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Heartbeat of Gaming: Spiderman’s History In Gaming Written By: Mitch (Goldprofit) Bunnell of 89 Bit Productions on 9/6/18

Believe it or not but Spider-Man has been around for awhile, first appearing in comics in 1962, and staring in his own 20 years later in 1982. Who would have guessed it would become the franchise it is today Steve Ditko and Stan “The Man” Lee have to be proud of Peter Parker. Without further ado lets get started on the history of Spider-Man in video games. The first time Spider-Man appeared in a video game was his own game made by Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600 simply titled “Spider-Man”. This is a pretty great game, you scaled skyscrapers using your spider-powers and shooting webs to capture criminals peeking out of windows and defusing bombs set by the Green Goblin. Many people note this game as the first time a licensed character of Marvel was featured.

Spider-Man Atari 2600 The next game came out in 1984, it is a first-person-perspective graphical text based adventure called featuring Spider-Man. The game is a sequel to Questprobe featuring The , the graphics are 2D and comic like, the gameplay is called the “verb noun” command interface and has you type actions for Spider- Man to follow. This game is notable as it allowed fuller sentence input over The Hulk game. The game was published by and coded by Scott Adams who started Adventure International. It would take another 5 years before Spider-Man would make a video game appearance and this time he wasn’t alone. “The Amazing Spider-Man and in ’s Revenge!” was released in 1989, the game told the story using comic book styled panels and the gameplay was similar to Street Fighter, a 2D one-on- one fighting game. You could play as Spider-Man or Captain America fighting villains until you reach Doctor Doom. Towards the end of the year of 1989 a game called “The Revenge of Shinobi” was released for the Genesis/Mega Drive. This game is notable because of blandt copyright infringement upon original release. Rambo, Terminator, Godzilla, Batman, and Spider-Man all make an appearance in the game. These characters are mostly bosses at the end of levels, both Batman and Spider-Man is a shapeshifter who alters his appearance during the battle. In 1990 Sega actually got the license to use the “real” Spider-Man from Marvel and makes the appropriate copyright notes and changes.

The Revenge of Shinobi Speaking of the 90’s, because of a little show on Fox Kids and the successful and booming comic book sales of the early 90’s a slew of video games come out featuring not only Spider-Man but a lot of Marvel’s characters. “The Amazing Spider-Man” (PC) is a puzzle-platformer released in 1990. The Gameboy also saw a release of a “The Amazing Spider-Man” game made by, a powerhouse of a company, Rare. This would be a year prior to Rare releasing another popular franchise of their own Battletoads. 2 more “The Amazing Spider-Man” games would be release on the Game Boy, though not made by Rare, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” released in 1992 and “The Amazing Spider-Man 3: Invasion of the Spider Slayers” released in 1993 both game were developed by B.I.T.S. All 3 games are similar in gameplay being a side scrolling action platformer . Sega also released a Spider-Man game in 1990 titled “The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin” for the Master System and in 1991 for the Mega Drive/Genesis. 1991 was also the year Sega release a coin-op arcade game titled simply “Spider-Man: The Video Game” it is a 4 player beat’em up game divided into 4 acts. The players can choose from Spider-Man, , Black Cat, and . In addition to B.I.T.S. developing 2 games for the Game Boy, in 1992 the also made “Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six” for the NES and later ported to the Genesis and Game Gear in 1993. “Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge” was release in 1992 for the Super NES. The next 2 games released in 1994 and 1995 for the Super NES/Genesis were “Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage” and it’s sequel “Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety” both are side scrolling action games, and if you haven’t played them I strongly recommend you do. The animated Spider-Man cartoon was taking off at this point a needed a tie-in game, simply titled “Spider-Man” was release in 1995 for the Super NES and Genesis and based on the cartoon was critically panned by every reviewer that year. 1995 was also the year Japan got a exclusive Spider-Man game, “The Amazing Spider-Man: Lethal Foes” was released for the Super Famicom in Japan. The rest of the games Spider-Man appeared in during the 90’s were mainly fighting games developed by Capcom, “Marvel Super Heroes” and it similar storied “Marvel Super Heroes: War of the Gems” both games are loosely based on the Infinity Gauntlet storyline of the comic books. This storyline should be familiar as this is the storyline the Marvel Cinematic Universe is based off of as well. Then came the Marvel vs. Capcom series starting with “Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter”, “Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Champions” and “Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age Heroes”.

Maximum Carnage cartridge for the SNES and Separation Anxiety for the Genesis In the late 90’s Marvel spread itself to thin and had to file for bankruptcy, which then Marvel started to license their characters for film and TV. It was during this time that acquired the Spider-Man license and publish some games. , of the ’s Pro Skater fame, was the developer this time around for the home console releases, starting with the Playstation again simply titled “Spider-Man” in 2000. Using the licensing agreement Activision and Neversoft used Spider-Man in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 game as a secret character. In 2001 “Spider-Man:’s Menace” was one of the earliest games released for the . Then in 2002 the live action Spider-Man movie was released by Sony and movie tie-in game would follow, “Spider- Man: The Movie” was developed by , yes the same Treyarch that makes , and released the same year. Now comes one of my personal favorite Spider-Man games released in 2004 “Spider-Man 2: The Game” was another movie tie-in game developed by Treyarch. This game took the open concept of web swinging of the last game and ran with it. It features an and 3D physics-based algorithms for the web swinging. In 2007 Treyarch developed “Spider-Man 3: The Game” again based on the movie, I was not a fan of either and my opinion is the movie should be avoided and so should this game. “Spider-Man & Friends” was release in 2005 and geared towards children with puzzle based learning gameplay. Also in 2005 “Ultimate Spider-Man” the game used the growing in popularity “comic book” art style known as cel shading. The player gets to be both Spider- Man and Venom, the game also fits into the Ultimate comic’s storyline, with issues #86-#88 dealing with the aftermath of the games events. 2005 also saw the release of a game Marvel wants everyone to forget “Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects” it is fighting game only featuring Spider-Man and can be skipped. Now the following year in 2006 “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance” was release, though you don’t get to do web slinging like the Spider-Man movie games this is a fun game. Players can select a team of 4 from 22 different superheroes. 2009 a sequel was released title “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2” another great game, this one has a story based on the Civil War storyline in , this story is similar to the Captain America: Civil War story in the MCU. 2007 saw the release of “Spider-Man: Friend or Foe” which was based on the 3 Spider-Man Movies with different results of the key battles. “Spider-Man: Web of Shadows” released a year later in 2008 to mixed reviews. We then went 2 years without a Spider-Man solo game until “Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions” this game allows the player to play as 4 different Spider-Men from 4 different Marvel Universes. Amazing, Noir, 2099, and Ultimate are the Spider-Men you get to play as. In 2011 a sort of sequel to Shattered Dimensions was released titled “Spider-Man: Edge of Time” though you only get to play as Amazing Spider-Man and 2099 Spider-Man. In 2012 Sony released a new Spider-Man movie and with it came a new Spider-Man game. “The Amazing Spider-Man” is an open world type game, the standout feature was the combat which was similar to the Batman Arkham series, freeflow combat. The last Spider-Man game to be published by Activision is also a game movie tie-in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” was released in 2014 the same year the licensed expired. The game introduced a morality system “Hero or Menace” to the game otherwise it was pretty much the same as the first one.

Spider-Man in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, his Venom suit is an alternate costume This leads us to the 2018 release of “Marvel’s Spider-Man” being developed by , a studio most known for , Ratchet & , and . The game is being published by Sony Interactive Entertainment exclusively for the Playstation 4. According to Insomniac Games, the story in “Marvel’s Spider- Man” is original and not tied to any movie, comic book, or video game. It is an action set in an open-world setting of modern New York City. Insomniac Games has also said the player will be able to use Spider- Man's abilities such as web slinging and wall-crawling as well other gameplay elements, one of which will be the ability to traverse using parkour, and the crafting and use of gadgets and alternative suits with special powers. The combat system includes an aerial combat, spider sense and reflexes, finishing moves, and environmental. Quick Time Events or QTE’s will also be a feature of gameplay as well as some stealth aspects. You will also get to play as Peter Parker out of the Spider-Man costume and apparently you will get to play as MJ, Mary Jane Watson, in key moments of the game. Go out and give this game a try on September 7, 2018!!!

I love this image. I totally think this is something Peter Parker/Spider-Man would do. The reason I chose to do this for the release of Marvel’s Spider-Man is because I love Spider-Man and you never forget the first superhero you connect with. I connected with Spider-Man, he’s smart, brave, witty, and as Peter Parker has zero luck with everything. Growing up I definitely saw myself as someone who would have been friends with Peter or possibly be Peter (spider-sense would be so cool), this is my love letter. I just got to combine 2 of my favorite things, Spider-Man and video games, thank you for taking the time to read this and learning a little bit about the History of Spider-Man in video games. As always we will see you in the games.