playing this for the first... and only... time, I did not ever own or play a game that I did not enjoy in some way, shape or form.
Well, I guess everyone loses their virginity some day.
I did not question why Superman had to fly through rings. I did not question the lack of music playing as I traversed the game world. I did not question the story, and I did not question the graphics. What I did question, though, was why I was not getting any enjoyment out of this game whatsoever. I simply was not having any fun while playing this tragedy of a video game. It was so confusing! Sure, I knew that some games were better than others, but I had no idea that one could play a game on their Nintendo and actually LOSE happiness while playing it. I felt sick, almost. More importantly, though, I felt like a jerk. My mom buys me this game under no occasion at all, and there I was not liking it. The nerve of me, I thought! And from that point on, for the next week or so, I was training myself to like the game.
I actually had to train myself, my mental state of being, to actually have fun while playing a video game. For those who don't realise the general grandness of this statement, this would be like someone training their lungs to get a tar buildup in them before they start smoking cigarettes.
So a week goes by, and my mom brings home McDonald's for dinner. Being the television family that we were, all three of us huddled around the idiot box set up in the living room, watching a good episode of "Who's Line is it, Anyway?" Of, course, anyone should know that during dinner time, idle banter is very unavoidable when sitting down with the rest of the family (unless of course daddy punched mommy in the jaw for getting his order wrong, after which case mommy says that everything is alright to the kids, that it was mommy's fault that she was hit and not daddy's, and that she should get the order right from that moment forward... but that is all hypothetical, of course). So here, my mom gets to ask the question that she has been looking for an excuse to ask me for the entire week... yeah, you all know it.
"How are you liking that game, sweetie?" She presents the question so lovingly it hurts. It really, really hurts.
"Well, ahh.. y'know... it's... er..." This was tough. I couldn't tell her that I didn't like the game, but I also couldn't lie to her. I had to make a choice between the two, though, one that I believed to be the lesser of two evils.
"You know... I really don't like it all that much, Mom..." I didn't look her in the eyes when I said this. She could read the pain I was feeling from a mile away, though.
"Oh, honey, that's OK! You don't have to play it any more if you don't like it! We'll just return it tomorrow or something, and you can bring your allowance this time and you can pick out another game, alright?" This is why I love my mother... the woman can feel someone else's pain, but seems to be invulnerable to it herself.
So a few days later, we go down to the mall and we pick up another game afte trading in Superman. Funny thing is, the cashier didn't look surprised at all when the return was made. Nevertheless, despite my mother's words, I felt terrible. In my mind, I had just replaced a game that my mother gave me out of the kindness of her heart for something that I would RATHER have. I know now that it is not like that, of course... but this game will always have that memory attached to it no matter how many years go by.
There are two morals to this story: The first being that you should always tell someone the truth about things like this, because a lie would only hurt you and the other person a lot more than if you told the truth or didn't say anything at all. The other moral is to stay as far away from this game as humanly possible. It really is that bad.