The game that was going to redeem Titus after the Superman 64 fiasco was canceled when it was nearing completion.
A collector, who had long ago announced the deletion of the most advanced existing copy of Titus’ Superman for PSX, has announced that he has managed to recover it and has made it available to the public (in a bizarre writing full of drama, something on the other hand that not new in certain circles). Beyond the circumstances, the important thing is that for the sake of preservation, we will have a more advanced version of the one that already existed of a perhaps not excessively important but curious part of the history of the video game.
Yeah dude, alternate universe Superman 64 (the unreleased PlayStation game planned to come out around the same time) just dropped. First time I’ve ever seen a video game prototype get released on Deviant Art. Https://t.co/a4xesFsGXE pic.twitter.com/tyU7gsPvPt
– Frank Cifaldi in the Alien Asylum (@frankcifaldi) November 30, 2020
This game is the “separated at birth” brother of the infamous Superman 64, one of the most crushed games in the game and forever become one of the most hand-crafted examples of “worst video games ever.” The original idea was to hire BlueSky, the creators of Vectorman for Megadrive, to make a conversion of it on Playstation, but given the monumental beating that was taking place, he decided to try to create something new with the base that could be used: new mechanics and new story to create something of higher quality and erase the memory of the Nintendo 64 title.
Canceled at the last minute
Unfortunately, misfortune was primed with this effort. On the one hand, Warner’s license to develop Superman games was lost, something that was thought could be resolved if an almost final version of the new game that was being prepared could be presented. On the other hand, the disgraceful Columbine shootings of 1999 put the video game in the media spotlight, causing Titus executives to call for profound changes in what had been done, forcing to change all enemies for robots and to present unrealistic weapons. which also led to create an adventure more focused on puzzles and exploration than combat.
In spite of everything and after two years of development creating a practically new game in every way, the project achieved a certification from Sony to be published and sales plans were put in place while it was polished. It only remained to renegotiate with Warner to get the rights back, something that however never happened despite the optimistic initial calculations that had kept everything afloat. Possibly this recovered version is the one that was active at that time before the news. Bluesky would close its doors in 2001, unable to fly back despite a decade with notable names under its belt. Titus would still have time to produce a few more horrors like the 2003 Robocop before filing for bankruptcy in 2005.
