Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 135: Spider-Man Games

Episode Date: January 22, 2018

Spider-Man has been starring in video games for 35 years, but outside of a few rare instances, his digital adventures didn't receive much praise before Neversoft brought him into the world of polygons. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Gary Butterfield, and Spider-Man superfan Henry Gilbert as the crew pores over the many, many Spidey games released from 1982 to 2000. Anybody call for a web-slinger?

This week on Retronauts, my Spidey Sense is tingling. Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackey, and today's episode is all about Spider-Man Games, yes, the history of Spider-Man Games. Before I go on any further, let's see who else is in the room with me today. As always, we have... Jeremy Doc Ack Parrish.

Yes, he has eight arms, and they're flailing wildly. I'm also an old scientist in love with Aunt May. And he's also secretly the president, and I'll let you figure that at home. And who else is here today? Gary Butterfield Ham. Butterfield Ham? Oh, okay. A big version of me that shows up every once in a while.

I'm getting these references, by the way. And who else is here? Straight out of Amazing Fantasy 15. Thwippity Thwhip, Henry Hilbert. Hello. So before I go any further, I want to say this is all Henry's doing, and by that I mean thank you, Henry, for doing this. I know nothing about Spider-Man.

And that's not to say I dislike Spider-Man. It's just that when I was a young, young, young, rosy-cheek-Bob getting into comics, I chose the image, comics, and manga path instead of the superhero path. And that's why I'm the dark, twisted man I am today. So it's not that I don't like superheroes. is it just that I never engage with them when they could infect my brain the most. So now I just kind of don't get them.

But I did see the new Spider-Man movie. I did like it. And Henry was very angry with me throughout because I kept asking questions. It just shocked. Innocent questions, Henry. Somebody needs to ask them. It just shocked me that nobody,

that somebody couldn't recognize a reference to Amazing Spider-Man 33 when he throws all the rubble off of him. I mean, I should have been somewhere early executed. But I'm thankful you were much nicer to me than that. But, yes, Henry was great enough to put together all of our notes for today to dig up every Spider-Man game

that he could find up to which, where was the cut-off point? So the cut-off point is the Activision year. So Activision took over at 99 and 2000. We're stopping before that because the pixel era of Spider-Man is enough. Like, there are quite a lot of games. Yeah.

When you say dig-up, you mean Ex-Zoom, right? Yes. Most of these are festering corpses. Pretty much. Yeah. I wanted to do this after I had listened to the great Retronauts East episode about Batman games. Oh, shucks.

You had on Chris Sims, but it was one of those podcasts that made me angry because it was like, I should be there. I want to say things too about Batman. How come you don't live in Raleigh, man? I don't want to. I don't want to. Fair enough, yeah. It's a good reason.

But though Chris Sims is right to call himself a Batmanologist, I think his term was. Like, I don't know Batman that well. I do know Spider-Man that well, though. So I felt like it was time to give Spider-Man. especially with there is a Spider-Man game looming. A new era of Spider-Man is beginning. The Activision era is over. Sony's been advertising that game for a year as if it's out.

By a PS4, you can play Spider-Man. Yeah, that Spider-Man game is being directed or produced by a former co-worker. Bob, did you work at Ziff Davis when Brian Intahar was there? No. Did he leave a little before me? But I know he went to Insomniac. He's been there for a decade now almost. That's awesome.

I sat down earlier this year and thought, you know, I should sit down, I should like invest and buy a copy of every game that someone I've worked with is making. And then I realized I would be broke. It's too many games. It's crazy. How many people from the Zip Davis era? All they ate four games too? Oh, well, I mean, oh God.

Yeah. I was just thinking like, you know, like production league. Like, even Sanchez is producing call of duty now. Every call of duty for the last like five years. I'm like, wait, she used to like report to me. She's made something with her life. And here I am. Oh, come on here.

We are the king of, the kings of podcasting. There's no ventilation here. I bet they have ventilation at Infinity Ward. Of course not. They're all locked in hot dungeons. That's true. That's true. We don't crunch.

No, we don't. We do pull-ups instead. So I want to say, I want to ask people in this room what their relationship with Spider-Man is. Of course, you heard my relationship with Spider-Man. I know him better as Spawn. But I've never read a Spider-Man comic. I never saw any of the movies until this latest one. I don't dislike Spider-Man.

I think his costume is cool. I think his world is cool. But I wanted to say that if Fox, if that Fox cartoon in the 90s, a better cartoon. I probably would have liked Spider-Man. I was kind of indifferent towards Batman until Batman the animated series. I love that cartoon. I went back to watch the whole thing again about a decade ago. I still love it. And if that cartoon was better, I would be a Spider-Man fan. Unfortunately, it's garbage. And I know some of you probably like it. It's fine. It's fine to like things, but I did not like it. I want to know, Henry, you're the,

you seem to be the biggest Spitey fan in the room. Yeah. What is your relationship? And how did you find him? He probably was the first comic book character I ever really read regularly. I got into it right as Todd McFarland's run on Spider-Man was its hottest in like 1990, 91, and then Eric Larson went in there. And then what crystallized me as a Spider-Man fan was the summer of 1992. I was off from school. I was ready to read comic books. They were celebrating Spider-Man's 30th anniversary with a ton of like hologram covers.

And then when the Amazing Spider-Man 365, the 30th anniversary issue comes out, Mark Bagley, the artist, is there at my local store to sign comics. and he signs mine, I was like, oh my God, I am a Spider-Man fan forever after this. And so, yeah, since then, I've read 8 million Spider-Man comic books. I've watched all the cartoons, I've seen all the movies, played all the games. And, yeah, I bought my first Spider-Man game probably because I just love the comics so much and just follow from there. So, yeah, I have been, I am the die-hard Spider-Man fan. Awesome.

How about you, Gary? I think you're a big superhero fan, or at least are more engaged with it than me, as most people are in this room. My relationship's really direct. He's my dad. Oh, my God. So just breaking here. Peter Parker or Peter Parker? Because you're the amazing Gary Ham was that?

Gary Butterfield, Cam. Colon, ham. Yeah, I, as a kid, I was much more of an X-Man fan. But because of 90s Marvel, those worlds crossed over all of the time. Oh, yeah. You know, so I remember the first Spider-Man, I was familiar with Spider-Man, but the first Spider-Man comic I read was a crossover with X-Force. Okay. Which bleeds into your image comics.

That's right. I think I read a few copies of that because. of all the lines and gadgets. I think that was my very first Spider-Man comic I bought with, like, allowance money. It was Spider-Man 16, Todd McFranl's Final Issue. Yeah, yeah. And so I read them occasionally in the 90s, but when I had my comics renaissance, kind of in the 2000s and got back into them, I read the first, like, 120 issues or so of Ultimate Spider-Man.

Oh, wow, okay. Which is a really accessible kind of relaunch of it. Is that the future Spider-Man? No, everyone's Spider-Man 2099. Yeah. Why is the ultimate, though? Oh, man. Therein lies the tales.

It's a new podcast. No, it's just the ultimate line was this attempt by Marvel to kind of sweep away continuity and retell their stories and kind of sweep away like junk. It was like what they've done with the movies before the movies. Yeah, exactly. I think it accessible to everyone. DC does it every 10 years now, right? 10 years.

Superboy just punches reality until the comics reboot. And then at that time, that's when, you know, I'm fine that we're stopping with the Activisioneers, but I really like the Activisioneers of the Spider-Man games. Yeah, we can easily do a sequel on all those games. The PlayStation games and the Spider-Man 2 for PlayStation 2 is one of, if not the best superhero game? Like, that is very fun. Oh, yeah. That era with that and like ultimate destruction and stuff, there was this time where it was a really great time to play Marvel superhero games.

Yeah, it was when it was a wilder time before, like, Marvel got as controlling with their, or also, like, charging too much for licensing, too, that you'd only get, like, one Marvel game every year from some kind of. I think now every Marvel game is a Candy Crush clone. or something, or like a Clash of Clans clone or something like that. Every once in a while, someone on my Twitter timeline post this image, it's like, I got Vulture. And there's just a picture of Vulture, and I'm like, I don't know what that means. I had to buy this with 500 jewels.

You want a carnage point. I'd rather see Vulture than some wifu from some, like, Granite fantasy or something. That's some fireblin bikini wifu, of course. I know. So, Jeremy, how about you? Like, what is your Spider-Man thing? My relationship with Spider-Man? Well, in a former life, I was Gwyn Stacey, and I loved Spider-Man until he broke my neck.

Oh, wow. That was a controversial statement, by the way. No, I mean, Spider-Man did it. An amazing 121. Well, isn't that really his clone? Teach the controversy, people. No, Spider-Man was called like 30-issue later after the death. Sorry, Jeremy.

No, so, yeah, I didn't read comics, superhero comics as a kid, but I knew Spider-Man because Gather-Round kids is Grandpa Jeremy's Storytime. I watched Spider-Man and his amazing friends when I was a kid. That was the hot cartoon when I was a whippersnapper. Post-80s. His amazing friends were Firestar, a character who I've never actually seen in a real comic book, an Ice Man, who is an X-Man. I'm about to say the same fat toy, though.

She made the Harley Quinn move of, she did get put in comics, but afterwards, they put her in it because it couldn't get a human torch. And I remember, like, my parents had some church friends who were upset that we watched that because they thought Firestar was naked because she had, like, a sort of peach-colored costume. Did they see? Did they see Chitara? She's wearing, like, a costume. June. What are you talking about? Anyway, yeah, but I mean,

Spider-Man was everywhere when I was a kid. You know, this was, oh, he was on 3-21 contact. They had the live-action Spider-Man segment. Was that the electric company? Oh, was that electric company? Okay, yeah, it was an electric company. Okay. Yeah. Like, those blend together my mind because they were always

on back-to-back. They're all the same. Yeah, so I just always saw Spider-Man, like, I had, you know, this big plastic Spider-Man toy that was, like, motorized and had a little hook that came out of its arm and you'd like hook the thing on with a string and it would pull itself up with the motor. So, you know, just like

Spider-Man was everywhere. I think we just discovered the origins of your Bionicamando love. Maybe. It was rooted early in your childhood. I also had a Hulk figure that could like pull apart plastic bricks with the same mechanism, but that wasn't as exciting. That sounds great. Yeah, so Spider-Man was just kind of pervasive in pop culture, but I

never actually read Spider-Man comics outside of just like picking up a copy of Secret Wars or something every now and then until digital comics and I sat down on an iPad and read like the first hundred issues of Spider-Man. Wow. Wow. Everyone has read like hundreds of Spider-Man comics in this room.

This is great. They go pretty fast. They're very smooth. I don't know. Some of the Ditko ones are a little. I'm like, what's up with Spider-Man? He's kind of an ass. Well, that's a little bit Steve Ditko.

Yeah. Steve Ditko is kind of an ass. Steve Dickko. Yeah. Let's not go there. Okay. It's still with us or, well, at the time of this recording anyway, These things launched pretty late, Henry.

Still making his objectivist and Ayn Rand fan fiction comics. Out of like the same rent-controlled office in Manhattan, he's been in for 50 years. Let's not count our dickos before they've hatched. So let's begin our tale of Spider-Man games with the very first one, Spider-Man for the Atari 2,600, 1982.

So, Henry. Yeah, so first off with Spider-Man, just so you know, in case you really don't know, Stanley and Steve Ditko created him in August of 1962. Amazing Fantasy 15 So he had been around for 20 years before he got a video game

which obviously like it wasn't going to happen before 1975 or whatever anyway But so The very first Marvel game And first Spider-Man game Was the Spider-Man on Atari 2,600?

Was there a licensed comic book game before this Spider-Man game? There was Superman like four years earlier Four years, wow. Yeah, it's it's suit The Superman one is super primitive compared to Spider-Man, no, pun intended. But Spider-Man keeps it very focused of just like you do one thing in Spider-Man.

You shoot a web to go up a building and avoid bombs. And if you get to the top, then it resets and you go to a new building and keep going up and up and up. And it's super-duper-simple. Bob found who was the developer of it. Yeah, of course, no one was credited. But the developer for this game was a woman named Laura Nicolich. And I'll link to this interview in our show notes. but there's a great interview with her at Digital Press.

Apparently, she was doing some, like, heavy-duty programming things like programming programs for, like, nuclear reactors and things like that. She was doing important things, and I guess she's stooped to making a Spider-Man video game, although this is a good video game. Yeah, for an Atari 2,600 game, yeah, it is. And the only thing Spider-Man can do in it is shoot his web, like, they completely forget he can crawl up a building. So when, like, the webline snaps, he just falls until he shoots a new webline. think Nichibutsu had innovated the concept of climbing video games. Crazy climber was still like a year or two

away. That's true. And I think they would have to draw two more Spider-Man sprites to get him to climb, and that'd be too much for the memory. Yeah. And also, though, it does have another Spider-Man constant of web fluid is limited. In case you don't know, Spider-Man normally

doesn't have organic web shooters. He has a mechanism in his wrist and they can run out. And so in this game, too, you can't just swing forever. You have to use a limited amount to get to the top of what I assume is the daily bugle, but they can't all be the daily bugle. The color of the building changes every time. It's a whole daily orchestra.

It's a whole daily horn section. They're really branching out with franchisees. You can run your own daily bugle. The daily trombone. It's like the chis. And I think he's disarming bombs in this set by the Green Goblin. And also is he picking up the fluid and windowsills. Is that what's happening?

Yeah, there's six fluid in windowsills. and the goblin is... It's a proprietary fluid that only he knows how to make. Well, if it's the Daily Bugle, maybe he left it there to be found later. Yeah, another question

for you, Spider-Man fanatics. Is there a version of Spider-Man where the fluid is just in his body? Yeah, yeah, that's happened. I've seen that before. That's definitely the movies, the Toby McGuire? Yeah.

The movies, that was the simplification. Wasn't Spider-Man 299 the first one to do that? Yeah, he had an internal, yeah, from... It honestly makes more sense for Spider-Man to have a mutation to shoot out webbing than that a 16-year-old invents a web fluid that no one's ever seen before.

Yeah, and I think whenever I see the Todd McFarlane drawings, it seems like it's coming out of him. Not like a device. Maybe I'm wrong. Well, no, Todd McFarlane draws web fluid like it's spaghetti everywhere. Like, there's way more than it. Everybody before him drew just a silly spring, really. Yeah.

One of my favorite kind of after effects of the Todd McFarland Spider-Man is any scene he's been in would just be this big gross mess. Like, I just imagine anyone walking down the street. after like a fight has happened. Just like, what is this? Spider-Man is a metaphor for puberty. His layoff philosophy was more lines equals more good. So everything would just have lines everywhere.

But this was 82, and Spider-Man was in a very traditional place design-wise. Oh, yeah. And there was a really cool commercial for it, actually, that has, like, perfect costumes for both Spider-Man and Goblin. Can we play that? Oh, yeah. They're really good costumes, too. Time bombs. Try to get up there in time, Spider-Man.

Watch me cut my web, goblin. Watch yourself for, silk slinger. God, stop the bombs in time. If I don't get you webhead, my young nasties will. Holy Hannah. And you're running out of fluid. Is this more action than even Spider-Man can handle? I love it.

You're running out of fluid. It's funny because the commercial is not a visual representation of what's happening in the game. It's Green Goblin taunting Spider-Man while he's playing the game. Standing over him. With the Atari stick in his hand. Yeah, that's great. One of the things, just real quick, about the first game that I really like, and I think this is generally true of the games I played.

I went through this list and played 10 minutes of all these Spider-Man games. That's about all you need to do for a lot of them. That a lot of them, you know, since it was an Atari, it's just slap a platformer on it. You know, so a lot of them actually, you do Spider-Man stuff. Yeah. Like, this game is really interesting in that, you know, they could have made it. like a maze chase, where the Green Goblin chases you or something like that.

But I think this design makes sense for the time because it's, what, one year after Donkey Kong. So lots of people were like, oh, we got to do the Donkey Kong thing. So you're ascending. But they said, oh, let's make Donkey Kong but, you know, with Spider-Man mechanics. So I think it's a pretty admirable job of sort of reinterpreting the franchise according to sort of what was a hot trend at the moment. I see it dropped from Donkey Kong. Yeah, also in 82, it must be post-pitfall, right? So the swing...

The pitfall was 82. Okay. Well, I wondered if the swing mechanic was taken, like, inspired by pitfall in any way, too. I want to say pitfall was like April, 82. I could be wrong. Oh, and also I found Marvel was one of the first American publishers to make a video game magazine. They did the magazine Blip. That's right.

And you can find the... Trives with Thwip. Well, you can find the second issue of Blip magazine on... archive.org, and it's the entire first issue, which is just a full-on ad for Atari's 2600 Spider-Man, and it's Stan Lee is playing the game with a guy in the Spider-Man suit, a guy in a goblin suit, and a bunch of like 1982 children. Are these, is this like a comic or is it like a photo spread? It's a photo spread, and then afterwards is a comic drawn by John Ramita Senior.

So he was the, he was the Spider-Man comic artist at the time, wasn't he? No, no. He stopped. So he was the guy who picked up. right after Dicko in the 60s. By 82, he had ascended to like a major Marvel guy, so him drawing in is kind of a big deal.

But it is your classic, silly, promotional comic book thing of Green Goblin, who was dead at the time in the comics, he says, Spider-Man has his own video game. I'll stop that. And he's going to attack the big premiere of the video games.

But he's in the video game. How do hostess fruit pies factor into this? They're just off-screen. They should have been catering the event. I'm sure there was a coupon for one of those in every box, Atari Twyndher box. One, Spider-Man even says, like,

I'm giving all of my proceeds to charity, and obviously Green Goblin as a villain wouldn't be paid for this game. I want to point out how you're talking, and every Spider-Man thing, he talks like this for the longest time. I'm a superhero, even though I'm 16 or 18, possibly. I think Spider-Man never has that deep a voice, though, except in that advertisement you just played. Oh, there'll be a clip later that's going to prove you wrong, Jeremy.

I just think of the classic Simpsons joke, where the Malibu Stacey is talking. I was like, my sputty, sense is tingling. Anybody golf or a web slinger? Yeah, I think it wasn't until the McGuire years or maybe a little before that, like in the cartoons that Spider-Man would talk as a fun young guy who is not your dad.

I think until 1990, everyone just started smoking at age 12. So by the time you were in high school, you did sound like this. That's true. I remember smoking when I was at least eight. Smoking in the boys' room. Anything else going on with this game? I mean, I feel like they're getting off to a good start. a lot of Atari 2,6008 games do not age well

and are hard to play these days because they're so primitive. This one, I feel like, has a reliable enough concept that I feel like it is fun to play for like 20 minutes. I don't know if you guys agree with me or not. Yeah, it's good. It's just, it's hard to go back that far, like, something that simple. But they did the best they could with the tools they had

and compared to, like, they also didn't overstep their bounds. Like the Superman game we talked about, they wanted to include, well, Superman has to repair a bridge, but he also has to save low slave, but he also has to transform from Clark Kent and them trying to do all that stuff. Everything is made of three boxes. Yeah.

Spider-Man knew to keep it simple. And just like he swings upward. That's what he's got to do. That's it. The Superman game reminds me a lot of ET in that respect where it's just like there's too many things going on and nothing looks like what it's supposed to look like. Not enough technology to support it.

Yeah, so it's like this box is the police station and this box is jail. Keep it spidey stupid. Save this city, save it from the hands of the structure. Innocent or guilty, it ain't all with easy to see. Hanging tough, just enough, slipping in and out of the shadows. Every man's hero. Swin' by the sounds of the streets

Now it's swing time Flying for justice Swing time Take on prisoner Swing time Bring on the break on the breakers Swing time Knocking trouble out

We're going to move on to Quest Probe Spider-Man And I want to say this is 1984 for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. I want to say that whenever I do, and Henry did all the work on this, by the way, but whenever I do a series retrospective for Retronauts podcast retrospective for Retronauts, it always involves at least two computer games I've never heard of and that are terrible. And I'm also doing a Doom episode in this weekend recording session. And a lot of my research in Doom speaks to this.

The guys who made Doom were like Nintendo addicts, were arcade addicts. And they were like computer action games suck. We want to make computer action games like they are in Nintendo. Quest Probe wasn't an action game, though. No, no, no. We're going to see a few action games, though, but just we're getting, this is a text adventure, right? I'm actually surprised you haven't heard of Quest Probe.

I haven't. No, actually, I know nothing about text adventure, so I'm in trouble soon. I mean, yeah, these were early PC adventure games with Scott Adams, who, not that one, not the Dilber guy. Poor original Scott Adams has to have a little asterisk by his name now. But I guess he was kind of a superstar of early PC development, wasn't it? Actually, when Dilbert first started, it was Scott Adams, the cartoonist, was like, no, not that one. So the shoes on the other foot, sadly.

This is an unjust world. It really is, yeah. So it was, so it was a big deal that he was going to start making Marvel games. He was going to do the, the Quest Probe series of Marvel was going to be 12 long. And first he did one for the Hulk, and then the Human Torch, and then Spider-Man came next. And I get what it was for its time, but I just, like, I mentally can't go back to it. It really is like you are in first-person view of Spider-Man in a first-person exploration of like,

there are three doors, Northwest South, which one do you go to? And, okay, behind this door is Sandman. The hunched, ooh, he dodged. You don't have the item that would make Sandman do something different here. Leave. And it's just, yeah, it's just all command-based. Yeah, there were like three big adventure, text adventure companies at the time. There was Infocom, there was Sierra, and there was Scott Adams, who wasn't a company.

but, you know, one of the creators. I definitely feel like his games hold up the most poorly. Like, even Sierra, as unfair as they can be, there's still a lot happening in those games. And I think 84 was the first Kings quest. And basically, as soon as graphics started becoming a thing in adventure games, Texas Adventure games died, like no one wanted to put up with them anymore. And I know there's enjoyment to be found,

but once graphics enter the equation, it was over. The interesting thing about this is it is command base, but they're in second person. So, like, you see from Spider-Man's perspective, But you say, you go do this. Or it's not you aren't Spider-Man. You're talking to Spider-Man and giving them commands. Okay, okay.

They're like to a perspective. Like, you go north. Like, I want you to go north, I think, is the command I saw on the long play I read. Yeah. And that's really kind of bonkers, right? Like, you're a kid controlling a comic that you're looking at. It's like something from the fantasy at the end of Big, that game that thing that Tom thinks, you know, was going to make me, you know, what you didn't want to make the building transfers? Yeah, I thought a big, too, when I was watching a long play of this and seeing people type in, like, punch lizard.

and says, punch never works because obviously the game would be too simple if Spider-Man got in a room and then it's like, Doc Cox here, punch dot cock. You won. So it can't be that simple, even though Spider-Man should just punch some of these guys or web some of them.

The biggest plus I'll give it is if you tell Spider-Man to go on the ceiling, then the screen flips itself. That is cool. I think it's a genre thing. I don't think Spider-Man's well-suited to an adventure genre. He's not collecting items

and solving puzzles, you know, he's punching guys and he's kind of pushing past his limits. I see Batman as more of a text adventure guy, not what were the other heroes he used, Human Torch, and Hulk? What is the whole? I mean, Hulk is the craziest one. I should have watched that because that one seems the nuttyest. They just have two verbs, get angry and punch. Hulk has to rub the rubber chicken next to the pole again.

Oh, yeah, smash. And an X-Men one would have come after this, but the company went bankrupt and there weren't more Quest Pro ones after spite. It has villains like Dococ, Electro, Lizard, Sandman, and then the goofball ringmaster is in there, which if you don't know Ringmaster, he is literally a ringmaster with a giant top hat with a swirling hypno coin in the center of it

that he tricks people into doing his bidding for him. And it's also just a silent game. I couldn't get over how quiet it was watching it. It's just, I guess, people in 84 accepted, like, music in a game. Why would you have that? You're supposed to put on your Spider-Man rock opera record. It's really hard for me to think of a text adventure that does have music. That was pretty standard for the genre.

But it makes, since it does have so many visuals to it, because it's closer to something like, it's like a parser-driven, like, seventh guest, or not seventh guest, uninvited, MacVenture kind of thing, where you do have the image and those things that are on screen you have to interact with. So it's kind of a hybrid, and that's what makes the lack of music stand out so much, I think. Yeah, looking at these games, going back to them, even like the original Mac Venture games, you mentioned, Gary, I find just playing a game in complete stark silence is eerie, just like something feels wrong, which is why I like playing the NES ports. You get the nice moody music of the deja vu's, the uninviteds, etc. It's a music good enough to make up for a lack of mouse. Yes. Using a control pad. So our next game is Spider-Man and Captain America in Dr. Dooms Revenge, 1989, Das, Amiga, C-64, and your Z-X Spectre. Yeah, it's, on paper, it sounds like a perfect team-up game.

Like, if I saw that title as a kid, I get Captain America and Spider-Man in one game and they fight Doctor Doom together. But it really isn't that. It is a Spider-Man game and a Captain America game kind of pasted together. And it's a very, very simple platform. Well, not even platform, just action game, like side-scrolling action game. I was surprised by how tiny everything is, how tiny all the superheroes are. but this really reminds me of PC action games of this era. It is a screen-by-screen game, and every screen has its own name.

Like, this one is called Anchors Away. This one's called Raise the Ladder. So Jet Set Willie. Yes, exactly. Wait, did the British person design this? No, this was by Paragon Software. As I put it, a very lucky Pennsylvania-based PC developer that got the license, not just for Spider-Man, but for X-Men and Punisher. They got to make all games for that on the PC

Or DOS back then Yeah, I mean, you say very lucky But at the time, I don't think Marvel comics or comics in general Had that much cachet. I feel like they really exploded In the pop culture consciousness A couple of years later, you know,

with like the X-Men reboot And the death and rebirth of Superman And like late 80s early 90s probably Yeah, that's when this was. I mean, this is 89 So it's pretty close to that. I think you're right. But we're on the cost of a huge deal.

It's nascent. Yeah. I think Marvel definitely, yeah, and Marvel always kind of undervalued all their licenses and just they probably saw video games as like, man, that made us some money. Like, it's, who cares? This person came to us. I mean, you have to keep in mind the most popular Marvel comics of the 80s were G.I. Joe, the NAM and Punisher and then Wolverine. Yeah. Like X-Men, Spider-Man, they were there, but they kind of become this like baked into pop.

culture, consciousness thing. They were, I think, much more viable outside of the comics properties than they were as comic books. Yeah, they were used to being a cartoon at that time. But, yeah, as Bob said, it's just super simple. Like, the first challenge you have is Captain America versus Robot. And it

takes forever. It's like punch steps. God, I hate that robot. And I also have to... I have to apologize in that the game with tiny sprites and individually named screens is actually a later game made by Paragon. That is going to be the problem on this episode, keeping all of these games straight because they all are kind of the same game outside of the Texas adventure one.

The one of the one you want to. Spider-Man in the title. He's the guy in the red suit. The game with the guy in the red suit, that's the one we're talking about. Well, in this one, they fight a lot of goofballs. You're going to hear a lot of repetitive names that appear in all these Spider-Man games. Not this one because it's a lot of cap enemies like Batrock the Leaper, gray gargoyle, and boomerang. But also oddball, rhino.

And then a guy they just made up called Rattan, who's just the guy who like tries to its cap. He's made out of like Dried Wicker. And it also when I was shocked by looking at it, the Amiga version of it. So they tell the story kind of with comic panels, which was at least a little inventive, that they just kind of flashed between comic panels. There was that Batman that before that. That's true. So they just ripped that off. Is it the Isometric Batman or the? No, the second one.

Okay. The one by Ocean that was following the ZX Spectrum one. Okay. But also Paragon straight up read. drew Todd McFarland Art. They're like, oh, that's a cool pose, and they redrew it. As I would find out researching a game like two years after this

one, they were told by Marvel, like, you can't just redraw a panel, like the artists, you're stealing from the artist, and you can't do that. It was a much simpler time. And also funny in the game, it ends with, Cap gets to fight Dr. Dew. Spider-Man doesn't even

meet Dr. Doon. Spider-Man instead beats up the Hulk when it's actually just a robot by Mysterio so you don't even really find it seems like Dr. Doom's Revenge was snubbing Spider-Man You're not invited He'll get him back He'll he'll make Doom pay another day

And then they get again Redrawing stuff When they beat When they finish the game It's the only time Spider-Man and Captain America are even together And then they are congratulated by George H.W. Bush He's like good job guys Let's go out for some burgers

Oh wait a different game Mysterio is such a gift to these games. All these games feature Mysterio because people who are making the game just thought you could do anything. He's a special effects artist. But he can make convincing Hulk illusions. He can make everything. He shows up as an antagonist really frequently.

Yeah, he works for pretty much any. You can just say, like, well, we want Spider-Man to fight a dinosaur. Technically, that's not really his thing. Mysterio made a dinosaur. A Mysterio did it. He made mummies. He made all that stuff. As would be the thing in the index.

Oh, also on this game of Mark, Mark E. Saramette, or Saramane, co-founder of Take 2, worked on this game. Interesting. Worth noting. So our next game is, I'm going to be. I feel like the most playable game in a modern context. It's the Amazing Spider-Man 1 for Game Boy, developed by Rare.

Hold on right there, Bob. What did I do? Put three seconds on the clock. The most playable game in the modern context. So far. So far. What are you saying? Boy.

Please, please explain. What's your beef, Jeremy? We're talking about the LJN game for Game Boy? Yes. Jeremy has grabbed Bob's lapels for people in home, so you guys know. I can't breathe. And he's right up in his face. I don't know.

I suffer through this game for Game for Game. Game Boy works. Okay, well, I did not have a good time. That's the thing. I would say it was the worst game that I had played to that point. It was like 60 games deep. Jeremy, it's a sliding scale. Maybe the Atari 2,6001 is better, but compared to the things that came before,

this is actually like a bit more playable. Can Bob, can you play the musical sting for Retronaut's Face Off? We need one of those. Well, I think I'll just use the Crossfire theme song. Crossfire. I would say there's a couple Genesis Spider-Man. games I'd play before. Amazing for Game Boy, definitely. But I think I also have a more positive feeling on this than, because Amazing Spider-Man 2 and 3 are much worse. Yes, that's my point.

I mean, there will be better games after this, but this is like some kind of sub-confident work, I think. Yeah, I mean, this was rare just cashing a paycheck. They did not put their hearts into this game. Rare could make some great games, and this is not one of them. This is one of probably 80 games they made in 1990. Well, yeah, so LJN got the Spider-Man license, and they'd have it for about five years, and this was their first one. LJN was the worst company and got the best licenses. I know. It was terrible.

Well, they spent big to get the license, and then we're like, throw it to some jerk off. All right. Well, we spent all of our money, so who can develop this for $10? Well, also, like, they couldn't even afford rare by 92, and they'd make the next amazing. Like, they'd have to go with a much worse company. But, yes. That was post-Battle Toads rare. everyone who wanted a piece of them then.

And yeah, this game is a super straightforward beat him up. It is walk to the right and punch dudes until you get to the end of the stage and then there's a boss there. And I do like David Wise's music for it. Oh, yeah. The music's good. And also, as a Spider-Man fan, I like that it kind of had the first ever use of his spider sense in a practical way of the stages of climb up the building and, oh, my spider set's

going off. Go right. the way of the bomb. Yeah, that doesn't work as well as it should because your Spider-Sense will go off, but you don't really know, like, which direction do I go to dodge? So half the time you'll, like, dodge to the right

and you'll move right into the path of something else that's falling into you. Somebody opening a window or, yeah. And also, Spider-Man eats hamburgers for strength in this. And sometimes he finds them just sitting on top of a subway car. Yeah, sure. The rats haven't found it yet.

I'll have it. That makes it seem like a Japanese developer made this game, just the hamburgers are power-ups, but I know it's rare. Spider-Man and hamburgers. He's not even, like, famous as a guy who eats hamburgers. Spider-Hamburgers. Oh, God.

He's eating his skin. That's disgusting. And, yeah, I think the Spider-Man Sprite looks okay for what their tech was, I'll say. But every villain looks like dog crap. I can't believe there's so many villains in this game. That's a little too ambitious for just this kind of product. Yeah, they really look bad. You get Mysterio Hobgall and Scorpion, Rhino, Docok, and then Fight a little.

Finally Venom, and as would be, as would happen in half of the Spider-Man games, Mary Jane is kidnapped and Spider-Man must save her. And the game starts with Mysterio just saying, like, hey, we kidnap Mary Jane because I know you're Peter Parker. Oh, really? Well, tell me where she is. And they never really deal with the fact like, wait, you figured out Spider-Man's identity.

That's more important than stealing his girlfriend. That's like the kernel of the comics right there, the ultimate conflict. It should be a very important moment when all his biggest villains find out. his secret identity. You know what, Harry, yeah, I'm just remembering this, too, because it opens that cutscene where he answers the phone as Spider-Man. Oh, Spider-Man. Yeah, Spider-Man here.

Not Peter Parker. Big-ass mobile phone, too. It's like a sat-track phone or whatever it's called. It is actually, I've turned around on this game. I didn't like it before, but now I'm thinking about that cutscene for Spider-Man taking it out in his apartment. I just, I remember the one for Scorpion in that, in the talking cutscene. He looks so bad.

Like, his tail's basically a hot dog behind him. And then I never beat the game as a kid because it was too hard for me. me. But when I watch the ending on a play-through, they just completely rip off the ending of like Super Mario World or a Mario game of you beat Venom and then Mary Jane is lowered and then she gives you a kiss and hearts and appears like the end. You save the day. That's kind of cute. I like that. But they all know a secret identity like it's over. So Bits Laboratory did the two sequels to this game. I could talk about what they've done since then. Some of them are- This was like a Sega developer in the Aipid era.

I'm seeing almost all Nintendo here. And a lot of these are ports. Like, they did the port for Robin and Prince of Thieves. I like that NES game. I never played the Game Boy port. But they also did utter trash, like, every version of the Last Action Hero game. They did a lot of art type ports. Like, they're all over the map here, but none of these things are really that good.

Yeah, and the Terminator. Some of the Terminator 2 games, they really, bits really specialized in licensed stuff. And The Amazing Spider-Man, too, kind of wishes it was Metroid-esque, but it is sort of like giant stages until you find the keys, and then you can beat up Mysterio. And Bitts also did the Mary Shelley's Frankenstein games, not the Sega CD one. Who is the lead actor in that game? Is it De Niro or something? Is De Niro Abrana? Well, I mean, De Niro was the monster in Frankenstein with Kenneth Brana, but I forget.

I did not play the Sega CD. Whoever the actor was the monster? I need to go watch this movie. I believe he does like full frontal in the movie, too. Whoever the lead is, you play as a digitized version of the lead and the Sega CD version of that game, and it's so bizarre. And then Amazing Spider-Man 3 actually retells somewhat accurately the 1992 comic book storyline Invasion of the Spider-Slayers,

which was perfect to do a video game about because it is a guy, Alistair Smyth, who makes robots to kill Spider-Man, makes a bunch of robots, and Spider-Man destroys a bunch of robots. That's perfect video game story. Yeah, they're pretty much Mousers from like Ninja turtles. Totally. I think that's what they're based on or vice versa. Yeah.

And then he ends the game beating up the guy in his robot wheelchair just as he does in the comic book too. It's very strange. That's one where they just animated the cover art. And also at the same time in 1990, Spider-Man makes a cameo in Punisher, the ultimate payback video game, which, like, when I say Kemi, I mean, in every ad for the Punisher game, Spider-Man was swinging in the background, like, Spider-Man's in this game, too, kid. Did you buy this? You get Spider-Man.

And, I mean, he appears in one stage. The second and third Game Boy games are so horrible in your hands. Oh, yeah. It's amazing how, because I'm not a real big fan of the first one, but it's amazing how much worse they can get. Yes. It feels like you just get to the floor and then get out a shovel, like, progressively every single time. Yeah, I mean, the thing that Rare Shat out is still like a breath of fresh air. compared to what Bits Laboratory did on their own.

Did they just feel bad? And I think the second and third one both do B jumps A shoots, which I know that's a cliche to complain about that, but like it feels bad. It's not a cliche. It's right. It's spiritually correct. You're within your rights. Yeah, it's like publishing a book.

It's like, I'm going to make the words go the other direction for fun. It's like, no, no, there's an established grammar of this. You have to follow it. Also, Amazing Spider-Man too. It's box art has like carnage on the cover, which is a total lie to you. Like, yes, carnage is in the game, but this is an eye. a carnage game. Like, he's not the main villain.

We'll come later. And Carnage is... He is the son of Venom, who's he be cooler and eviler. Well, we'll get to him. Okay, cool. I really want to know more about Carnage. I mean, Venom eventually went to San Francisco and helped homeless people, whereas Carnage was just pure evil.

I want to see Venom, like, working out a soup kitchen in his costume, just like ladling things out. Pretty much, yeah, that was like a whole Larry Hama run. Take all you want, but eat all you take. I kill Jeremy. Let's move on to the next game. I think we're ready to move on to the next game. And that is another game called The Amazing Spider-Man.

And this is the game I was talking about. 1990. It is the game. It's a screen-by-screen game. Every screen has a name. And it is very much of this period of computer development. Henry, let's talk about this game. Yeah, I mean, it was Amiga da C-64 and Atari ST.

And guess what? Mary Jane's kidnapped again. Did you know the song Last Dance with Mary Jane by Tom? I'm Petty and the Heartbreakers was actually a discarded, like the theme to a discarded Spider-Man game. Everyone thought it was about Pop, but really. It was about Spider-Man. It was actually a Spider-Man game. Sing a CD.

But it's just Mysterio. But that's how they get away with Spider-Man going to a bunch of different places because they're just different traps set up by Mysterio. And it's just a long screen-by-screen thing where you go to a different stage and then you find the key there and then you walk all the way. back and find a new key, and it's just, you do web swing in it, I'll give you that, and it's better web swinging than in previous games. But you fight robots, zombies, mummies, lizards, and it's fine. What I felt was funny and also disgusting is that there's like a strip going on the right side of the screen, and that is your health bar, just an image of Spider-Man.

And as you get hurt, more and more Spider-Man's costume is torn away to reveal a skeleton underneath. It's a Paris ID game. So my head canon is Spider-Man is a skeleton in a costume and that makes him better to me. There was something kind of like that in a Batman game. Like, yeah, those really like super gruesome character display status screens.

I don't know, who thought that was a good idea? Bart's nightmare has one too in virtual Bart. So like Bart gets progressively sicker until he turns to a skeleton. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of like Doom Guy stuff as well. But I didn't know that because I watched a perfect play-through where the guy never really took any damage, so I didn't, but that is, I feel like even five years later, Marvel would have said, you can't show Spider-Man's skeleton.

This is too gruesome for kids. I want a Doom mod where you have sick Bart in the display heads-off. Oh, you can totally do that. I'm sure. Rip and tear, man. I'm sure there's been like five Doom-Monds to do that at least in the past year, maybe. I actually looked up some Simpsons Wads, but none of them had that. We'll get to that soon, guys.

Let's get to the community. and yeah also this was paragon again it was their last spider-man game i think probably they kind of just shoved it out after ljn got the got the license for it instead and uh yeah i mean you when you free mary jane it's also another super abrupt ending of like you freed her the end just done like in one version i think on the amoeba you at least get a spider-man hugging mary jane scene as your payoff for going through i can't imagine it looks so complicated of just just like where you have to find crap that you, that, without a fact, I don't know how you do it. It's such a hard game to finish and that's your reward hugging Mary Jane.

It just burns me up. The Mephisto took that away from me. Yeah, you know, that is, that is important. I think that's why Mary Jane constantly gets kidnapped these things because this was married Spider-Man years. All these games came out while Spider-Man was a married man to Mary Jane. And so you can't make it without her. Like in other Spider-Man games they make later, they could pretend, eh, he's just not dating anybody right now.

Spider-Man's single, but when the fact is, he's swinging bachelor. I can't believe they never took the opportunity to have a Spider-Man-themed casino game where when you win, Mary Jane says, face it, Tiger, you just hit the jack-top. Oh, yeah. They should have. That right there is better material for a video game than most of what we've seen. I feel like there's probably a pinball game that does that. Pinball games are always way too horny, I feel.

I did play a Spider-Man slot machine, but it was based on the movies, the Toby McGuire films. But the seat shook a ton. That was its big draw. Was there anything based on, like, the dancing part in three? No, they only licensed the first movie. That's probably for the best. Who would spend the extra to license Spider-Man 3? Why doesn't Spider-Man dance anymore?

So before our break, let's move on to probably. Probably the most popular game to date. This game, I had no idea it was so huge at the time. It passed me by completely. It's just called Spider-Man. It is the Genesis Master System and Game Gear game. The Genesis 1 was 1990. Other ports came later.

Henry, tell us about this game. I had no idea. It was like Sega, like it was one of their huge early games for the Genesis. It was a big-ass deal for Sega. So this is explained pretty well in the console in most books about Sega. But Console Wars especially talks about how Sega of America. before Sonic was in a bad place where they were handed Altered Beast, but nobody gave a crap about Altered Beast in America. So until Sonic existed, they needed to find somebody to sell their systems.

So they just spent the money on big names that were for outside of games. They got Mickey Mouse. They got Michael Jackson, Tommy LaSorda. The Slim Fast guy. Kids love him. And Spider-Man was part of that, too. And it was a big get for them. It was the second American developed game Sega had ever.

paid for, like, that they'd, a second American developed thing they'd ever made within Sega. And the game, also, Spider-Man illegally appeared in Revenge of Shinobi. Yeah, I was just about to say, like, this, the fact that Sega got this license kind of amazes me, because I know they were in hot water over the Shinobi thing. Yeah, was it Spider-Man, Batman, and Godzilla? Yeah. In Revenge of Shinobi, they all appear. You fight Spider-Man and Batman back-to-back, but it's actually like a demon that transforms into both of them.

It's mysterious. It kind of sucks for this developer because the bootleg Spider-Man that was in Revenge of Shinobi looks way better than the Spider-Man in the Spider-Man in the Spider-Man in the Spider-Man. Oh, the Genesis Spider-Man looks good. It's okay. It's okay. But the Arcade's taller. Yeah. I mean, it's just kind of bigger and a little bit more detail.

Like, lanky. Well, so then in 1990, though, when they re-release Shinobi and they're forced to take a Batman and Godzilla, they officially licensed Spider-Man, and Spider-Man is still in it. When they would re-release Revenue of Shinobie later, they'd turn him into a pink dude. He still played the game. He was like pink Spider-Man. Yeah, he's a pink Spider-Man. That's Peter Porker, the amazing Spider-Man. But so, yeah, they go to Technopop.

And Randall Reese was kind of a source on a bit of this. He was one of the main developers. And he was apparently a driving force on making this a good Spider-Man game. He was a big-time Spider-Man fan who wanted to make this the best Spider-Man game ever that would be true to the character. and, like, he owns Amazing Fantasy 15, the first appearance of Spider-Man. So he's a real fan that guy. And at first they went with a company called Enterprise, but Marvel really disliked what they were first seeing.

And so then they gave it to Technopopop and they had under a year to finish it based on, like, the design documents, but none of the art or assets made by Enterprise, they just had to start over. Yeah, the only other game I could find that Technop worked on was Tasmania for the Genesis, which was another platformer. Yeah, I could see why Sega would go to them again for Spider-Man, but it was Marvel also clearly was getting a lot more involved at the time. And though by the time the development on the Genesis version ended, techno pop was kind of falling apart too,

so they then handed it to recreational brainware as they wrapped it up. But it's mainly techno-pop. And they also credited it was very successful. According to Randall Reese, it had sold to two-thirds of Genesis owners in 1990. I found that amazing, and I totally believe that, but I didn't have a Genesis. All my friends did, but I never saw this game in any of their houses. I never saw it being played. Look at your house.

Somebody will have the Genesis. I mean, I had it, and I had it on game here. But, yeah, well, this was people who owned it before Sonic. Like, once Sonic was out, nobody was bought. Well, there were still people like buying Spider-Man, but they were, going to buy signs. I think all my friends were post-Sonic Genesis fans, not true gamers, of course. Yes.

And, yeah, that they credited as saving the Marvel license with Sega because Marvel was, they were so disappointed with how Spider-Man was going that had it not sold that well, Sega would have just been like, we're done with you, you're, or Marvel would have just been done with Sega, but they weren't, and that's why there were X-Men games and future Spider-Man games with Sega because of this game's success on the Genesis. It's kind of a good run, too. Oh, yeah. Like, I have some affection for both those X-Men games, and this game is actually pretty good.

Yeah. I played this when I was younger, and, like, they do as good a job as we've seen so far and possibly better of emulating the character, specifically the photography thing, which kind of blows my mind in retrospect. Like, that's so cool. That is really interesting. Spider-Man does all the things that you would know him for if you read the comics, or even if you didn't like he, obvious things like strength speed, agility,

web swinging, wall crawling, spider sense. but also it incorporates his life as Peter Parker. You can go back to your apartment to recharge webbing or to get life energy back. Mary Jane and her, even her acting on the soap opera Secret Hospital, which was just a point in the comics at that time. That's part of it. Secret hospital?

That's great. And then Spider-Man has tons of comedic inner monologues, like he's talking himself and saying funny shit. And you have to buy web fluid. It's not just the web fluid is limited, and you can use it to make, like, a shield to take damage or to shoot different levels of it. It runs out, and you can find more of it in levels, but also you take photographs. You earn money. That money is then directly translated to increasing your web fluid amount at the end of a stage.

Who do you buy a web fluid from? Is it just a computer or something? No, no. Well, in the mythology, it is Spider-Man makes it himself, and so he's spending that money on the assets for it. But it really just works at, you're at the end stage, you're at the end level screen. It says you took pictures of these people. You earned $200. That, $200, it translates to this much web.

Several dollars. So that's how it worked. But, yeah, it was a, you, if you see Doc Ock, you don't just want to punch him. You want to turn, switch over to your camera and photograph him to get the, to get the money for it. And that would be huge in kind of later games. I didn't realize how early this showed up, but that's like the same thing you do. And like, Bioshock when you have to research enemies or Dark Cloud 2, when you have to research enemies. And it's that risk reward of like, you know, I'm putting myself in danger in order to get this advantage later by not fighting right away.

Dead rising also. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was way ahead of the time there. Yeah. It was scanning stuff before many games were doing it. And it was just a natural extension of doing Spider-Man the right way.

And they also wanted his sprite to be cool and getting cool poses. When he climbs up walls, it has to look all spidery. It's something that drives me crazy looking at the other games that came out of this time that Spider-Man is just, like, stood up straight and running in place. It's like strutting down the street. Yeah, that's Spider-Man. Good posture, Spiderman. You don't get that until you see Spider-Man not posed in weird ways. Like, Spider-Man is a weirdo who, like, crouches and takes odd positions.

That's what he is. I think you're thinking of Spider-Man in his amazing posture, pal. Yeah. Spider-Man is amazing backbrace. Educational comic. And so they took real pride in making Spider-Man look cool. And I believe it was, let me look at the name. Yeah, it was Scott Halley. It was the person they credited as the artist really instrumental in getting the design of Spider-Man correct or as cool as possible.

And the other plot of it is, so the plot of it is that Spider-Man is framed for planting about. your bombs in New York that are going to explode in 24 hours. So you have a ticking clock in the game that's constantly at the bottom of the screen, which doesn't really run in real time. But also, every time you die, the clock goes down

too. And... So kind of Prince of Persia-ish. Yeah. I never thought of it like that. Yeah. And that the villain is Kingpin, but also in it are Docok, Electro, lizard, hobgoblin, and Venom. And Venom actually kind of appears in fun ways, like, one

time you beat Top Goblin, you think you're done, and then Venom pops out and you have to fight Venom. And this was when Venom was super cool, not a villain, like, not an anti-hero, but a straight-up bad guy. Not a soup kitchen worker yet. Yeah. And that he's, like, he kidnaps Mary Jane again. And so at the end of the game, you have to beat up Kingpin and say Barry Jane from being

dumped in a vat of acid. And it's pretty, it's pretty nutty to look at actually. It's grizzly. Isn't that the one where Kingpin will put both Spider-Man and Mary Jane in a bat of acid if you lose? Yes. I just saw a gift of this online. Ooh. Yes, but they actually...

It's really horrible. It is pretty hard-fying, but that's in the Sega CD remake of this game. But they would make it more grizzly. You can fail and she'll fall in and you'll be like, game over. Mary Jane's is, she does a pile of, like, coronet bones that matter. Closed casket. It explains the Marvel comic what it. if Mary Jane and Spider-Man were dissolved in acid

that I read. Not a great seller. It's a dark comic. It's super duper grizzly. But yeah, also that the master system game-gure versions were just less cool versions of this that had the same stages

and most of the same abilities, like you can still take the photographs in it too. But it was just super-duper simple comparatively, especially like the Sprite just didn't look as cool either. And the music's pretty nice in it. I actually want to throw people in general two of my old buddies,

Brett Elston, who's, I think, been on the show before he... Oh, yeah, quite a few times. He does the video game music podcast, VG Empire, and he did one called Spectacular Spider-Sounds, all about the Spider-Man game soundtrack. So, and there's a lot of focus on the Genesis ones. But, yeah, it's pretty much it.

It made, it made, Spider-Man was, this Spider-Man game for Sega was central in, like, so many of their ads. I remember in those 1992 Spider-Man comics that turned me into a forever Spider-Man fan. I remember, I see it's so clearly an amazing Spider-Man 364. There's a page of like, get all your favorite heroes in one system on the game gear. Spider-Man, Bart, and George Foreman, all together.

And Buster Douglas. I remember their team up, Secret Wars 3. Sonic and Knuckles and Lasorda. Again, this is like Sonic hadn't completely replaced every other character as the only Sega a character that mattered, you know, and so they were still advertising the crap out of, and that did kind of sell me out of a game gear of, oh yeah, I can get

Spider-Man Bart Simpson and Flicky, all right. On the same machine. Awesome. We've got so many more games to cover. We'll be back right after our break. Hey! It's Rob Riggles. And Sarah Tiana.

And you are listening to Riggles Pits. Yeah, and a ham horn. And we have a new podcast. You can find our show exclusively on the Podcast One app on Podcastsports.com. And don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcast. Every Thursday, we're going to sit around and we're going to talk about the things that really excite us like life, comedy, sports. A lot of sports. Ourselves.

A lot of Sarah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Kim Jong-un. Yeah. Whatever. It's going to be a lot of fun. join us.

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Dr. Octopus has assembled Electro, Mysterio, Hobgoblin, and more. Only you can disarm his evil plan to rule the world. For portable web-swinging action, it's Spider-Man 2 for Game Boy and Spider-Man for Game Gear. You'll need your spider sense when you take on supervillains, venom, and carnage. Get ready as Marvel Comics Dream Team bursts onto Super Nintendo in Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcades' Revenge. It'll take all your mutant powers, Spighted's Webs, Wolverines' Adamantium Clause, Cyclops optic blasts, storms, lightning, and gambits exploding cards to foil Arcades' diabolical plot. Marvel Comics Amazing Spider-Man on NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, and now Super Nintendo. If this is too much action for you, take it up with this guy.

BASSO- BOR. BOR. THEIR. THEIR. THEIR. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be.

We're going to be. Thank you. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. So our next video game with the Spider-Man in it, it is Spider-Man, the video game aptly named. It's a 1999 arcade. I can say I have never seen this game in my life. I've been to so many arcades in 1991.

It was never there. It was always Simpsons, Ninja Turtles. Never Spider-Man. I keep traveling back in time to 1991 looking for this game, and I never see it. They have it at ground control now. So next time you're in Portland. Okay, cool. I might be there soon.

I played through it. It was, it's very fun. This is a good game. Well, man, then I was a lucky boy. Because they did have it at the Atlanta arcade places I was going to. It was there with X-Men and Ninja Turtles and Simpsons. But unlike those Konami games, this is by Sega's amusement division. While the American side was working on Genesis games, the license also gets handed to the arcade people.

I think that's why I was dissing the look of the Genesis Spider-Man, because immediately, I was going in order doing this research as you were sending me your notes. I looked at this one. I was like, wow, this Spider-Man looks great. It is a good-looking game. This is gorgeous. The art is the best part of this game. Like, Spider-Man and everybody else is so vibrant and alive.

I kind of, the way everybody is, their bodies are, they're like kind of extra lanky, but I like that. It's a very specific look to them. And there's sound effects everywhere. And there's also like, I mean, like on screen. Like, like the speech bubbles appear.

I thought it was funny because a few of them are just bizarre. The punching automatopoeia is Vok, V-O-K. I feel like Japan should have ran that by someone, maybe. I don't know. I think that's German for some. Vok. I must make my stove-fri in a vok. And this is a really weird, so it's a classic quarter muncher brawler, and that means you need four people in it.

And you get Spider-Man with his best buddies, Black Cat, Hawkeye, and Namor the Submariner. Spider-Man and his amazing friends with benefits. Black Cat is, like, she's at least like a good friend with benefits for Spidey. But, like, he has no real relationship with Hawkeye or Namor. In comics. Spider-Man has no friends. And it's also, we just talk for just a tiny moment about how brave it is to make it Speedo Namor. Yeah.

It's not any of the redesigns where they gave him clothes. So I think there's one, like, Adonis walking through, like, who's just... One player really likes a Speedo Man. Yeah, the guy's going crazy. Yeah, Namor, classically, is a guy with, he's one of Marvel's, he is Marvel's actually very first superhero. The first mutant. Yeah, and also the first mutant.

And he's, but he's. Also the grumpiest one. Mm-hmm. And he's imperious Rex, is the saying. But he is not Spitey's friend in any way. It felt more like Marvel just said, look, you can't, you can't have Avengers there in this game. He can't have X-Men there in this game.

Well, isn't Hawkeye in the Avengers? Hawkeye is in the Avengers. I associate with him just with Avengers, and then Spider-Man, I associate him. associate with always wanting to be an Avenger but never actually being allowed into the club. Yeah, at this time in the comics he had become a reserve Avenger while, meanwhile, Hawkeye was

leading the West Coast Avengers. God. But who was in the Avengers Selective Service? Beat us up, Bob. You nerds. And Namor was just, oh no, he's West Coast Avengers also. And Black Cat actually had lost her powers and it was retired

at the time in the comics. So she was just a lady walking around beating dudes up. She was dating Flash Thompson, actually, in a romantic subplot. Goodness, gracious. But was this like before or after Flash was a werewolf from the moon? No, that was John Jameson Jr. Oh, that's right. I got mixed up.

It's easy to get it mixed up. At some point, guys, let's just start making up stuff and see if it follows up. I will believe anything you tell me. But, hey, let's have like a one-piece game series in here, and I will fool all of you. Revenge. Yes. But for as random as the heroes were, the super villains were like A plus. They got all the best people.

They got kingpin, venom, Doc Auk, the best, the best. Lizard, scorpion, sandman, green goblin, hobgoblin, and Dr. Doom, and you fight him in Latvaria. Okay, so Dr. Doom actually makes sense for Namor and like no one else. Yeah, well, I think. Hawkeye v. Dr. Doom is just not a classic. The Avengers, Dr. Doom is a okay. Well, but Dr. Doom would, like, mop the floor with all of them. But if you're working to the end of a game where you want to fight a bunch of robots in a castle,

then Dr. Doom is the guy you're going to pick. And, yeah, the... He's kind of the Marvel Comics version of Shredder. Yeah, totally. And though at the end of the game, when you beat Dr. Doom finally, he explodes in, like, a bunch of robot parts. Yeah, I was going to say, is this a DoomBot? It is a DoomBot, I believe. It's not Christoph.

And also his... Oh, yeah, Christoph, he... and how Christoph is a, like, his... There we go. The Adopting the edge case that you don't know what this is. The adopted child he takes on to be his heir, who then is basically a child in a Dr. Doom-sized robots. Wow.

And, yeah, it's... They went through a lot of convolutions to retcon every loss that Dr. Doom ever had because they wanted to be like, no, he's the best villain. He's never been defeated, except all these other times he was defeated, but that was actually a robot or a little boy. Yeah, John Byrne was obsessed with keeping. his win-loss record as perfect.

That was actually a wizard. It usually was a wizard. It's for parody with life model decoys. Yeah. If the good guys get to do it, the bad guys get to as well. And the plot, too, is that Venom is try, or that Dr. Doom has recreated the Venom symbiote and is trying to take over the world with it, which is an excuse for you to fight a bunch of venom sprites at the end of the game.

Land to Giant Venom. Yeah. There's a huge screen-filling venom you fight as the small version. And that was so cool. That's the coolest thing about. this game, it's pretty much a standard brawler, except once a stage, the camera will zoom out to be more of a traditional platformer, and you'll, and you just kind of explore a big stage, you'll even fight, like, you fight Dr. Doom in that, sorry, you fight Dr. Octopus in

that scale, not in the close-up scale. So they got pretty creative in that, and it also let Spider-Man actually, like, climb walls for a change. His powers really aren't used that well near, because you have to consider. Or, well, somebody might play this game entirely as Hawkeye. So there can't be a part where Hawkeye climbs up a wall to get somewhere. Yeah, we're not seeing a whole lot of web play in these games outside of, like, the first one. A bit sprinkled here. That's really just between Spidey and Mary Jane.

But, yeah, the art in it is just gorgeous. I love this draw. The game over art of Spider-Man is beautiful in this game because he's all beat up and shrugging your shoulders. It's brought down by Zee, demons, and there's a saw blade that comes down into his chest. Yeah, I think I might actually have the artist for my episode covers, Nick Daniel, recreate this, because it looks like a mad magazine cover. And I can see the text above it saying, in this issue, we splendor. We splander, we slander, spider bland.

And it's just like him shrugging in the what-me-worry pose. Spidey beats up the usual gang of idiots. The lighter side of Spider-Man. That's just great art. And if you assume Spider-Man is showing you that after you run out of quarters, he's like, hey, you're right out of quarters. Go ask your mom. It's in the spitey suit.

And the plot of this would actually be kind of redone in the 2008 Mighty Avengers comic storyline Venom bomb, where Dr. Doom shoots a venom bomb at Manhattan and a bunch of symbiates take over people's bodies. So I wonder if Brian Michael Bendis, the writer, played this game and was basing it on that or not. But just watch a playthrough of this because it is so gorgeous, the art is so gorgeous. I wish this had been released in the way Konami released all of their beat-em-ups in the last generation, but I'm guessing Sega and Marvel weren't really talking then, so it wasn't going to happen. Well, I mean, if you see it, I definitely drop a quarter in it, and, like, even, you know, if you find it, you can Google it, like, if you want to find, check out of the meme thing, like, I recommend doing it. I think this is pretty fun. Yeah, when I'm in Portland this summer, I will play this game for the first time.

Yeah, we should definitely play some, because it's an extremely, like, I mean, it's just a beat-em-up, like, all these games have a sameness to them. playing for is the flavor. And the graphics and flavor and sound effects and music and stuff. I call the Speedo Man. Yeah, yeah. That zoom in, zoom out thing actually I feel like it adds a lot. Oh, yeah. It's a very neat mechanic.

It's really cool, yeah. Yeah, the Ninja Turtle games were two in that. Our next game is Spider-Man Return of the Sinister Six. 1992 for NES, Master System, and Game Gear. Henry, please, what is this game? And who are the Sinister Six? Well, so Sega was in the middle of their Spider-Man games, but LJN still had the license, so they were putting it out on,

the Nintendo systems mainly, and this was them creating, recreating the amazing Spider-Man story from 334 to 339. The Sinister Six was a team-up of all of Spider-Man's first villains, which is Dr. Octopus, Sandman, Electro, Hobgob, well, Hobgob, actually wasn't in the original lineup, Vulture, Mysterio, and so they all team up to take on Spider-Man in the 90s, in this big, crossover event and that translates in this game to kind of Mega Man ish going through six different stages each themed after one of the villains and so you're going through the Hobgoblin stage you fight Hobgoblin and you go through the Samman stage you fight Samman at the end and it's pretty straightforward in that way and it's another Bits studio production barf I will say despite the quality of the game itself I love the box art it's just Spider-Man's face and the enemies are reflected in his eyes and his mask.

And I feel like the one thing LGAN got right was their packaging. It managed to succor a lot of people into buying the Friday the 13th game into buying back to the future. I feel like they knew how to bait and switch people. They knew how to trick children. Yes. And they spent the big money to get Eric Larson, who was the artist of that crossover, to do the box art for it too.

So if you were a kid like me who was reading those comics and then saw that cover, you didn't realize it wouldn't look anything like. that you were just like cool the uh eric larsons cartoons are jumping off the page of me and uh yeah there's not much more to say to it either it's it's you kind of walk around a bunch of stages till you find keys and it opens up a door at the end that then you walk through megaman style to then have a like a one room fight against the against the villain and uh they took they they took art from the last page of spider man versus superman comic too which they just like straight off stole from the late

Ross Andrews and made that the wind screen. It's like, you beat everybody. Here's a drawing. The end. And like, here's three credits. They did a little, bits did a little better work with next year's game, which was on the Super NES and Genesis.

And that game is, is this the game you're talking? Yeah, Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcades Revenge, and that's 93 for S&S, Genesis, Game Gear, and Game Boy. I did play the S&ES version of this back in the day. I don't remember what I thought of it, but I just thought it was cool that there were a bunch of different characters in it.

I also played it on a rental and thought it was very confusing. The layouts are like really vague and it's, you know, kind of exploratory but not in a Metroidvania sense. It's just like, where the hell am I going since? And why can't I get through this passage and so on and so forth? Yeah, very confusing level. This is Bits Laboratory too, right? God, they did so many of these games.

The level layouts varied, though. So like the kind of gimmick here. So that's how the Spider-Man stage plays. That's a little bit of how the Storm stage plays. psychop stage, but other ones, it's like the Wolverine and Gambit stage are almost like runners. Like you have something at the left that's chasing you. You have to, so they kind of vary the gameplay, depending on the character, which is kind of

cool, but it's a little bit of a woof. Yeah, something about the game experience I had playing this always makes me kind of muddle it in my mind with Krusty's Funhouse. I don't know why, but I think they just have that kind of similar sort of like non-linear stage design where you're just kind of wandering around doing stuff. It's a little vague. Very European. I'm not using that in a derogatory way.

I feel like European platformers. I think European platforms have that kind of style. This is a Pennsylvania developed game, though. But I think you're thinking of Cresby's Funhouse because one of these levels is just like a toy, a toy factory or like a toy. Well, I mean, it's arcades. Right, right. It's a lot of jack in the boxes. It was always the least interesting X-Men villain.

Well, you knew you were in for a goofy story when Arcade showed up, but you'd at least get, like, funny draw. I think it was he's a guy the artist's love because they're like, Well, I can draw anything that Arcade makes. He just makes all these. He's more like a Superman, 50s-style Superman villain who fights the X-Men. Yeah, and it's always stuff like, oh, no, Colossus is inside of a giant pinball game. I mean, weren't all of Superman's early enemies just like magic imps? Magic imps or like scientists or a guy literally called the trickster who is like,

well, this big whoopee cushion is going to get you Superman. And that's kind of the same way arcade comes from. But actually, it's funny you mention Krusty's Funhouse because a person in common works on this friend of Talking Simpsons game producer Paul Provenzano. I guess I should watch what I say. He worked on both of those. Well, he would admit they weren't great games in the LGN years. But so he told us the story about going to the Marvel offices and with the editors going over like what could be the subjects for Spider-Man games for LJN. And they were suggesting bad guys to him.

And then when he's going through the booklet or whatever of lists of villains, he sees like, but this guy's literally called Arcade. Like, this guy is a video game villain. We've got to use this guy. It's staring you right in the face. But really, it's more arcade and the classic boardwalks. It's not in the video game arcades. A lot of small shops and boutiques.

Actually, he's got a bow tie. So he's kind of like a forerunner to Howard Phillips. Oh. Yeah, he is. They're both of the same school of thought, the Tucker Carlson. I am sorry to even compare anyone to Tucker. That was really unnecessary. But this also rips off, when I rips off,

it takes direct inspiration from uncanny X-Men 123 through 125, right down to the opening is Spider-Man is swinging around and then sees a dump truck kidnap the X-Men, and he goes and follows it to save them from arcade. The X-Men were thwarted by a dump truck? It's one of the most emasculating X-moments. Well, like a tube pops out of a fake dump truck and then sucks them up

and then they all wake up by a vacuum, Bob. Wow. And they all wake up in pinballs. And the truck was lined with like anti-X-Men chemicals or something. They couldn't punch their way out of it.

This was before everyone was like hyper-powered and they could still be punked by pretty common things. Yeah. And Arcade would then drop them into murder world, which is just this is amusement park

of a more deadly danger room. And the trick with it is that it allowed him to make robots of guys who they wouldn't normally fight. So while they would fight Carnage, Juggernaut, Rino, and Apocalypse, they also had very weird

X-Men villains who know what he has heard of like Celine and Nazareth, or no, Nazteerth. Nasterre. He was an Excalibur. I don't know. The guy, like, I was not reading that. I think Celine shows up. Isn't that one of the the, like, Balasco's demons from

the, uh, the, uh, the, magic's realm, whatever the hell that is? Inferno. Uh, see, yeah, no, he was an inferno. Yeah, he was an inferno guy. I am not the excellent answer. I can't believe I know that. And, yeah, this was made by software creations of Plock and Silver Surfer NES phase. Ooh.

Look forward to our Plot episode, right? Yeah, the music was all right. And they were apparently really difficult to work with, and LGN gave them a lot of grief during development. They're like, do you know who we are? We're the Plot people. Watch yourself. And then also in 1993, that's when the Sega CD version of Spider-Man came out. then renamed Amazing Spider-Man

versus the Kingpin. And Sega thought it would, just as Spider-Man and saved the Genesis, Spider-Man was going to save the Sega CD. And so they invested... Nothing can save the Sega CD. The Sega CD was like the dissolved Mary Jane's skeleton and acid by this point.

But they went all out. The developer they hired was Monkey Business to remake the game for Sega CD. So there were a crap load of cuts scenes, full CD music, a new overworld map, a couple new levels, one where you fight a vulture

on a moving train, which, like, technically you look at it, like, I probably couldn't have done this on the Genesis. And then, yeah, the cutscene, that's where the cutscene of, if you fail, you can actually have like three different endings to the game. One, you beat up Kingpin,

but the timer has run out. So Mary Jane has been dissolved in acid and Spider-Man's like, you're going to pay for this, Kingpin. That's where Marvel's Injustice comes in. Or you lose to the Kingpin, and then he dumps you both in acid together and he's horrifying gift.

They're all about acid in these games. Kingpin loves acid. Is that his thing? Like, what is Kingpin's deal? Is he? No, he sells drugs and pretends to be a legitimate businessman. And was he invented in the, he feels like a very 80s villain. Actually, no. He was he in 80s, wasn't he? No, he was a 66th creation. First appeared

in Amazing Spider-Man, 50. But then in the late 70s, they realized he was a much better fit for Daredevil than Spider-Man, so he becomes a Daredevil villain. But I think if you're licensing Spider-Man villains, he ends up in your pack, so you can do a Kingpin guy. You've got to have a way for Spider-Man to make fat jokes. Yeah. Over and over and over. Well, it's also he works better as a Daredevil villain because despite the fact that Kingpin is much bigger than Spider-Man, he is still, he is a large human who is nowhere near as strong as Spider-Man. So he's not a physical threat.

And, yeah, the, I just play one of these cutscenes. The voice work in it, I will give them credit for doing great work on the voice work then, like spending the money on it. But it sounds like crap. Now, Cam Clark is the big standout of it. Cool. I'll play a part of one of these cutscenes here. It's a long story, Kurt. You might say I ran into you while I was looking for something down here.

That's Spider-Man, by the way. Yeah, right. I'll keep going. A key. Could this be the key? Where did that come from? I don't know. I never saw it before.

Here, you take it. Thanks, Kurt. This will help me clobber the kingpin. I'm Peter Parker. I'm such a young man. That's right before he was going to tell kids to eat ground crackers to keep down the urges. Yeah, it's, I couldn't find out the name of any actor from it. They weren't credited.

It's all non-union. Spider-Man remind you to put saltpita in your mashed potatoes. But when you hear Cam Clark's voice You're like, all right, that's Leonardo And also, though, that the music was done by Spencer Nielsen Like Sega made a big deal of getting this guy Who had worked in real music to work on Sega CD games And he'd got the lead singer of One Hit Wonder Mr. Big

To do two different songs for it Including the big hit Swing Time Which would play during boss fights Swing Time, by the way Dib-Doo-Doo-Doo. Yeah, and you should also suggest you listen to, again, VG Empire. My friend Brett did a whole interview with Spencer Nielsen about all his work on Sega CD games, including how the Mr. Big lead singer

worked on the game. So our next game is another one I played, because it's another one I played because it came in a cool red cartridge. It's Spider-Man and Venom, Maximum Carnage, 94, Genesis and S-N-E-S, and also has a green jelly soundtrack, which leads to a lot of bad guitar samples in these games. Yeah, this was, I'd call this the peak of LJN and Software Creation Spider-Man work. It was still, they just made another brawler, but this was the best-looking and best playing of those brawlers, though.

It is balls hard. That game is so difficult. I never beat it without a game, Sheenie. Yeah, it's an arcade-style brawler, but it's, like, there's no... You're giving limited continues and sort of just, like, get good or else you'll never finish this game. I think I played, like, up to the third stage in this when I rented it. That's about it. It's always a weird value proposition when, like, an arcade-style brawler goes directly to console.

Yeah, yeah. So there's no... It's not like, oh, you know, I have the arcade experience with this limited resource to get me in. It's just like, oh, I'm just going to unlimited to continue and make my way through this with this kind of bad mechanic. Only later in life, like, on the PlayStation and Dreamcast, I think they would actually go and, and add extra features to be like, we'll give you this extra mode. We know it's just an arcade game. So just here have this, too.

And the big draw as a kid for me, though, was you could play as Venom. You could never play as Venom in a game before this. So it's like, this is a game. You'd have a Spider-Man stage and you'd have a Venom stage. And you kind of switch between the two. That was a big draw, not to mention that it came. Right as Carnage was at his hottest, it was the year before in the Spider-Man comics, there was a 14-part three-month-long Spider-Man event called Max

some carnage. And this is that exactly. Like, they, they redraw panels from every issue telling every plot point in order. In the comic, Spider-Man doesn't beat up a ton of random idiots. Like, he's like, he doesn't beat up 80 dudes on skateboards in the comic. That'd be a great comic. Just 50 pages of beating up on skateboarders. Spider-Man beats up skateboarders.

Spider-Man, no more. He gives up for all his skateboarders. And, but all the villains from the comic are there, even though the one, you wouldn't pick to be good for, like, a guy called CarryOn is one of the enemies who's just like a floating dude who spreads disease. Like, he's not really a good video game villain, but he was in the comics. The way you pronounce that made it sound a lot like Carillon on an airplane. It's like, what a villain. You're right.

This won't fit in the suitcase. Carians. And also they got every superhero who was in the comic too as they're basically just a summon who does an attack. and that includes Captain America, Iron Fist, Firestar, and Deathlock. They all appear in it. And, yeah, it's, I loved playing it. It was the right time for it. I don't think it holds up particularly well.

It doesn't. I want to go back to the green jelly thing. They did the soundtrack, and that was a heavily advertised feature. At this point in my life, I'm like, I vaguely remember them from that three little pig song, but I've never really heard anything else from them. I think they were counting on kids with poor eyesight to think it was Green Day on the box or something. Just like, it's green something, kids, you know them. There was kind of green jelly mania.

Really? I remember that being, because that video was ubiquitous. It was, yeah. Were they green jelly at this point or green jello still? I think they were green jelly. They're credited as jelly in the game. Once they started, once they signed with a record label, they were told, like, you can't be jello anymore. You got to be jelly.

I mean, around this time, there was also the Beavs and Butthead games, which had Guar soundtracks. And that felt more appropriate because Beavis and Butthead liked Guar. Garguar was more notable than green jelly for other reasons, but yeah, it struck me as odd. It's very hard to imagine Peter Parker coming home from a day of photography and then pop it on his green jelly to me. Time to relax to little pigs. It more felt akin to Carnage's taste because Carnage was a hard rock dude who, like, he, it's one of his first appearances, he goes to basically a Metallica concert and murders people on stage. So it's, that's what Carnage expressed. It was like, these kids today with their hard rock and roll and heavy metal, they're going to be killers.

Like, that's Euclitus Cassidy. I see. So you mentioned the value proposition of this game. Let me skew that for you a little bit more. The Japanese version of this game is one of those, a handful of American developed games by acclaim, published in extremely small numbers in Japan that now sells for like $2,000. So if you want to really question the value proposition, you go track yourself. down a Japanese copy of this game. And it was only on Genesis there.

And I think that's because the Super Famicom had exclusively Amazing Spider-Man, Lethal Fos. I have never heard of this game until I saw these notes of yours, Henry. Yeah, I had actually never heard of it until this either. It was released in March 1995, only Super Famicom, Japan only. And actually, I was stunned looking at it because, like, the Sprite is fantastic. They took the Mark Bagley drawing of Spider-Man and really did make the sprite as close

to him as possible. It's really surprising. It was made by agenda for Epoch, and Epox mainly just releases a ton of Doremon games. That's their main thing they've been doing for like 20 years. They publish some other stuff that I've covered on Game Boy Works,

like Cyray, that weird puzzle game where like the moon comes out and breaks up the level every few seconds. They were a pretty weird company. And they also had, you know, the pocket game computer in the early They released the first, like, Game Boy-style handheld game system five years before Game Boy. So they could have been big, but they weren't.

Well, in the developer agenda, the only, like, non-Doriamon game I could find that we've heard of is they did the DS Clubhouse Games game, which was just like, play poker with your friends on your DS. So they're still around. Yeah, they apparently are still around. And it's a very straightforward screen scroller where Spider-Man fights Beatle, Docok, Green Goblin, Venom. Carnage, and basically it's kind of its own version of the Maximum Carnage storyline as well. And the only other thing I'll say awesome

about it is that they paid Mark Bagley for a really great original cover art, and way before the Ultimate Spider-Man video game perfectly captured Bagley's artwork, this got the closest. So it looked kind of fun, and there's apparently an English translation ROM

out there. Spider-Man also talks a lot in it in Japanese. I played a little bit of the ROM. It feels very stiff. And Spider-Man has a weird, he has that weird stick back. Like, it's good posture Spider-Man rather than regular Spider-Man. I think when you stop moving, though, he crouches down and, like, his, like, famous crouch.

When he walks, he walks like a fema-thum-bott. Like, it's very strange. He's going to fire out of his apse to you. He's like a real spider. It just comes out of his thorax. So, I think we're right now time, but I want to just zip through these to get to the last one because it's a biggie. So first off, November 1995, there's the Venom Spider-Man separation anxiety.

which is the sequel to Maximum Carnage and does not do very well because I think like the spell was over just like the fad was done people weren't as into it Yeah and was this a black cartridge I want to say they had a similar gimmick with this one I'll look it up

And in that one you fight a bunch of carnage ripoffs and also carnage So there's a plot in a Venom comic where they make five more children of Venom who look like carnage except they're blamer The only cool one is the one the smurfed of the group's scream.

She has like killer giant 80s hair that just stabs people. Yeah, no black heart in the cover art is bad. Just a bunch of compositive images of existing venom types. What are they? Those are his children. Yeah, you're teaming up with

men of fighters fight the evil. I see. Symbiots in San Francisco. And yeah, daredevil, hawkeye, Captain America, and Ghostwriter also appear in the game. At the same time, there was much more kid focused Spider-Man game in 95 for the Super Niesc and Genesis.

Spider-Man the animated series based on the then-new Spider-Man animated series of Bob Hates. Not just me. But yeah, it's really kiddie, it's really cheesy. The only thing that really connects it to the cartoon is just the designs of all the villains.

Otherwise, it works just like any other Spider-Man game. They don't recreate any real storylines from the cartoon. And this would be L.J.N.'s Final Spider-Man game. And it was developed by Western Technologies, who, as far as I can tell, their most famous thing was that they made the games that were bundled with the menacer. And so they worked on this after that. Thank you for your service.

And, yeah, you fight doc,og, spider slayers, venom and scorpion, all straight from the thing. And it's the Boxart 2, as a kid, I didn't even want to play it because I was like, this is a lame kids game based on a cartoon. I want a game with murderers like carnage, man. I'll play these spawn brawl. Thank you very much. I feel like, yeah, so we've seen Bits Laboratory and then software creations are the ones who mishandled the franchise so far. And Sega and maybe the Atari people are the good guys in this, to date, in this chronology. Yeah, though.

Well, Sega's going to be a bad guy soon. But then enters Capcom with not exactly Spider-Man games, but games where Spider-Man is in them. Marvel's Super Heroes comes out in 1995. after X-Men Children of the Adam begins the Marvel years with Capcom they then make a Marvel a fighting game that's all the popular Marvel characters

not just mutants and it's sort of a retelling of the Infinity Gauntlet comics which is now what they're doing again with Marvel versus Capcom Infinite and Spider-Man is just one of the choosable characters in it but it's not really, there's maybe like a Spider-Man stage in them but he's just

another member of the troop. There's also was the Super NES didn't get a Marvel Superheroes fighting game. It got a platformer made with those sprites called War of the Gems. You're right, yeah. Where you could play a Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, or Wolverine,

and just go through the world and collect all the gems. But, so technically it is a Spider-Man game if you play through it all the way to Spider-Man. But Spider-Man's been a consistent part of the Capcom world. He just got... Well, this is dating it. He's in Marvel versus Capcom infinite as well, keeping that streak going.

And Venom was later added to Marvel versus Capcom, too. And he's kind of, he was just like a burlyer Spider-Man was how he played as. But I love the Spider-Man Sprite in the California. Oh, yeah. It looks really good. And I assume they probably reused it throughout the games or maybe improved it. Yeah, they pretty much reused it. I just like how lanky is, how he kind of just likes, you know, he's very lanky.

He's very well-animated, very fluid. And I feel like not since the arcade game, did he look this good. Yeah, and when he would do the Maximum Spider? Or also, I love using It's just an image of him pointing at His like taunt is, do your job. It's just a funny image of Spider-Man pointing at Chunleys. You disappoint me.

Spider-Rand. And then in 1996, we come to the end of the pixel era of Spider-Man, and it is a sad one. It was the amazing Spider-Man, Web of Fire, for the 32X. And I bet that they thought, just as Spider-Man helped the Genesis and, well, it didn't save the Sega CD, but I guess it was a good game on it. Maybe they thought 32X needed a Spider-Man game, too. But by the time it came out, the 32-X was dead.

So it just took them too long to make it, and it was made in small quantities, so it is actually a very collectible game because of that. Yeah, I think it's the most expensive 32x game, which is to say, like, $60 or $70. And it was developed by Blue Sky coming off of that. Vector Man. You can really tell if you take a look at it. Yes. Well, because they thought that the silicon graphics and motion-captured Spider-Man would look really awesome, but it looks so much worse than he did in the Genesis game.

Yeah, I mean, Vector Man was what, just a collection of balls stuck together? That works. That works as a silicon-based graphic. Yeah, there's an abstraction to it. But, yeah, people. They just, every character is Sid from Toy Story. Yeah. Just, no, it's so uncanny Valley.

And the game is just like balls, too. It's, number one, he fights some of, like, the lamest felonies he's ever fought in a game. The Eel, Dragon Man, Super Adaptoid, and Thermite. Who the hell are they? Are they actually from the comic? They all are from the comics, but there you never, you rarely see them because they're like the guys. They're the ones who always stole the hostess fruit pies. Yes.

Are there a guy Spider-Man beats in, like, the first page? It's also, like, it makes sense to start introducing these weird also rands because you don't want to literally just fight Green Goblin every single time you play a Spider-Man game but the issue is the Rokes Gallery is not quite big enough to support that. Yeah, I would have at least anchored it with like you get Doc Ock and then also the Eel and Dragon Man

work for him and yes. Meanwhile, Super Adaptoid is like he's a high-level Avengers villain, you know, but that's also because he's fighting Hydra in this game which Spider-Man is not really known for fighting Hydra and they put a techno bubble over Manhattan

and Spider-Man pretty much just has to run over rooftops and beat up hydra villains, which at least like those are henchmen, Spider-Man would beat up hundreds of if he was fighting them, I guess. But it's, it's lame. And also, the only other superhero in it is Daredevil, who you can kind of summon if you collect enough Daredevil logos around a stage. But it is really, yeah. It is just really an ugly game.

I played through it. I played through it and had no fun with it. I could at least easily put it into the test mode. And so I just had unlimited lives. And the end level, like, is a wannabe. Oh, the clock's ticking down. It's like, Metroid, get out of here. And it's like, this sucks.

It's no fun. Swinging through this. You swing, your indoors web swinging. And then you're like, I hit another wall. Climb down. Web swing, hit another wall. Oh, this sucks. That sounds very tedious.

And this would be the last Spider-Man game until Activision's and Neversoft's Spider-Man. So, what, three or four years off? It would be three or four years away. And I believe it's... Because this game is so bad. We're just like, let the corpse cool for a bit. Well, actually, this is an assumption I'm making,

but I base it on the massive research I did for the Spider-Man movie history. From 1996 to 1999, there was no real progress on making a Spider-Man movie because Marvel was bankrupt. And I think it was preventing them from making any deals because they didn't know who was technically in charge of Marvel to make deals. So I wouldn't be surprised if it was just for three years, they couldn't make a deal with any publisher to make a game

because they didn't know who was in charge of Marvel. So that is my new reasoning for why I think there was a lull of Spider-Man games. I totally buy that theory. But so, yeah, a very sad way to end Spider-Man's big time as a video game icon

even, at least for Sega with Tangled Web. like eight people bought on a 32x barf. So I guess we have one final question that Henry wants to ask us. Go ahead, Henry. I want you to be the one who does this. You put together all these notes. I'm so bashful.

I mean, like, what was your favorite Spider-Man game of that, of this era? Like, which one did you, or did you play? The arcade one was my favorite. It's my favorite to go back to just because it is the simplest and the art is so gorgeous. And it's just very, like, straightforward in what is fun about Spider-Man. The Genesis one, I do love its ambition, but it's harder to go back to now. It's kind of needlessly complicated in some ways. I'm going to go with, this is totally unfair because it's the one I like the most,

but it's not really that's Spider-Man related. I think I like the first Marvel versus Capcom the best. Oh, yeah. I'm not a fighting fanatic. I know there are better fighting games. You probably like two more. You probably like three better. But I like one because of how much personality it had for each character.

Like each character had their own theme, their own stage. And I did play a Spider-Man in this game. So it may be cheating a bit, but that's my favorite Spider-Man game, NBC1. Yeah, until Spider-Man will eventually come back and bring the Imperfix with him. And shout out to my Imperfix fans. So if we're just looking at this era, I'd agree with you, the arcade game, I think, is the most fun to play. But, you know, very similar to your answer, Henry. Like, I like that Genesis game.

I played it a lot when I was younger. But I think that the arcade game, like, I'm always happy to play it. When Ground Control got it, I flipped. Like, I was just like, oh, this is so good. Because there's only so many times you can beat Sunset Riders. And that number is three. And once you get to it, it's like, well, I've seen the Barry with me with my money kind of thing.

I've reached my max lifetime playthrus of Sunset Riders. Yes. But not wild guns. So, look out. And the rarity and makes it more special, too. You never got to play it on XBLA or PSN, you know? Jeremy. Without a question, 100% buying a commando for any of us.

Oh, right. I guess it is a secretly the best Spider-Man game. I don't actually like any of these games. I played a bunch of them. and those big white bullets are just spider globs right and the bionic arm is a spider arm let's make this work people spider man has a no kill policy even on the reanimated head of you're taking on like the neo-nazies which is hydra yeah so there you go i've never seen dissolve hitler and acid spider man's fought tons of nazis he's not killed any of them yeah let's

make this a call to action to our listeners make jeremy a bionic commander ram hack that turns him to spider man and he'll be happy that'll be the one spider man game he will like I would, yes. It's amazing that doesn't exist. That'd be heroic. I bet it does. I bet someone tried it. It seems so obvious.

I have a whole bunch of ROM hacks for Bionic Commando and ever seen that one. Four of us didn't come up with that connection before this moment. The Bioniccairot, the Spider-Man thing. Bob kind of did when he made a joke about my Spider-Man toy as a kid. I mean, I feel like that was the genesis of it. I was kind of just surprised I hadn't seen that before. It turns out there is not a ROM hack for this. So you have to go out and make it.

But I do want to wrap up here. Thank you so much, Henry. I will offer a special prize. to whoever makes this ROM hack. If you can make a nice looking Spider-Man rom hack for Bionic Commando, you just got to replace like Master D with...

Oh, Master D, Doc Octopus. Yeah, there you go. And maybe do something about the exploding head. I don't know. That's not really spying. You will get a parish no prize. Yeah. Everybody, I get that reference.

Give me your respect. Right on. You graduated, Bob. Yeah, I did it. Thank you. You're a lot of us. Thank you so much for listening. And special thanks to Henry

for doing my work for me. And doing a great job, all these notes. like introducing me to the world of Spider-Man and being patient with me as I am an ignoramus who knows nothing of the world of spiders or men. Well, I hope I've taught you something, and I look forward to someday doing a sequel of this to talk about the polygonal spidey era. There's so much to talk about, and let us know if you like this and let's know if you want a sequel. I bet the answer will be yes. I think there's also room for a spinoff talking about the versus games. Oh, totally.

Yeah, I mean, we can do so many superhero topics. And if you want to hear more, go back to our episodes with Chris Baker. We talk about a lot of early superhero games. Those are great, too. And also some of the Retronauts East episodes with Chris Sims. So far we've just talked about Batman, but I'm sure there's going to be like some sort of... He keeps saying like, oh, I'd love to do an episode on this. Henry and Bob already kind of touched on that one.

We stole aspires. We need to do a World's Collide thing. Peace to us rivalry. So to wrap up, I have one question for our listeners. Did you hear ads in this episode? Do you hate them? Are you penning an angry message to me right now? Well, stop what you're doing because for five, no wait, three dollars a month.

I'll make it better. a month. If you give that to the Retronauts Patreon, a Patreon.com slash Retronauts, you'll get all of our podcasts a week ahead of time with no ads at a higher bit rate. That is a great deal. And that will help us a lot. It's how we run the show. It's how Jeremy flies out here. It's how we get guests in the show. We pay for their transit. We have for snacks. You help this make this show happen. And if you want to help out, even a dollar a month would be amazing. So go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts to help out. We have some incentives for you. So please check those out. And as for me, I've been on this podcast for a while now. My name is Bob Mackie.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo, and I'll let Henry talk about the other fun stuff we do and stuff that also has a Patreon attached to it. Bob and I do Talking Simpsons, where we go through every episode of The Simpsons from the beginning chronologically and chat about them for 90 minutes straight sometimes, and we have a ton of fun going through Simpsons and explaining every reference and including discovering stuff like, oh, that was a reference to that. And that is supported on patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, where you can listen to a podcast. week early and there's tons of exclusive there too. Bob and I are well I guess the least in season six now when this episode goes out but just go through them on all

your podcast listening devices too and give it a sample. We also do Talking Critic on there and hopefully we'll do a talking thing for every cartoon ever someday. Hachimachi. Gary, where can we find you? What do you do? Yeah, Gary Butterfield of the Duck Feed TV podcast network.

You can find us at DuckFeed.tv. We do a Games Club podcast that's been running for about six years now, where we take a game, talk about it, like a book club. We also have a Patreon. I understand Patreon is what we have instead of universal health care now, so you're going to hear about a lot of them. But at patreon.com slash DuckFeed-T-V-T-V-E-T-V-E.

Love it if you gave the episodes a shot, and we do a bunch of other stuff on that network. So if you like that, you might like the other shows. You can also find me on Twitter at Gary Ba, G-A-R-Y-B-U-H. Well, and Jeremy. And this is what I do, Retronauts. You can find me at Retronauts.com. On Twitter is GameSpite.

I've got various projects like NES works and Game Boy Works, where I go through and play terrible games about Spider-Man and hate life. It's great. So please check those out. Check out the website, Retronauts.com, because it's a real, real website now. It graduated from blog to website. And we have some great people writing for it,

Kim Justice and Kishi, and a fellow named GSK. So they all have different areas of obscure expertise that nicely balance my boring mainstream appeal. So come on over, read it, and it'll make you smarter. Awesome. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Retronauts, and we'll see you then. The Mueller Report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute.

President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to. to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins, says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican Senator to publicly back it.

In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choice is will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do.

The robbery suspect in a man, police, they acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.