It’s OK If We Never Get a Good Superman Game

By Willa Rowe | July 21, 2025 | 12:30pm

Video Games Features Superman

It’s OK If We Never Get a Good Superman Game

Not to sound like Lex Luthor but the Man of Steel is a menace to society. Specifically Superman is a plague upon gaming, over which he looms like a sprawling shadow. The common refrain, one making waves again thanks to the release of James Gunn’s new film, is that there are no good games starring the character. There are two issues with this claim. For starters, it’s not entirely true. But more importantly, we don’t need a good Superman game.

Let’s start with the facts. Superman has appeared in videogames before. The most notable interactive adaptations include a first outing on the Atari 2600 in 1979, a reviled Nintendo 64 attempt, and an interesting but under-developed tie-in to 2006’s Superman Returns. Each attempts to bring the Man of Steel to games in a different way but the thing that unites them is their underwhelming delivery, at least in the mind of the audience.

A recurring issue plaguing Superman, in games but also in any medium, is what has become known as the “Superman problem.” As an (for all intents and purposes) invulnerable and all-powerful being, it’s hard to give Superman the required challenges to make any story starring the character feel compelling. A byproduct of this is the often spouted belief Superman is an inherently boring character. This goes doubly for games, in which giving the player a challenging (but surmountable) obstacle can be the entire gameplay loop. There have been attempts at getting around this problem; Superman Returns notably forgoes a health bar for the hero in place of a health bar for the city of Metropolis itself. This was a clever way to link your actions to the responsibility of the hero, yet this still didn’t quite deliver the fantasy people wanted. Which raises the question: what do people want out of a “good” Superman game?

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A video of an Unreal Engine 5 demo from developer Tyson Butler-Boschma showing Superman flying around a realistically-rendered city scape blew up in 2022. This video is also heavily referenced in a 2024 Polygon article from Patricia Hernandez that calls Superman the “white whale” of video game superheroes. The article goes on to interview plenty of developers on past Superman games about the appeal of Butler-Boschma’s demo and what a truly satisfying modern game starring the character would need. Getting flight right, delivering big-budget action, and ensuring the player feels super strong are all answers given. My issue lies in how these expectations of a platonic Superman game fit into a pre-established mold, that of the AAA action adventure title. Furthermore, when people talk about wanting a good Superman game it heavily revolves around the fulfillment of a fantasy, the fantasy to be an all-powerful being. This risks reinforcing an already tired perception of games as nothing more than wish-fulfillment and misunderstands the appeal of Superman.

Perhaps my assumptions are wrong, but I think they are backed up by the Superman games people choose to ignore in this discussion. Even if we agree that there are no good games where Superman stars as the main character, it does not mean there are no good games starring the Man of Steel at all. As a member of an ensemble cast, Superman tends to shine in games. 2013 fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us (and its sequel) exemplifies this wonderfully. As the story’s antagonist, one that we do not even get to play as for a substantial amount of the short campaign, Superman shines. This is largely because the Superman problem has been removed through the equalizing design of a fighting game in which every character needs to be viable for competition. Without the pressure of delivering some ideal gameplay experience, Injustice doubles down on a parallel universe story that interrogates the core pillars of the Man of Steel. Lego Batman 2 and 3 also offer pretty great Superman experiences, though I’m sure some people would refuse to accept what they would reductively dismiss as a kids’ game as good video game representation for the character.

Outside of video games, the Superman problem has been solved countless times. The secret is to focus on the internal and emotional conflicts of the character rather than the external and physical. Comics like All-Star Superman and Superman For All Seasons execute this flawlessly, which is what makes them some of the best Superman stories of all time. To successfully get around the Superman problem a game would have to do the same. Yet external and physical conflicts remain so entwined with what people expect from big-budget titles than any Superman game that does not deliver on action won’t fly. If all people want is a third person action game that lets you be a god, there are already games that fill that void: just play Saints Row IV. It’s ok to want that, but what you want is not a good Superman game.

Willa Rowe is a queer games critic based in New York City whose writing has been featured in Digital Trends, Kotaku, Inverse, and more. She also hosts the Girl Mode podcast. When she isn’t talking games she can be found on Bluesky rooting for the New York Mets.