Concept Arts From Cancelled Superman Games Found

Aside from being a playable character in “Injustice: Gods Among Us,” “Lego Batman” and “Injustice 2,” fans of Superman have yet to put their hands on a standalone title that features The Man of Steel. Yes, there are a bunch of Superman games back when Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2, the original Xbox and Game Boy Advance ruled the console wars.

There have also been several unreleased and canceled titles since 1983. The most recent was Factor 5's “Blue Steel” in 2008. Other than that, Superman took the sideline and settled for fighting game appearances when developers could have made far more superb gameplay.

It wasn't until recently that a handful of concept art of what seemed to be yet another canceled Superman game was found on the Interwebs. Twitter user Tatlinsky, aka Tad, posted on his social media page an image that he found on the website of artist Joel Dos Reis Viegas. The image, which was according to IGN, included in Viegas' “Batman Games” collection, showed the iconic blue-and-red clad Kryptonian swooping through Metropolis' skyline.

“Batman Games” also featured Viegas' stunning rendition of Bane, Damian Wayne, Joker, Mr. Freeze and sketches of Harley Quinn, among others. These images also point to the fact that WB Montreal, the firm responsible for “Batman: Arkham Origins,” was rumored to be working on a “Superman” and “Suicide Squad” title. Unfortunately, the news came to a halt when follow-up reports in 2017 said the latter was canceled.

Viegas is also the vice-president of Steambot and both have worked with WB Montreal in the past by helping create “concepts for characters” in “Origins” and DLC costumes for “Batman: Arkham Knight,” the outlet added.

Moreover, DC insider James Sigfield also posted several images of Superman in action and mentioned that one of the games pitched in 2013 pointed on an open-world Superman game “in the vein of Spider-Man PS4.”

Along this line, MS Power User reported that a long-standing rumor about Warner Bros working on two Superman games since 2013. Aside from the open-world treatment, Sigfield said another game had made it to the prototype stage. Warner Bros gave it the title, “Superman: Unborn,” a “less open world” game set in the miniature city of Kandor. It was supposed to feature some of Superman's arch rivals like Brainiac, Doomsday and “tons of other mind controlled villains.”

Unfortunately, Warner Bros decided to chop both games. Sigfield said “Unborn” was canceled because Warner Bros wanted new games to use the Arkham engine, a “heavily modified” version of Unreal Engine 3.