Last updated on September 10th, 2023 at 03:39 pm
With a plot that bares an uncanny similarity with Dark Horse’s Nest Next Men Comic Book, Superhero resolves around a secret Gov Research project gone wrong. In an attempt to genetically construct the ultimate human super-soldier, the top bosses at U.S. R&D Labs unwittingly unleash Apex, a malevolent super-being that’s evil personified.
In Superhero, the player starts in a superhero construction lab where they can construct the ultimate warrior.
The options available are incredible, and virtually any known superhero can be put together from the array of limbs, lycra jump suits, capes, and boots that are placed at the player’s disposal.
As well as these aesthetics, there’s also the chance to dictate the hero’s dexterity, strength, endurance, and special powers. Once the player is happy with their creation, it’s into the main game.
Superhero is a platform beat’em up set over a staggering 1600 screens which pits the player against the massed hordes of evil under the renegade Apex’s control.
Psygnosis Superhero has never been released but hope isn’t lost at all :
In 1993 there was a “The One” coverdisk demo and many previews for a Psygnosis platform game called Superhero.
In 1993, a game was almost completed and ready for release, but the development office was raided by police and all computer equipment was confiscated for investigation into an alleged computer fraud charge.
The charges were later dropped, but no access to the computers could be made until they were returned in 1998. By then, the Amiga games market was dead, and Psygnosis was fully in the hands of Sony, with no one at Sony responding to requests for who owned what IP around the title.
However, the source code and assets were still on Anthony Ball’s A4000, which hadn’t been powered up for a few years. In the process of the police’s investigations (and subsequent loss of the case), the internals of the A4000 were vandalized, and some computers were returned with different hard drives.
What was left from incremental backups were incomplete and out of sync. The graphics and music didn’t match up with what the code expected, and some animation frames were missing. Anthony was able to piece together a somewhat working version with some broken graphics and only playable through a remote debugger in a very specific hardware configuration.
Anthony’s home was involved in a house fire whilst he was away from the country, and anything that wasn’t destroyed was either water damaged from the fire service, and if that didn’t seal the deal, the remnants were left outside to the elements in the north of the UK in October.
Crucially, the last vestige of any contract which may have indicated defaulting conditions allowing release of a finished game in a similar manner to Putty Squad in 2013 was lost.
Since SCEE is not forthcoming with any info which might shed some light, any likelihood of an Amiga release will be in a perpetual state of limbo.
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