Aqua Man

Aquaman looks around underwater and realizes his kingdom has become an electronic waste dump. This 1993 DOS title should be an arcade platformer with collectibles, but the game gets stale after just five minutes.

You play as an underwater hero navigating levels filled with minor enemies and collecting items to boost your score. Nothing more, nothing less. The graphics are rough all around — sprites are awkwardly drawn, animation is almost completely absent, and environments repeat in the most basic possible way. Sound exists, but we'd rather not talk about it — a few recycled audio loops that burrow into your brain like a drill.

The game plays ordinarily, but without any punch. Character movement isn't fluid, enemy encounters are unpredictable, and worst of all is how tedious each subsequent level becomes. You feel like you're getting nowhere, stuck in place collecting the same items over and over. The controls are adequate for the era, but that's not enough to keep you at the screen.

Aquaman deserved better care in the nineties. While other games featuring famous superheroes at least showed some ambition to do something interesting, this is a soulless task — just a title and water around it that doesn't have the right feel.

This isn't a game you'd seek out today. It doesn't even offer nostalgia — it was boring when it came out. You can try it in an emulator out of pure curiosity if you're a fan of everything bearing the Aquaman name, but indie projects from the same era put it to shame.