Superman - The Man of Steel

The Games Machine

Overall 34%

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £7.95, Diskette: £14.95 Superman's familiar red and blue costume is exchanged for cyan and black in the Spectrum game in a 3-D Space Harrier-style landscape which passes lowly and jerkily. Character movement also slow, as is the control response which means you have to fire before the enemy is actually in your sights. This is one licence that definitely isn't super-powered

COMMODORE 64 Overall: 38% TGM016 ATARI ST Overall: 43% TGM016

Crash

Presentation 40%

Graphics 38%

Sound 67%

Playability 37%

Addictive Qualities 32%

Overall 35%

Mark Caswell 38%

Phil King 32%

Clark Kent changes his clothes Producer: Tynesoft Change of Underwear: £7.95 cass, £14.95 disk Author: Mike Talbot and Tim McCarthy It's enough to make even a grown superhero cry: first Christopher Reeves buzzes off to be a 'serious actor', then the horrendous Superboy appears, and worst of all I've got a demeaning job with Tynesoft. My Tynesoft adventure starts at STAR laboratories, where Professor Corwin informs me that unusual seismic disturbances have been recorded across the Earth, threatening the whole planet. He must go to the STAR Lab Satellite to gather further data, so he asks me to escort his space shuttle. I must protect it from floating asteroids - these can't hurt me, but contact with shards of kryptonite temporarily disables my superpowers. Once the satellite is reached, I must deactivate its security system. Then it's outside again to biff more asteroids before flying to the Lexcorp satellite; the apparent cause of the disaster. Fighting off defence robots, I must destroy a geo-disrupter in the satellite's core to save the Earth yet again. Superman is one of my favourite comic heroes, but Tynesoft have really messed this licence up. Superman himself looks like a matchstick figure as he walks along the horizontally-scrolling sections. Gameplay is further ruined by an annoying multiload system. The best feature is a handy cheat mode, so you don't have to play the game! MARK 38% THE ESSENTIALS Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: a 'matchstick' Superman Sound: good title tune

Breaking the record for superpowered flight.