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. 

[YouTube] Golden Axe

https://youtu.be/wMKr5c6VIOA

Released in late 1989 for the Sega Genesis, Golden Axe is a game I played over and over when I got it. It's rare that I try to be perfect at any game which is something I was attempting to do with Golden Axe when I was younger, though based on the scores I wrote in the manual, I never got through the game without dying a few times. Of course, I'm not as good at it anymore either, and in the video I'm using a gamepad rather than an arcade stick which is what I played with exclusively as a kid. The game itself isn't difficult but it's easy to make a mistake that will cost a life, whether it's falling off a ledge (rare) or getting cornered by multiple enemies, especially skeletons, that hack-and-slash the hero from the front and back at the same time. Also, being an arcade port, it's not a very long game and can be completed in 30 minutes or less. While Arcade is the primary mode, in the video I also play the much shorter Beginner mode and the Duel mode, where players can battle the computer in 12 rounds or challenge another player. 

Axe?

When the game ends it provides a score, strength rating, and letter grade. Based on what I wrote in the manual, my best score was 390.6 playing as Gilius Thunderhead and my highest strength rating was 118.3 as Ax Battler. I'm not sure how the scores are determined, though I believe the less magic you use to eliminate enemies, the higher your score will be. Since Gilius has the weakest magic and the strongest weapon with the best reach, it makes sense that players will get their highest scores playing as him. I'd noticed magic's impact on the score when I was recording the Beginner mode play through, as the less I used Tyris Flare's magic, the better my score. That stood out when I had what I thought to be a perfect run but ended up with a much lower score than my previous game in which I thought I played worse. In that perfect run I used the magic often simply because I wanted to show as many spells as I could for the video. Unfortunately, my Genesis started having issues as I finished up the recordings, otherwise I would have gone back through Arcade mode without using magic to see just how high I could score. This game was also a Sega CD pack-in title on the Sega Classics Arcade Collection disc and I own it but I can't test out the scoring there either. As I posted in 2019, my Sega CD also isn't functioning correctly and I don't know how to repair it.

Although the Sega Genesis version is what I'm playing in the video and I've never played the Sega Master System (SMS) version, I am including all the magazine coverage I could find on the game, which wasn't a lot, and there was a little bit more of it for the SMS release. From what I could gather, the primary difference is that the SMS version only supports one player and the only playable character is Ax Battler (referred to as Tarik by GamePro). For the Genesis' Golden Axe, I scanned a review from the December 1989 issue of Game Player's and part of a page from Electronic Gaming Monthly's 1991 Buyer's Guide that has review scores of a bunch of games, including Golden Axe for both the SMS and Genesis. The SMS coverage are scans from GamePro's March 1990 issue and the June/July 1990 issue of Sega Visions. 

Sega Genesis (EGM Scores include SMS)

Sega Master System

Mickey Mouse Game Reviews

The animated short Steamboat Willie debuted on November 18, 1928 and so this day is considered Mickey Mouse's birthday. I scanned a variety of game reviews starring Disney's famous anthropomorphic mouse from issues of GamePro, Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), Video Games & Computer Entertainment (VG&CE), and Sega Visions. Mickey has been featured in quite a few games so I opted not to include the "Illusion" series this time around as that would have been another 19 pages. Below you'll find coverage of Mickey's Dangerous Chase, Mickey Mousecapade, The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse, Mickey's Challenge, Mickey Mania, and Fantasia. Surprisingly, I only found a single review of Fantasia which comes from Sega Visions, and that magazine's reviews at that time were primarily descriptions with a little opinion at the end. Also, the EGM "Review Crew" for Mickey's Dangerous Chase is the same group of writers I attached to Magical Quest while Mickey Mania is the same as the writers for Mickey's Challenge.

Mickey's Dangerous Chase

Mickey Mousecapade

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse

                                                     Mickey's Challenge                    Mickey Mania              

Fantasia

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

German Game Magazines - October 2002

This post is a little different than the usual since it features magazines I cannot read and are beyond the year 2000 cut off I use for most of my magazine coverage. However, I was trying to think of a games magazine post I could tie into current events and this week the Gamescom video game convention kicked off in Cologne, Germany, and I just happen to own a couple game magazines from Germany. I've been following the news and have watched some video coverage, as well as took part in the Xbox Fanfest trivia contest in which I did quite poorly. I've not noticed any huge game announcements at the show as most of what I've seen is more detailed looks at upcoming games we were already aware of, release date changes, and interviews. 

Getting back to the magazines, my father had a business trip to Germany in October 2002 and asked if I wanted anything so I said how about some video game magazines. He picked up Germany's version of GamePro and one simply titled PC Games. I do not know any German and hope I'm not posting any adult language here but I thought it would be fun to take a brief look at the two magazines anyway, though primarily just at some of the ads. The ads can vary completely from those found in the U.S. or they can be nearly identical. I did also scan a few pages from the review sections of each issue. When seeing the magazines in person one thing that is immediately apparent is that they are taller than U.S. magazines. Both are approximately 11.75" long and 8.25" wide while a U.S. issue of GamePro is 10.75" tall and 8.5" wide. The spines are very tight which did lead to the edge of some ads being blurred or cut off slightly. 

GamePro

This magazine includes a DVD I never attempted to watch. From what I can gather there are no demos, just news, previews, trailers, and some bonus materials, like footage from an Xbox event and something to do with Nintendo. For this one I scanned the page featuring the review staff and three pages of reviews. Some of the magazine's reviews are up to four pages but I stuck with the shorter ones. A few notes about the ads: Pro Tennis: WTA Tour is known as WTA Tour Tennis in the U.S., Shadow of Memories is known as Shadow of Destiny in the U.S., and the TimeSplitters 2 ad is six pages that I am posting in two parts (first two open to reveal a four-page spread).

PC Games
This magazine comes with a CD containing demos, videos, and even game patches. It doesn't put the review staff on one page, instead it has a small photo of the writer with the review. The reviews are also divided by genre with the genre page featuring a short interview and a top 10 chart. I only scanned two genre pages and one review here. You can probably assume from the ads (and the covers of both magazines) that first-person shooter and real-time strategy were among the two most popular types of PC games at the time. Aside from games, this magazine has a bunch of Internet service and hardware ads too. In both issues I did not scan every ad as I avoided M-rated games and some less interesting ones.