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. 

Behind the Screens: Taito (Electronic Gaming Monthly #19 - February 1991)

This is a four-page article that appeared in the pages of Electronic Gaming Monthly's (EGM) 19th issue published in February 1991. Although the header at the start of the article says "EGM Visits - Taito of America," most of the story is about Taito's business in Japan and its smart decisions throughout the '80s. One thing EGM appears to have wrong is the release year for Space Invaders. EGM states that it was released in 1979 and I believe it is referencing the Japanese release, but all sources, including Taito's corporate history page, have Space Invaders releasing in 1978.

This is the third Taito post on the blog with the first being the ads post (Taito of America) and the second being scans from a 1989 issue of Commodore Magazine about Taito's arcade to Commodore 64 ports. I should point out that the Facebook links on all the ads posts are broken because of a change Facebook must have made, sorry about that. The Google Photos links work and you can find the correct Facebook links under the "Game Ad Links" tab.

X-Men Video Game Previews & Reviews

During the '90s I read a lot of X-Men comic books and watched the animated series Saturday mornings on Fox. Disney is reviving the show, titled X-Men '97, on March 20th so I decided to put together some X-Men coverage leading up to its debut. I'll have at least three posts, maybe four, that cover some video games, television appearances, and toys. I scanned quite a bit of coverage from video game magazines but I'm only using some of it in this post.

The scans include a GamePro "ProView" of The Uncanny X-Men (NES), a preview and review of X-Men (Genesis), a preview and review of X:Men: Mutant Apocalypse (SNES), a preview of X-Men 2: Clone Wars (Genesis), a review of X-Men: Children of the Atom (PlayStation), and reviews of the computer games X-Men and X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants. For Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) reviews I place the review next to the writers that appear on the first page of the column to show who wrote each one. There is also editing on the reviews that appear across multiple pages and sometimes you'll see review scores and or screenshots for other games as well.

GamePro - March 1990

        EGM #44 - March 1993                              EGM #46 - May 1993

EGM #65 - December 1994

                                EGM #65 - December 1994                    Next Generation #40 - April 1998

Video Games & Computer Entertainment - September 1990 & June 1991

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden Previews (Electronic Gaming Monthly)

Akira Toriyama
April 5, 1955 - March 1, 2024
(Image Source: Jiji Press)

As I was flipping through my gaming magazines in search of Mario and X-Men articles this past weekend, I came across previews for Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden and its sequels. Although I've seen a little of the anime and tried some of the Dragon Ball video games, I don't know a whole lot about Dragon Ball Z other than its significant impact on anime and pop culture. Unfortunately, Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama recently passed away. He began working on manga (Japanese comic books) in 1978 and launched the Dragon Ball manga series in 1984. Other than his writings and drawings being used, I'm not sure if he was involved with these particular games. During his career he did provide character designs for other video games too, such as Chrono Trigger, Blue Dragon, and the Dragon Quest series. Of course, Toriyama-san wrote and illustrated other manga as well, including Sand Land, which is receiving its first video game adaption next month.

These previews are all from Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), appearing in its coverage of Japan's Super Famicom games. All three released in Japan and Europe but not in North America for the Super NES. More recently the first one was available as a special pre-order bonus for Dragon Ball FighterZ on Switch and the second game was a pre-order bonus at Amazon for Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butōden on Nintendo 3DS.

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden (EGM #51 - October 1993)

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2 (EGM #57 - April 1994)

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 3 (EGM #65 - December 1995)

EGM's 1993 Super NES Holiday Shopper's Guide

Every year around this time I try to post an old holiday catalog of some sort. A few times I've posted Electronics Boutique catalogs and I might still do that but the one I've scanned is more than 80 pages and I still need to edit each scan before I can post it. This Super NES shopper's guide from Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) magazine is much smaller allowing me to get it ready in a couple days. EGM polybagged this guide with an issue, something it did on occasion for things like this, as well as strategy booklets, posters, etc. Although I've posted the ads previously, I opted to include them here. From what I can tell, this guide is simply a list of games available for Christmas and doesn't actually take into account whether the games are good or not. I guess that's why it is a "shopper's guide" rather than a "buyer's guide."

I'm also considering scanning parts of a FAO Schwartz catalog but may wait until next year. Those tend to be 80+ pages too and not all of the products in it are interesting (like toddler toys) so if I do that I might just highlight some things. I wonder if people would want to watch a YouTube video of myself flipping through a catalog; would that be too boring? Let me know if that's something you'd want to see.

Phantasy Star Series Reviews

Below are scans of magazine reviews and one preview covering the first four games in the Phantasy Star series. However, most of the coverage is of parts two and three as I've only got one review for the first game and one for the fourth. It's a significant series for Sega and the early days of Japanese role playing games (JRPG), specifically the first one that features a female protagonist. Phantasy Star is often overshadowed by similar games from the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) series that appeared on the more popular Nintendo consoles.

Personally, I've only completed Phantasy Star II which I did a couple times in the early '90s. On the Master System I never had Phantasy Star because it released around the same time as Miracle Warriors, another Sega RPG that I got instead. While I also own Phantasy Star III on the Genesis, I never completed it and the fourth game released during my college days when I wasn't spending much time or money on video games. There were a couple of Game Gear Phantasy Star games too but those only released in Japan and one was not a RPG like the others: Phantasy Star Gaiden and Phantasy Star Adventure. After Phantasy Star IV Sega moved away from the single-player only format to Phantasy Star Online during the Dreamcast era.

Some of the reviews had to be edited to fit on one image. Video Games & Computer Entertainment's reviews can sometimes be split between multiple pages and with Electronic Gaming Monthly I like to line up the "Review Crew" next to the review (otherwise it only appears at the start of the magazine's review section). I'm also adding a video on the YouTube channel this week that looks at the Phantasy Star II package and the opening as well as the ending of the game. 

Phantasy Star

Phantasy Star II

Phantasy Star III

Phantasy Star IV