Sometimes it seems that certain superheroes get all the gaming love. There have been so many Spider-Man and Batman games over the years but I struggle to think of one centring the Man of Steel. Superman did almost have his own game years ago, it turns out, but it was crushed under the weight of the recession but now, 13/14 years later, details are rising from the ashes and giving us an idea of what it would have been like.
Developer Salvatrix on Twitter was the lead designer on the game back in 2007/8. The main reason it didn't release was the economy crashing which also killed the publisher and the studio of the game in one fell swoop. However, Salavtrix has now been able to reveal the thought process behind the game and what they intended to make it.
First, it was designed to feel like the fights you'd see in the animated cartoons. "The goal was to present super brawls as they were seen in the cartoons and comics. JLU was our main touchstone. We put together this fast video montage to show what everything we wanted to have as gameplay. And we DID IT." She follows up with a YouTube video you can see below.
The team were creating large urban environments like the ones you might remember from the Spider-Man 2 game. "Aerial brawling, large urban environments, crashing through buildings, fast target engagement, knocking your foe into the next block, shockwaves from hits, impact grooves in the streets or building sides... all of it."
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Essentially it sounded like the studio, Factor 5, were really trying to create a fully explorable city that you could fight in as Superman which sounds absolutely awesome. We might be used to that idea now with games like Arkham City or Marvel's Spider-Man but as Salvatrix says in the thread, "We hadn't seen a game really deliver on that promise before," and she even thinks that we're yet to see that full effect in place.
Ultimately the developer is sad that the dream never came to be however, there wasn't really anything the team could probably do to save the studio - times were really tough in the mid-2000s of course. On the bright side, it's incredibly interesting all these years later to see some screenshots and development notes from the lead designer. We can always dream of what could have been. If you want to read the entire thread showing us all these juicy details, you can find it on Salvatrix's Twitter.
