have a whole lot less “meat on the bones” than the Infocom text adventures. You get a
lot more of those infuriating vanilla responses, like, “You can’t do that” or your charac-
ter/avatar just shrugging at you.
How didSuperhero League of Hobokencome about? Had you wanted to tackle that
genre for a while?
Well, I’d been wanting to make
an RPG for many years, and at
the time, the early ’90s, RPGs
were generally outselling adven-
ture games. This was before the
“death” of RPGs that lasted until
the release of Diablo. But I
thought that the usual Tolkien-
esque fantasy setting and trap-
pings of RPGs had been done to
death, and it occurred to me that
superheroes was an excellent
alternate genre that worked well
with RPG gameplay, with superpowers substituting for magic spells.
I originally planned to make it a full RPG, but Legend had never done anything that
wasn’t a straight adventure game and were therefore nervous, so the only way I could
convince them was to make it an RPG/adventure game hybrid.
It’s the only superhero game I am aware of that was not dreadful. Why do you
think so few superhero games have been done?
I think that the dearth of superhero games is mostly a legal/licensing issue. Most com-
panies probably feel that only one of the well-known superheroes is worth creating a
game around, and such licenses are hard to come by. And even if a license is obtained,
the cost of obtaining it means a lot less money in the development budget, which is why
all licensed games, not just superhero games, are often so mediocre. I was able to get by
with original content inSuperhero Leaguebecause it was a satire. I don’t think I ever
would have been able to convince Legend to do a “straight” superhero game in the
same style and engine.
Superhero Leagueis your only RPG. What made you want to try a game design in
more of an RPG direction?
I enjoyed and still enjoy playing RPGs a lot, and I always try to make games that would
be games I’d enjoy playing myself if someone else created them. And I always prefer to
do something that I haven’t done before, whether it’s a new genre as was the case here
or a serious theme likeAMFVor adapting a work from another medium likeHitch-
hiker’sor a larger scale likeZork Zero. Of course, that’s just my preference. Publishers
often have other ideas!
Chapter 10: Interview: Steve Meretzky 191
Superhero League of Hoboken