Masters of the Game: Special Sweepstakes Edition (1992)

Masters of the Game was a newsletter from Acclaim Entertainment that promoted the games it, and its subsidiary LJN, published. I've got a few issues Acclaim mailed myself, all for free, though a couple that I have display $3 and $3.50 cover prices. I can't imagine anyone actually purchased them, as they're quite small, and a video game magazine with coverage of a wide variety of games for about the same price would have been more enticing. Of course, most of Acclaim's games either featured licensed properties or were home ports of popular arcade games, which didn't appeal to everyone.

This particular issue says "Special Sweepstakes Edition" on the front cover, and the back cover does have a quiz and entry form for a contest with an entertainment center as the top prize. While I couldn't find a published date within the newsletter, the sweepstakes shows a cutoff date of November 1, 1992, so I'd guess it was released in fall 1992.

The Death and Return of Superman Game Reviews

A new Superman movie hits theaters this week, as DC reboots its movie universe with David Corenswet replacing Henry Cavill as the Man of Steel. The comic book and game title "The Death and Return of Superman" is fitting in this sense as well, but that's not why I chose this particular game to scan magazine coverage of this week. I chose it because I couldn't find any other Superman video game reviews in my magazine collection. There were 11 Superman games released before the year 2000, my usual cutoff date for blog posts, starting with the Atari 2600 Superman from 1979. Surprisingly, I don't have much experience with any of them, though I think I did briefly take a look at Superman for the Nintendo 64 to see if it was as bad as the critics said, and it was. Sunsoft published The Death and Return of Superman in 1994 for both the Super NES and Genesis, and while the only magazine reviews I found are for the Super NES version, from what I've read, the games are very similar, but with different soundtracks. Both versions were developed by Blizzard Entertainment.

In the August 1994 issue of GamePro, writer "Lawrence of Arcadia" enjoyed the game quite a bit, awarding Superman no lower than a 4.5 out of 5 across the magazine's four ratings categories. I also scanned a four-page strategy guide from GamePro's September 1994 issue that features the game on the cover, and it's the only video game magazine I own with a Superman cover. Maybe it's just the timing of my magazine collection, mostly from the late '80s and early '90s, but Batman and Spider-Man saw a lot more time in the video game spotlight than Superman. Electronic Gaming Monthly's four "Review Crew" member (Mike Weigand isn't part of the scoring), rated the game a 6, 5, 5, and 5, so very average and much lower than competitor GamePro.