Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 204: Spider-Man Games Part 2

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

We left you hanging for over a year after our first exploration of Spider-Man games (episode 135), and now we're back to see what the world of polygons held for Marvel's arachnid hero. Spidey had quite a bit of video game history between his 2000 self-titled game and his... 2018 self-titled game, and we're here to comb through the webs of the past to see if there's anything worth salvaging. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Jeremy Parish as the crew activates their Spider-Sense to figure out which of Spidey's past interactive adventures should be gently shooed out the front door, and which should be swatted with a rolled-up newspaper.

Hey everyone, it's me, Jeremy Parrish, co-host of Retronauts. You may have noticed that we've moved back to Libson after being on podcast 1 for a couple of years, which means you can listen to Retronauts on platforms like Google Play again, and you won't hear any more creepy geotargeted ads. Now that we're setting up at our new home, our new hosts would like to get to know our audience a little better. If you're a fan of Retronauts, we'd be truly grateful if you could take a few minutes out of your day and complete a quick survey for us. Please head over to Survey.libson.com slash Retronauts,

and let us get to know a little bit more about you. Yeah, this is about collecting info for future podcast ads, but it's our way of making sure you'll only hear us reading ads that are relevant and useful to you. Again, that's survey.libson.com slash retronauts, L-I-B-S-Y-N. Thanks. We really appreciate your help. Now, on to the show.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to a very special Retronauts preamble. I am one of the people on this podcast, Bob Mackey, is another person on this podcast. Henry Gilbert, hello. And we recorded the podcast you're about to hear way back in October of 2018, where we ever so young. My gosh.

And between then and now, there was a major difference, and that Stan Lee was alive. Yes. And I have not edited this podcast yet. I'm sure we make some goofs about Stan Lee, but I think he would be okay with it because he played a cartoon character for most of his life. Yes, yeah. I have recorded so many podcasts where I have. have jokingly said, and here we're talking about Stan Lee,

better not risk how he'll be dead by the time it posts, because he was almost 96 when he passed away. He has been old the entire time we have been alive. So it's just been, you have to think about his death a lot of the time in your life. Yeah. But oppositely, it felt like he'd never die. I was going to say, it seemed like he lived forever, but I guess 95 is kind of sort of forever if you're a human being.

So what a full life. I think he's probably much happier wherever he is right now. I don't know what you believe in. But it felt like his last year wasn't super great, people taking advantage of him. Maybe his last few years his wife passed on. And I think at that point, it's like usually when somebody is that old and their partner passes away, they kind of, you know, they're not long for this world after that. No, there were many sad stories of different parties in his life, like different agents and lawyers and, uh, producers who would come into his life and were seemingly just using him for all he was worth

before he was gone like in one case literally selling his blood yes i forgot about that and it also seemed like his daughter didn't seem like such a great person and uh yeah it was it was just a lot of sad details at the end of his life you'd see him do like these interviews and even into his early 90s, Stanley seemed very spry, very like, hey, he had so fun, kiddos. But in his last one, he's like, I am tired. Yeah. He only recently stopped appearing at places, too. You're right. And you met him not too long ago. I'm not sure if we talked about that on the podcast, but you did meet Stan Lee, right? Yes, I mean, I got to be in his presence. Yeah. I even say hello to him at a San Francisco Giants baseball thing of all things. The perfect place to find Stanley at a baseball game.

No, I mean, if people want to hear me talk a long time about how awesome Stan Lee is, I chatted with, I believe, former retronauts guest and the person we talk about on this episode, Chris Baker. Me and him did a quick little podcast remembering Stanley that's for free on the Talking Simpsons Patreon, if you guys want to give that a listen. I totally forgot about that. That's true. That really happened. So much has happened since, what, November he passed away, right? Yeah, November. Yeah, he, and you were out of town. so you couldn't do it.

I think I was in Vancouver for that. Yes, yeah, you're on your mega Vancouver Thanksgiving Triporama. It really was a triporama. But yes, yeah, it's sad that Stanley has passed, and I definitely, I also haven't listened to this podcast. And if I recall when we recorded, definitely talked about Stan being a downloadable character in one of the amazing Spider-Man video games

and him doing funny lines and stuff. It was cute, but it please, If I joke about Stan's mortality there, forgive me. I miss him a lot, and wherever he is, I hope he's happy. I'm sure we all joked about it, but it was all in good fun. I think Stan would appreciate some good-natured ribbing. I think so. He's a very jovial guy.

Kevin Smith would have said much worse jokes. That's true. To his face. With dirtier words, I think. But yes, this podcast is dedicated to the memory of Stanley, so please enjoy our second part of our Spider-Man games retrospective. This week on Retronaut, Uncle Ben had it coming. Welcome to another exciting episode of Retronauts. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackie.

And today's episode is the sequel to our Spider-Man Games episode from about a year ago. Before I continue, who else is here with me today? It's Jeremy Deadweight Parish. Whoa. Is that your superhero alias? It is. It's my role in this podcast. You show up and you ruin every plan.

I haven't played any of these games. Well, I haven't really either, but that's why. Jeremy, third wheel, perish. That's why the real superhero is going to save this podcast. He better is, who is it? Marvel zombie, Henry Gilbert. That's right. And I say I am the host of this episode. But really, you guys demanded a sequel to the Spider-Man episode.

You've been pounding down my door. And really, Henry was the architect of the last one. He wanted to do it. And I said, I could not possibly do this on my own. So he did the first one. He's taken over for this one. Henry put together all of our notes. Henry has played presumably all of these games.

Is that right, Henry? Almost all of them to completion, but have touched them all. Yes. And it's kind of hard to touch them all today. But we're going to go into it. And last time, we left off. I believe it was Retronaut's episode. like 138 or something like that. Look in the archives. It's there. I believe we left off in

1996. Yes. So previously we went through the entire pixel era of Spider-Man from his first game on the Atari in 1982 to his last game for a few years in 1996 on the 32-X, Spider-Man Web of Fire. Oh, yeah, that was bad. And there weren't a lot of... It's a very rare game, though. It's bad, but it's worth a lot of money. And there weren't a lot of highlights in those years, if I'm correct. Is that right? No. The arcade games, the arcade games?

The sake arcade game was a real highlight. And I also did, at the time, really enjoy the first Spider-Man Genesis game that was also called Spider-Man versus Kingpin. It's not good now. And some people, I have a fondness for maximum carnage, but that game is also not good. Yeah, but it came in a red cartridge. I mean, what the hell else do you want? With green jelly, the coolest band.

Wow. Well, we are now... I like the way they were a jello. I want Henry to put us in time here. It's the year 1996. Surge is about to take over the world, the famous soda. What about orbits? Orbits.

It's on the rise, let's say. All of my history facts are soda base, by the way. But, Henry, what is going on with Marvel? Apparently they aren't doing very well in this time period, and that is why we didn't see a lot of games until our first game on this list. Yeah, so December 1996, Marvel files for Chapter 11 bankrupt. And it is because of the bust of the Marvel, of the comic book bubble, it burst from the early 90s, image comics, death of Superman, the all the X-Men number ones, all that. Nightfall. Yeah, Batman Nightfall, yeah.

They all built and built up the comic market to the biggest it ended up. It had been in decades. But then it also came crashing back down when kids fell out of interest or there was just too much product. and Marvel was not being careful with their money, partially because it was being run by a guy who just wanted to goose Marvel stock by saying they'd do something and not actually making stuff. And Marvel had still failed to infiltrate Hollywood, I believe.

So on our other podcast I do with Henry, what a cartoon. The X-Man animated series was their first TV production since the Incredible Hulk series from the 70s. So they did not have a lot of hits. I believe comics were making them the most money. Well, I mean, Roger Corman was making a fantastic poor movie. What the hell else do you run? One saw that on bootleg, unfortunately.

Yeah, the early 90s were defined by Marvel making a lot of movie deals for films that wouldn't actually get made like that Fantastic Four film. And also, James Cameron really wanted to make a Spider-Man movie, but it never got to happen. And it was partially because they didn't want a movie to happen. They wanted to say a movie was happening so it could bring up their stock, but they never actually wanted to go to production. And that kind of led Marvel to a financial dead end in December 1996. and they really needed to rebuild themselves. And the effect that had on games is that Marvel couldn't make any new deals for games either.

Web of Fire was the last breath of the deal they made with Sega in, like, 1989. Meanwhile, the Capcom games, they got lucky. They signed the deal with Marvel right before Chapter 11 bankruptcy. So Spider-Man would continue to appear in pretty much the only Marvel games, the fighting games, that started with Street Fighter and Marvel Heroes, into Marvel versus Capcom and Marvel's Capcom, too. We didn't really talk about those because they came after 96.

How faithful are those games to Spider-Man in terms of just how he moves, what attacks he has, his backgrounds? Spider-Man is a beautiful Spider-Man. It's one of my favorite, like... Is he, like, hunched over on the ground and, like, bobbing up and down? It's always bobbing up and down. He web stuff. He has his maximum spider, and he has very, like, agility-based combos.

Right, yeah, he's very jittery in those games. Like, you get the sense that he's, like, kind of restless and that he's a really fast guy kind of slowing himself down a little bit. And one of my favorite things that get cool about the character is when he wins, his win pose is he webs up his camera

to take a picture of himself for the bugle giving a thumbs up that he did a good job. He's getting his own pictures of Spider-Man. And also Venom was in the first Marvel versus Capcom game, and he's a really good bruiser character. The artist had a lot of fun drawing his symbiotics, shape-shifting into whatever they felt

Yeah, I haven't seen that game in probably a decade, and I can see it moving now. That's great. That was Capcom, like, peak Sprite art era. Great stuff. It's so, they still look so gorgeous today. And the artist, the character artist for Marvel's and Capcom made all of them look amazing. But they weren't really Spider-Man games. Spider-Man was just a participant in them.

But that was really the only place you could play as Spider-Man from 96 to 2000. At least he was in those games, unlike Iron Man, who was supposedly a major-tier character and still didn't show up until Marvel versus Capcom 2. We talked about that in a recent episode. Yeah, it's Iron Man and Captain America. It's funny now how they are at the top of the list, but

of Marvel heroes, but in the mid-90s they were kind of seen as like, what do we do with these guys? We've got U.S. agent. We've got War Machine. Who cares about the originals? It's boring. Those are the harder edge guys. They're not extreme enough. Get them out of here. What about Exo Mano War? We talked about that game, and

it's a stinker. Yeah, I just find that name enchanting and bad. That was my husband's first game he played on a PlayStation. It was he got it. He still likes video games? Yeah, I was going to say he still plays video games. Wow. I mean, I believe his parents were like, this Iron Man guy, he's in those comics you

like. Well, here you go for your new PlayStation. You've heard of men, right? Well, how about Men of War? Exo Man of War. I thought it was a fish. In concept, Exo is not a bad idea because he's, what if Thor was inside an Iron Man costume?

and recent comics have been pretty good with him. But this isn't the Exo Man at War show. But okay, so Marvel's getting their shit together. That's pretty much the late 90s of them. They are like, we need money. Give the X-Men movie rights to Fox. We need more money. Let's figure out how we're going to make this Spider-Man movie

so they were like in a lawsuit for three years. And when it comes to video games, they kind of let all their old licenses drop, except for Capcom, which was kind of grandfathered in. But they had thought all the others drop. And in 98, they finally signed their first, they got their shit together enough to sign their first real game deal with a publisher. And that is Rising Star Activision.

And Activision in 98 is, you know, they're not Activision of today or even 10 years ago. They are just starting to have Tony Hawk as it's for, actually, Tony Hawk's 99, so they don't even have that yet. Yeah, they're just recovering from the mediogenic era of 10. years before. Like, who was Activision in the 90s? They were nobody. No one played their games. No one cared.

I'm trying to think of something they released. They released those... $2,600. Yeah, those 2,600 upgrades for PlayStation. Was that Activision, or is that somebody else? I don't think there was an Activision collection on PlayStation. There was, like, Atari's greatest hits.

Not a collection, but it's like, here's the new Frogger, and here's the new Pond. That was Hasbro. Okay, got it. Yeah. Yeah. Konami actually was Frogger, wasn't it? That's right.

Damn. So they signed a deal with Activision in 98. Well, a big get for Activision, like, and I think Marvel definitely undervalued their game license, and they just needed money now. And so, signed it in 98. By 2000, the first two Marvel games come out under the deal. First off is the Tekken-inspired X-Men fighting game, which really looks bad. Oh, boy.

How does it compare to Masters of Cheras Kasi? Oh, boy. Of this era, how many of these 3D fighting games are still? playable or ever were playable. They never actually were. Maybe Virtua Fighter of this era and Tekken of this era, that's basically it, I think. Yeah, like the Masters, they're still fine. But that's like 5% of the total 3D fighting games.

Street Fighter EX, that's okay. It's all right. From what I recall playing both of them, Tereskazi is actually better. Like, it's... Damn. Yeah. Rise of the robots. But much better than that was 2000s PlayStation game Spider-Man.

So, Henry, maybe this is better for the end. There's a lot of games on this list. And I'm curious, because of how licensing works, especially with Marvel characters these days, how many of them are playable today? Like, I know you can always buy the disc or whatever, but how many of these are digitally available? Like, is this first game on the PSN store even?

No. No, it is not. More than you would think are available still on this list, which by that I mean a few. But, like, they're not under the backwards compatible label. You could just buy, you could buy a PC, the PC version of this game right now, and it would play on your machine, I'm sure. But otherwise, like all the other Spider-Man games, especially the movie license ones, they're just gone.

You're not getting those. The ones that are not movie license is pretty much gone to, except for, and I'll get to my reasoning why later, I think. But the Ultimate Alliance games are available right now. You can get them on PS4 and Xbox One. Wow. Which was a weird of a very surprising thing. But, yeah, so 2000 Spider-Man NeverSoft, which if there was a AAA, that was the top team for Activision to hand Spider-Man to because they were the, their only hit was Tony Hawk the previous year.

And I did want to point out that like every developer of this name of this era, their name is very embarrassing. And Neversoft is a boner joke. It took me a long time to learn that. But it is a boner joke. It was like Neverland or something. Geez, that's... Never soft. They're always hard.

Coming at you hard. Yeah, well, and amazingly, this was made in tandem with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. This, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 came out within two months of this game and even had Spider-Man playable in it as

a skater. Oh, wow. Because they were just so into Spider-Man. And they had guys on this game were lead designer Chad Finley, producer Kevin Mulhall and also composers that included Tommy Telerico with

Howard Oolgate or Olegate but there's this this is such a fully featured game the Spider-Man game that Neversoft made was like for the time in 2000 I played it after having no Spider-Man

games for four years it was amazing I was like this is a multimedia event this is a this is never been a a Spider-Man game the desert in my life has found an oasis I have to wonder, there's a lot of speculation during this recording session because we don't know yet, but I have to wonder if it's all possible for this to be on the PlayStation Classic because at the time it was a notable game for its quality,

especially for a license game, and I think it has aged rather well for what it is. And it's also a year 2000 PlayStation game, which is kind of like the last real year of PlayStation games for the PS2. You know, I wouldn't say it's a complete outside possibility because Sony right now has the Spider-Man game license. So if they could talk to Activision and Marvel to allow it, the only reason I would think it wouldn't happen is because there's stuff in this game that Marvel would not okay now, not even for a second. And so they might not be cool with that being spread around again.

What, like Spider-Man and Mary Jane are still married? There is that. Mary Jane isn't dead. Yeah, Mary Jane's not dead. Oh, that's right. She's just somewhere else. But, yeah, so the big. the biggest thing is that this

includes a whole lot of the Marvel universe, which had never really been in a Spider-Man game before, like specifically a Spider-Man game. This is a Spider-Man game where you swing to the Baxter building and see the Human Torch. It's where you meet the Punisher, Captain

America, the Silver Surfer has a tiny cameo in it. Like, this Daredevil, this is a true Marvel universe that Spider-Man is in, which, knowing what Marvel does with licensing deals now. Like, even in 2000, it's kind of shocking.

They got the rights to put all those characters in this game. Yeah, with the modern rights now, it's like, so Fantastic Four is owned by someone, and Spider-Man is owned by someone, and X-Men are owned by someone, and everyone else is owned by someone. Soon Marvel will own it all, though, because Disney is about to buy Fox at the time of this.

So that'll give them Fantastic Four and X-Men. That's a good thing for consumers. It is. It's less choice to be good. Yeah, let's consolidate everything, so we only get one vision. That's great. One corporation for But by 2000, this Spider-Man game took a ton of inspiration from the 3D platformers because this was Spider-Man's first polygonal game. And so obviously they're going to take inspiration from Tomb Raider, from Metal Gear Solid,

and from Ocarina Time. Those are, I'd say, the three biggest, because you have kind of the Tomb Raider-style platforming in there in 3-D. You have MGS kind of production values of just so many cutscenes with, like, dialogue over it trying to tell in-game cutscenes to movies. No lip sync, just a bunch of bobbing heads. Yes. Well, they've got masks. It's okay.

That's true, except for Doc Ock. He's just sort of just... Actually, there's a lot of faces that are not... But this was an SD game, so back then in your imagination, you're like, well, maybe I just can't see their mouth. His lips might be moving. And it also, Ocarina of Time just for the, you know, the lock-on capabilities, too. Because there's a lot of locking on Z-targeting and then shooting stuff with your web.

Excuse me, it's not technically Z-targeting if it's on PlayStation, which doesn't have a Z button. Okay, it's R2 targeting. Mega Man Legends invented it, Henry. Yeah, God. Give me, the commenters are here right now. We're in there in the room, calling from inside the house. Somebody get that Bob Mackey off the show. But what the game really mastered was it NeverSoft understood what, like, fun movement was.

Like, they got, now it's a quaint game now of what you know Spider-Man movement is really supposed to feel like. in a game, but for the first time a game ever tried to express being Spider-Man with all of his powers moving in three dimensions, they do a really good job of it, not just web swinging and wall crawling, but even just webbing up guys, using your webbing for special abilities, having your Spider-Sense, even stealth missions in there, which are definitely crude compared to say, Arkham Asylum, but you can see kind of the breadcrumb trail that would have led from to Arkham Asylum. Yeah, you know,

previous Spider-Man games being two-dimensional were really constrained by that limitation because, you know, Spider-Man is so agile. He's so much about kinetic movement and, you know, swinging and so forth. And it's really hard to pull that off. So, yeah, like every previous Spider-Man game I played pretty much was kind of unpleasant

or else it just didn't feel like Spider-Man. Like the LGN game for Game Boy. Like, you can swing. That's fine. Technically. But he's so stiff and awkward and clumsy. That's just not Spider-Man. And the game also really got like how

you want to have fun as Spider-Man and beat people up as Spider-Man. And also, though, quipping. This is the first CD-ROM Spider-Man game as well. Was he voiced by Dana Gould? No. He was voiced by Reno Romano, is the actor's name. And it's just a smart, alicky, goofy, fun Spider-Man.

Technology is the light that will cut through the darkness. When humanity conforms to a single truth, a truth based in technological progress and scientific method, we will be unstoppable. I, Dr. Otto Octavius, bow as a scientist and businessman, that my duties to humankind will be fulfilled. Thank you. Thank you.

Here. Nice words, Octavius. If these executives knew you the way I do, I wonder if they'd be so quick to applaud. So it's a lot like the animated series and that he's finally given a younger man's voice instead of like the old man voice he had and everything else, including the Sega CD game. Yeah, this isn't the first time we've heard Spider-Man in a game. He talked very badly in the Sega CD game. We talked about it. And he also had some voice clips in the Sega arcade game, but this is really,

Spider-Man saying full sentences in being a guy. And if you've read Spider-Man comics, you know, he is constantly saying funny things, or at least like, he thinks they're funny. Who am I talking to? And so that's who Spidey is in this game, too, which I remember being fun when playing it, re-watching the gameplay videos of this. I was like, shut the fuck on Spider-Man. We were living in the year 2018.

A thing that talks to you is not as novel anymore. But it was really cool at the time to hear Spider-Man talking. And that Reno Romano, his most famous role after this would be Darth Redden in the... Oh, pretty much the same character, really. And they did get some voices from the animated series, namely Ephraim Zimbalist Jr., who is Doc Ok there in the clip. And Jennifer Hale, the early in her career, Jennifer Hale... Didn't know that she was in the animated series. She was Black Cat in that as well.

I think Ephraim Zimbelis Jr. was also Alfred on Batman Day Made a series. That's right, yeah. He's a great Alfred in that. And meanwhile, backing him up, they've got future voice acting superstar D. Bradley Baker, basically doing almost every other person in it. And also our buddy Stan Lee's in the game. Yes. Welcome, true believers and newcomers alike.

Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee here. Once again, we find our hero, Peter Parker, better known around the world as the amazing Spider-Man in a heap of trouble. But this is just the beginning, Spidey fans. So get ready for a true superhero action thriller. Packed to the brim with thrills and chills, twists and turns. More super villains than you can shake a web at it. And, of course, non-stop web-slinging, wall-crawling action.

That was back when Stanley was only 85. Right. And he recorded that. Did he feel obligated to say co-creator? Was that a new thing? Co-creator of Spider-Man. I think by this point, Steve Dicko is bidding. getting more open about like, hey, you didn't create Spider-Man, you co-created it with me.

And so he was being, I believe his PR team just told him like, let's just say co-creator, it's better. Don't make a fuss. Don't be Bob Kane. I noticed that in this game and in the sequel, Stan Leeer and both of them in terms of voice acting, but they also lean more into the goofier aspect of Spider-Man. And once the Sam Ramey stuff starts up, it's a little more of a serious Spider-Man experience with the quipping and stuff, but they take it a little more seriously. Like, the intro to this game, the, sorry, the title screen has the classic Spider-Man theme song from the cartoon.

Yeah, your beloved one, the, oh, wait, no, not radioact to a Spider-Blob, but the... Yes, Spider-Man, Spider-Man. I remember, like, in the Homecoming movie, they play, like, five notes of it, like, and they're all winking at you, and all the nerds are just slamming their elbows into each other in the audience. And I think Spider-Man 2, the Sam-Ramey one, where someone's, like, a street performer is singing it badly on a violin. Yeah, it's still. kind of end an amazing Spider-Man too.

His ring tone is that song. So it, when Spider-Man's self-off, that movie sucks. I actually just saw it in a bar

today and I was like, why? What the hell kind of bar was that? Did you like start a fight to say, hey,

turn that off? Well, I preferred it to watching college football, which was in the other TV channel.

But, but no, you're, well, first on the Stanley thing, that's funny too because we did the, our other podcast,

what a cartoon, we did the X-Men animated series from 92. And one thing I forgot to mention on there was that Stan Lee wanted to do the narration for that, too. And they're like, no. Oh, boy, the X-Men are going to have a lot of fun today, kids. Exactly.

That was like, that's not the tone we want on this show. But Stan Lee apparently is insistent on wanting to be narrator for Marvel things. Like, he really wants to be that. And he got his way on this, too. But the goofiness you mentioned, I mean, that was totally, that was the Marvel Comics. and it was a fun, silly, like, winking, knowingness. But that was totally up Naversoft's alley. If you play the Tony Hawk games, they are full of, like,

ribald humor, no doubt. And then when the new movie started up in the early 2000s, it was like, no, their costumes are darker. There's more leather, like Spider-Man in the first trilogy. He's got like a sort of a crimson costume, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it's all toned down. It's because if it's too colorful, people will be scared. Yeah, after Wolverine made that crack about yellow spandex,

it was all leather all the time. I mean, the Matrix is also to blame for that, too. That is true. I mean, X-Men was in production before that first, before the Matrix came out. Yeah, that's true. So there was, it was a... They were both Fox movies.

They're probably walking by those costume warehouses. Like, there sure there's a lot of leather in here. I thought Matrix was Paramount. Ooh, actually, it could be WB. No, it was Matrix is Warner. Warner. I remember that the logo with the green. tin over it now that you mention it.

The comedy, too, extended not just to Spider-Man's quips and silly scenes. Like, there's a scene where Venom... Venom kidnaps Mary Jane, of course, because she gets kidnapped in every game. So, Venom kidnaps her, and when Spider-Man frees her, and he and

Venom decide to work together to stop carnage, Mary Jane is really mad, and about it, and Venom's like, the whole ball and chain, huh? And Spider-Man's like, come on. Shut up. And also, it gets even sillier in, you can unlock a what-if mode in the game,

which has jokey stuff in all of the stages. It's also, in case this, this should go without saying because they didn't have an open world for a while, but this is not an open-world game. It is a stage-based, level-based game. Some levels are stealth. Some are just beat everybody up until the boss shows up. Some are, where's that key? Better find it for 20 minutes.

And some are the most fun, as I recall, were the either chase or being chase levels, which are the pseudo-open world of web swinging from building to building and a lot of platforming there. Yeah, having no memories of this, I was wondering, how did they make convincing outdoor environment with Spider-Man? And really, they just eliminate most of the buildings

that are under you. It's just a foggy day, Bob. It's a very foggy New York City. It's like they're like the super, like, okay, so this is much better, way, way, way better than Superman 64. But like in that game, there is a in-story excuse as to why things are foggy, right? Yes, yeah. Doc Ock has dropped a poisonous fog on the city.

And so that's also why. Like Bionic Commando, the remake. So if Spider-Man drops below a certain level into that poisonous fog, he'll die. And so you can't see that other part of the level. So did, like, the entire city, like the entire population of New York City, are they dead? They're poisoned. So they're dead? Well, Spider-Man has, like, super stamina.

Well, they're sick, and they're going to hang. They're dead. They're sick with symbiotes, and Spider-Man will later cure them of that. Okay. I think the Superman-64 excuse was that you were trapped in Lex Luthor's very shitty VR machine. Yeah. Yes, that was the trick they got around there. And in the game, yes, so Spider-Man faces most of his big-name enemies in this game.

The lead villain is Docok, but also Carnage, voiced by Dee Bradley Baker. You team up with Venom to face Carnage, which is a classic, Spider-Man comic trope of the 90s. And at the end of the game, you actually do a rare thing for a Spider-Man game, which is you face a villain who was created specifically for the game, which is Monster Auk, which is Doc Ack, but controlled by Carnage's symbionies. So when you say a villain created for this game, you mean, quote, unquote, created. I mean, Monster Ack has never appeared in the comics to date.

For some reasons. We talked about Arkham before. That reminds me of the Final Boss in that game where the Joker drinks the McFarlane potion. It becomes like a badass hot topic, yeah. Basically, McFarlow Post. It's very embarrassing. It's fun. It's venom, actually.

I'm glad the game ended up for that point. So, bad man, you adopted the darkness. I was born into it. I do like that in Arkham City, he's on Death Store because he's like taking a super power of potion that tore my bones apart, somehow had bad effects on my hell. Go fig. You also, I would say the game's other major contribution to future Spider-Man games is that it had a ton of unlockables that were super fan servicey.

No previous Spider-Man game really had that. You couldn't change Spider-Man's costume. You couldn't pick up comic book covers for classic stuff. It was just littered with those kinds of secrets that, you know, again, the Tony Hawk Pro Skater comparison, just like how they hid, you know, they hid the VHS tapes or all these other missions. type collectibles all through the stages in Tony Hawk. Same deal with Spider-Man, except now they were comic book

covers and other ways to unlock your costumes, though. This also had a classic cheat code mode, so you could put in a cheat code to unlock any of those costumes. You didn't even have to do the collectibles. And also, if you wrote in a bad word,

a swear into the cheat code, Spider-Man would then punch the word and it would turn into a nice word. Oh, that's cute. I wonder how many bad words are you programmed into that game. If you wrote shit, it turned into sugar. Oh, that's very cleverer. I like that.

And I loved it so much to see the unlockable costumes. You had Spider-Man Scarlet Spider costume, the black symbiote costume, his 2099 costume, and my personal favorite, the Amazing Bagman, which is when Spider-Man for about two pages once, Spider-Man lost his symbiote suit, had no costume, and so the Fantastic Four lent him an old costume, and then a bag to put over his head and eye to secret identity. I think I have seen images of that on the internet. It's a classic costume. It's a lot of fun. Was that his only unstable molecule fabric costume ever?

Oh, I'm sure. No, because he's worked for the Fantastic Four afterwards, so they definitely gave it. See, Bob, unstable molecules are the fabric that Reed Richards invented to give superheroes super outfits that didn't say burn off. when you lit on fire. Unstable molecules, that was the... So it's his doings. That's why you can't see Hulk's twiggin' berries whenever he turns back into Bruce.

He has stretchy pants. I have a feeling that was an answer in a letter's column that became canon. Pretty much. It's probably a no prize at one point. So, Henry, you just played all of the new Spider-Man game for PS4, and you're telling me they're not as imaginative with the costumes.

They don't have as much creative license with Spider-Man this time. So I will say I'll keep complimenting it many times on this podcast. But, like, the Spider-Man PS4 game is my favorite Spider-Man game ever. Like, it's the best Spider-Man game that's ever been. But it's a difference in how things are now that, like, it felt like back then, Never Soft just got to say, like, well, what are the best Spider-Man costumes?

We'll definitely put them in there. But for this game, say, all the ones after it, they got more restrictive on it. I think Marvel realized what a big deal they weren't, so they wouldn't let you just put everything in there. PS4 Spider-Man has a ton of unlockable costumes. Some really cool deep dives even into Marvel history. But what they don't have is say, the big one they don't have is the black symbiate suit. Which they're probably saving for a sequel. Saving for a sequel.

So that's it in most cases. I mean, there's like 18, over 20 suits in the game. Is there a Spider-Ham costume? No. Has there ever been a Spider-Ham costume? No. Spider-Ham does make a cameo appearance in a game. I'll be mentioning later in this, but I think it's more,

now Spider-Ham is about to star in a major motion picture. Wait, what? Have you not heard of this? No. Is he in Guardians of the Galaxy 3 or something? No, he's writing it? Into the Spider-Verse. That's the upcoming CGI Spider-Man film.

I thought that was like direct-to-video or something. No, it's a real movie. It's basically Spider-Man's Lego movie because it's full of knowing winks and everything. And so it's spider people from at least six different dimensions. all team up, including a fedora-wearing Malady Spider-Man noir played by Nick Cage. But also Spider-Ham is in there. Voice by John Mulaney, which is perfect. It is amazing casting.

I can't wait for that. Looks like fun. But, yeah, so anyway, to answer your question about it, there's a lot of cool costumes in it. Once I would never have thought that they'd include because I'm like, that was just in one, that was just in Spider-Man-350. And I feel like I'm the only person that remembers that comic. But there it is, and it looks neat. But so, yeah, they didn't have all of the stuff like they had in this. I would say, too, you know, the game obviously has aged a ton of 2000 PlayStation game will age terribly.

Like, the movements don't feel exactly right. And, I mean, one thing that really stuck me in how much it aged is, like, just watching the videos on YouTube, I just realized like, oh, the textures are so simple. There are no web lines on Spider-Man's costume because they simply can't do it. You couldn't convey it at that resolution. And everybody, of course, has fists that just point to things. You mean concrete blocks that have fingers painted on them?

They have little mitts. And, but I mean, that's what every PlayStation game was at the time. And the game got ported to N64 and even Dreamcast. and the Dreamcast one definitely looks a little sharper, and the N64 one, it has the usual N64 port. Sharp is not the term I would use for N64 graphics. Fuzzier, but, and also they had to lose all of the multimedia aspects of it because it's on a cartridge.

So the whole point you play Spider-Man, you want to see those cool cut scenes. You didn't get those on the N-64. I worked at a game store from 2001-2003, and I associate a lot of these early games with just selling a ton of them, even when I assume Spider-Man wasn't a big deal because there was no movie or TV show

or anything like that, they moved a ton of copies. Spider-Man games sell, and it was, I think this also started the era of feeling like that Spider-Man is a Sony game, even though it was on everything. This sold most on PlayStation and first.

Like, I think most people who have strong feelings about the Neversoft Spider-Man games, they think of a PlayStation controller in their hand, nothing, nothing else. And even though it sold on everything, I remember in like 2004, it was one of those free string cheese

games. It's like, if you buy string cheese, you get a download of Spider-Man. There's something in my luncheables. And Vicarious Visions did the Game Boy Color Port, which I, it's a crappy little game, but it does have a cool little menu. The title screen

is Spider-Man getting rained on? And if you like, if you like cool pixel art done on a gayboy color it's a nice picture who doesn't and vicarious visions has been in activision's pocket for a long time they're really so i'm sorry go ahead oh skylanders well that's still a thing or no not anymore none of the toys to life are still alive bubble burst as well yeah i mean they've they've gone back to making spiro games so clearly they you know skylineers started out as a Spiro thing, and now it's just Spire on his own again. I guess they made the

N's Crash Bandicoot trilogy, and they're doing the Spiro trilogy then now, right? The port job. Yeah, the ports. I mean, I don't like those games, but they did a ton of work to make them. I like Spiro. I mean, Spiro's just like a kid's game. It's hard to get into if you're an adult. That's also funny

because Vicarious Vision's first job was the port factory for like NeverSoft made the games and then Bicarious usually ported them. Like their first jobs were the ports for Tony Hawk or the ports for Spider-Man as well. And Insomniac was Spiro, right? Yes.

Yes. Okay, cool. That makes sense. I was the PlayStation play. If I was going to play a cute platformer, it would be on a Nintendo system or nothing. Spiro was good. I'm sure it was. It had great music by Stuart Copeland.

Oh. It had pretty good flying physics. I enjoyed it. But if I... The Vicarious Viscence Game Boy Color game gave them the practice they would use for next year with Spider-Man to enter Electro only on the PlayStation. And a 2001 PlayStation game was not a game people were really playing, but it was an easy enough cache for all the people who didn't move on to a PlayStation 2. And it really was just vicaric visions being handed the Spider-Man engine and just said,

okay, can you make another thing with this? It only needs to be two hours. Just put it out. So it was like the Tomb Raider 3 of Spider-Man. But this is totally a B-tier Spider-Man game. So they brought back all the voice actors from the first game. All four of them, that's all they were going to pay. And so Spider-Man faces his B-level villains.

And the last game, they had Doc Ock and Carnage and Venom. And in this game, it's Electro and it's Mysterio and Rhino. Like good villains. Yeah, so it was a game based in New York City that came out in October 2001. Guess what else came out right around that same time that was based in New York City? That's right. Grand Theft Auto 3. Guess which game did not compare to Granddad.

in Theft Auto 3. Yeah, well, also another thing that happened in New York in 2001. I thought that's what you were talking about. There was that, but I was keeping it away from political, you know, current events and more toward video games. And GTA 3 was everywhere by, you know, by the end of the year. It was just like kiosks and everything. I'm not bringing up 9-11 just to be like Edge Lord humor. No, no, no.

It actually has a real impact on this game. So the game's planned release of Enter Electro was September 18th, 2000. in the game, though they do not explicitly say this is on the World Trade Center, the final battle is on top of two buildings that are positioned in the same kind of like two diamonds on top of each other shape that the World Trade Center had. And the game is set in New York. And it even has one of them has a tall, like, antenna on top. And I'm assuming they're much taller than any of the buildings around them.

Oh, yeah, I mean, you're just, it's a platform in space. It's not really up there. Right. But, I mean, yeah, it's pretty obvious. Oh, yeah, and it's the tallest building. So, yeah, you're on the World Trade Center. The game had been shipped, and Mac Division had to immediately recall it a week ahead of release. They recall the game. There's no patches back then, so they instead have to just print the game all over again, redoing the ending.

They can't patch out your zombie Michael Jackson like Plains v. Zombies did. I'm still bitter about that. But because the discs were pressed as a retail release, it's out there. You can find online footage to compare to see what they changed from the pre-9-11 to post-9-11 version. All the real changes is that they turn the two buildings into one building with like a bridge between them. So you're not clearly playing on top of the World Trade Center. And they cut out a couple cutscenes that show kind of an establishing shot of the building Electro is on in the final boss fight that make it far more. clear it's the World Trade Center. And that also delayed the game until October 18th was when it

actually came out. So when you're playing this game and Halo is out as well, like this, it's, it's just, this is your little brother's game. I was going to say, I had the words little brother in my head. It's like they get your PlayStation and your, or little sisters. And you're in your room with your swear words and your sex workers and just having a good old time recreating Goodfellas in your bedroom. The one thing this game does. that the first one didn't do was it included X-Men. So you have a danger room training-type mission where you hang out with Storm and Professor X. So it's good X-Men as opposed to like marrow or something.

Yeah, you get the real, you get real X-Men, not Wolverine, but you get some real X-Men. But meanwhile, so while Vicarious Visions is working on this, the real Spider-Man team is working on the adaptation of the soon-to-be-released Spider-Man from Sam Ramey, starring Toby McGuire. This came out at a weird time for movie time games where I think they, Activision and E.A were very much subscribed to the belief of like, these are like movies. We're making movies and we're hiring the actors who are in these movies.

They're going to play themselves in it. When I was watching video of this game again, it really brought me back to this era of AAA movies. movie games where the music is just this symphonic thing that has nothing to do with anything that's happening

on the screen just like look at what you do we can have this beautiful song playing behind Spider-Man and we got a little better about that but it really reminds me of that era specifically and this game in particular

is one I remember selling a ton of and then getting yelled out for selling a new game instead of you used one no this this game was a big big deal so this was handed from NeverSoft

Spider-Man was handed from Neversoft over to Trey Arc which when they started working on this game they weren't even owned by Activision they started working on the game in 2001 and by October of that year were purchased by Activision and there's now

Activision's top developer I would say that Activision owns like they went from being the B team on Call of Duty to the A team on Call of Duty and this was where it really began they made some port jobs and some smaller stuff for Activision but this was really at And when they were given the script to the movie early, but that's not what really got filmed.

So there's some bits in it that are just very different from the movie, including the final battle with the Green Goblin. Yeah, in fact, we all read the U.S. Gamer feature. What was it called again, behind the scenes of Spider-Man 2? It's the oral history of Spider-Man 2 by Alex Kane. It's super long, super worth reading. But I remember there's so many good anecdotes in that. Like, they were each allowed one at a time to go into a room with the story. grip. They could not write anything down in the room.

They had to take it with them in their brains out of the room in order to create the video game. And I have to wonder if all of these movie tie-ins are like that or if there's a more sophisticated way of having a liaison or something like that. It just seems like incredible that they were able to keep all that in the brain.

Yeah. Well, they were still negotiating with now it was even more complicated for them because they were making the game for Activision, but they weren't just working with Marvel. They were also working with Sony's film division too. So the feeling was like, so, okay, Marvel's cool of this, but is Sony cool with this or Sony's cool of this is Marvel cool with this? And that made it less fun.

The fun kind of went away a little bit from the NeverSoft games because you can't, if you are adapting movie Spider-Man, then they don't want to reference comic book Spider-Man in the game of it. It's just the movie verse. Let's maybe not say anything about clones, guys. Yes, can't do clones. can't have comic book covers It's just no guy with a lion for a vest Sorry Actually they do

But they make them more boring The characters like So Craven is in there Craven, vulture, shocker They all appear in these In all three of the games based on the Ramey films They're just made more boring

To be the Ramey look So yeah It's they're all like you find So Craven's wearing like a lion face On a T-shirt or something I forget exactly how he's dressed. It's still ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as a lion's face on his vest, which that's such a cool outfit.

So, Trey Arc, they're working on the game, and they just, they got to get it out by April of 2002. They have a strong cutoff date there. So they're just working super hard to get it out, and they are making, again, a stage-based, level-based Spider-Man game, not an open world or anything particularly ambitious. One of the more interesting things about it, too, is that they had recorded the entire game with Josh Keaton,

who has played Spider-Man in multiple things, and then late in the production, Toby McGuire, they got him. And they're like, all right, dump all that Josh Keaton stuff. And boy. Toby McGuire, we got the star. He's so clearly not care. He's going to sleep, walk through this one, folks. He's too busy thinking about, like, the poker games he'll play later with Leonardo DiCaprio. And all the rest of the P-Wreux.

in posse. Yes. What a great group that was. Yeah, I was listening to this today just laughing. He's like, oh boy, I'm sure I'm Spider-Man. Wow. Yeah. It looks like the city, what's it called again? Yeah, whatever city I'm in, it's in trouble this time. Yeah. Uncle Ben said that, and I agreed. It's a very sedate Spider-Man.

And they got Willem Defoe, who has a little more fun in it, but doesn't he always? I heard in this era from Ian McKellon told me personally via talk show that you would make a ton of money doing these side projects. But after a while, that started being, that started to be put into your movie contract. Like, you must do these games.

You have to opt in in this contract or else we will replace you with a sound alike. Yeah, or just clips from the movie. Yeah, yeah. And we won't pay you extra either. But I'm sure he made like a sweet six-figure deal out of this, just voicing Spider-Man. And though, they said both for this game and the other two, Toby had some long days because Willam Defoe just needs to do his fight scenes. in his cutscenes. You're always Spider-Man,

and you're always quipping. So when you're Toby McGuire doing that, those are some long days of recording. So who has less energy in this performance? Toby McGuire or Peter Dinklage and Destiny? Oh, boy. Well, they patched him out, right? It was so bad.

I think Toby McGuire actually feels even more tired. Wow. I think Dinklage, well, because Toby was, you should also know that, like, In between one and two of Spider-Man, Toby McGuire tried to quit. Like, he didn't. He was like, I hurt my back. Give me more money, or I'm out of here.

More upside-down kisses. And they said, Jake Gyllenhaal will replace you then. And then he's like, fine, I'll come back. That's why it's even funnier that now Jake Gyllenhaal is going to be Mysterio in the next Spider-Man. Oh, I didn't know that. Wow. The game's all right. I remember playing it at the time.

It actually, it came out two weeks before the movie. did. So it was how I experienced the plot of the film before I saw the film. I forgot when you could actually do that. It was what, that does not happen anymore. Or you could, like, read the novelization of a movie. Yeah, novelizations would come out weeks before the movie.

With all the scenes that would eventually be deleted. Yeah, that's how I learned that Luke Skywalker did not die at the end of Return of the Jedi before I saw it as a movie. Whoa. Oh, sorry, guys. I wasn't thinking about spoilers. I'm sorry. It's only been 35 years. I haven't seen Return of the Jedi yet, Jeremy. I really

I'm really happy. I forgot the moratorium's 36 years. Yes. Also in that oral history, there's a funny bit in there about how when Traiark got bought by Activision, they were in the two top movie tie-in games development for Activision. One team got Spider-Man, and the other team got Minority Report. Nobody bought Minority Report. Everybody bought Spider-Man, and so the Minority Report team didn't get any of the bonuses the Spider-Man team got, and it sewed a lot of Disneyland.

ascension in Treyarch. That was kind of a cool game, though, with all the ragdolls and whatnot. Yeah, everybody runs. I forgot. Wow, I forgot about that. I already reported. That's some cool tech in it. And yeah, they just followed the pattern of the NeverSoft game as well in having the stages.

And also, there was, you could swing around in a city. But if you went below a certain part of the skyline, or if you swung to someplace you weren't supposed to, you just died. It should have been like in a balloon fight, a giant fish would grab you. And so, also, Spider-Man just swung from the air. Like, it was also just a consistent swing and drop and swing and drop, just arm pretty much just like how Tarzan would be animated to of just like grab a vine, grab a vine. Or I guess I think of it how Donkey Kong Jr. moves from behind a vine.

It's pretty similar. Yeah, they had Vulture, Craven Shocker, and, oh, and also in the voice cast, I almost forgot to mention, the Bruce Campbell is also in it. They kind of has a bit part in Spider-Man. He does. He's the wrestling announcer. Yeah. But I mean, obviously the Sam Ramey connection.

Yeah, no, Bruce Campbell, I mean, when this game came out was probably the height of my Evil Dead fandom. So seeing Bruce Campbell, who didn't appear in anything in 2000 if Sam Ramey didn't do it, he doing the tutorial for the game was really cool to just hear like, wow, it's Bruce Campbell. I know who that is. I know why that's a big deal.

And he would consistently be hired in the Trey Arc, or in the movie tie-in games as well. And yeah, so unlockables, too, just suffered because of the deal with Marvel and Sony. The only real unlockable in it is that you can unlock Alex Ross's early costume designs for Spider-Man and Green Goblin, which look a lot cooler than the movie versions. But they're also more extreme,

and I can see why they didn't go with it. So we're going to take a break now. We'll come back with the highlight of this era of Spider-Man games. We'll see you then. Thank you. So we're back, and before we move on to the highlight of these games, Henry, I believe you have something more to say about the Spider-Man 1 movie game. Yes, I certainly do. Well, so one funny story about the Spider-Man video game is that you could unlock Mary Jane as a playable character through a cheat code they put in the game.

But at the end of the game, the character of Spider-Man kisses Mary Jane at the end of the game. But if you replace it with Mary Jane, she is kissing herself. So when Sony found out about that, that Mary Jane could kiss herself in this sapphic scene, they deleted it from all future versions of the games. Oh, my God. But Fear Effect, too, prepared me for this. If you, if kids see those two polygon models that both look at, look like women moving towards each other, it will turn all of them.

That won't play in the sticks. It's a good thing Hillary Clinton didn't find out about that. So now we're moving on to Spider-Man 2. Definitely the highlight of this list. And actually, like, I feel like you didn't have to care about the movie or Spider-Man too like this game. This was a genuinely good game on its own merits. And all my friends played this, which is why I know about this game in particular.

And this is what is featured in that U.S. game oral history. It is the focus of that oral history because it is the one Spider-Man game since I think there are three really memorable Spider-Man games. Obviously, the PlayStation one, this one, and then the new one, pretty much. And the arcade ones are fine. Yeah, but this made a huge splash because by the time Spider-Man 1 came out, Grand Theft Auto 3 was the biggest game ever at that point. I mean, this came out sort of in tandem with San Andreas.

Yeah. So that was the third in the GTA-3 lineage. That's how they were finally able to. to catch up with the open world of GTA 3 only when San Andreas. Like, that's how far ahead of the curve rock star was on that stuff. But it, so, that did hurt all those other games that you, when you saw that one game could do open world, you wondered why all these other action games that take place, especially in a Liberty City looking location, why couldn't I walk on the ground there?

What's the deal, huh? Especially when it's Spider-Man who is a guy who portray, trolls New York City and cleans up crime. It's a perfect fit for him. He's the anti-GTA-5 star. He's the anti-GTA star. I would say by 2003, every developer had to figure out how to make an open-world game no matter what license they had, no matter what idea they had it had to be an open-world game. But also what had a huge effect on the development of Spider-Man 2

was seeing the first Spider-Man movie. So they're making Spider-Man 1 the game, you know, without seeing the film. but they had the designs. They knew who was in it. They'd seen a couple trailers. But in that amazing oral history on U.S. Gamer, they talk about leaving the theater and going like, oh, that's what swinging around is Spider-Man is supposed to look like

and feel like it's supposed to be exciting. You're supposed to be weight to it. And I'm sure that in this modern era, if they were making that game, then Spider-Man 1, the studio would share assets with them. Like, here is what our CGI looks like. Here's how Spider-Man moves. Make sure he moves like he does in the movie.

movie because this is a tie-in product, but I guess it was still sort of like a primitive age then in terms of licenses. Yeah, yeah. Compared to today so much, though. And in the oral history, Jamie Fristam Fristram talks about how he

was the lead on the Spider-Man swinging mechanic, that he actually got a prototype of it working on their Spider-Man-1 engine. And everybody liked it, but they're like, we can't ship this game if we completely change how Spider-Man moves in it. So we'll save it for the hopeful sequel we'll get to do. And so Trayark just started

working on the Spider-Man swing technology for some leading the team to get the swinging just right. They were working on it. He joked about how he's like, you see in the old Spider-Man cartoons of the 60s, Spider-Man's just swinging off the air. And that's the same deal as in every Spider-Man game to this point. It made Spider-Man couldn't just swing off of a body. He's swinging from spider buoys that the government places in the sky for him. There's the 60 Spider-Man cartoon, I remember as a kid, even then

laughing at how stupid it was that he goes like, those look like some pretty thick clouds over there. I think it'll swing over. Well, history would show that Ralph Backshe and his team were all dropping acid and making those cartoons. But they also realized when they were making Spider-Man moving like that, that it also

wouldn't work in a level-based game like they'd been doing. You needed a full, large, large, city for Spider-Man to just swing around in. So in tandem, those two were being worked on to build up the city and to build up the swinging. But they also talked about how they had, as they were building up the city, which was a much more vertical Manhattan than the Liberty City of GTA, obviously, because in GTA3,

you can't fly around. Like, it's a much more flat world. Their New York City, meanwhile, had to be all about the heights and all about the buildings and the skyscrapers. And it was easier for Rockstar to make an open world game because it was so flat, they could stream in parts of the city with you, it being obscured by, you know, buildings. The things that weren't loaded in were being obscured. So it wasn't that big of a deal. And if you go back and play GTA3, even the modern HD ports, you realize just how little of the city you see at a time in front of you.

And just the rhythm of the web swinging is so amazing. Like you go, you go from L2 to R2, L2 to R2, like it's a rhythm you're in there. There's so much finesse you have to get into it. it too. The way they describe it in the oral history is there's a friction to it and that also means you there's a little bit of a learning curve that you can't just pick up and play and

immediately be good as web swinging as Spider-Man but once you get in the groove they even internally talked about how like they had one of their worst crunches ever, they hated the crunch but they say they had like their therapy was just swinging around the Spider-Man

a Zen-like experience of just going around Manhattan and doing nothing, just swinging as Spidey. Because they also had all these, like, trick moves you could do, too. Like, it set the standard for all Spidey swinging from that point forward to a negative

extent. Like, all most other Spider-Man games after this, people would be like, well, does it feel like swinging in Spider-Man, too? And it would come up lacking by comparison. But what about the new game? Well, the new game is called Spider-Man, right? I guess if you want to be specific, it is Marvel's

Spider-Man. And in parentheses, In parentheses, 2018. Yeah. In that game, it's closer to the field, Spider-Man, too. But even then, it doesn't have that kind of finesse. It's not R2 and L2. It's just R2. And basically, R2 is like the gas on Spider-Man.

Like, Spider-Man is a car, and you're like, go, Spider-Man. But then you let go of it when you actually, you don't let go of it. So you're just always on the gas of Spider-Man. It's like, you've got the, like, go button. Yeah, actually, it's learned a lot from Assassin's Creed. But when you're at the arc of a swing, You then hit the jump button and you're like, oh, I'm going even faster and swinging. And so you still have more like control over like when you can do another jump and then swing.

And there's more finesse to it than in some other Spider-Man games. But it's still not like Spider-Man 2's very specific version of it. Also, this game not only got Toby McGuire back, but they also got Alfred Molina and Kirsten Dundst to play their characters as well. And it couldn't get, they couldn't get James Franco. I thought you were going to say he couldn't get any sleep here. He was too busy weird. I think you're going to say Jamie Fox. I was like, no, that was a difference.

That was a different to... No. Tubby McGuire is definitely very sleepy in this, but he does have to do even more voice work than ever because technically Spider-Man should never run out of quips because you never stop being Spider-Man. Like, honestly, the movie parts of this game are all the worst parts of it

because you have to stop doing the swinging and fun of the world and just have to like, well, I better go inside this. building and have a stupid level-based boss fight or some crap. Those were always a bummer. But also a big change they made from the movie. They had to completely change the movie's plot. Spider-Man 2, 45 minutes of Spider-Man 2, the movie,

Spider-Man has no superpowers. Obviously, he can't do that in a video game where a third of the game, Spider-Man can't do anything. So that's not in it. Plus, he meets the black cat, rhino, and shocker. And most humorously of all Mysterio, I don't know if you guys have

Remember this, or you've seen the video. So you go through some, you know, wild Mysterio stages where he's messing with your head and things are all weird. Then when you finally meet him in the real world, in a convenience store, you're like, oh, there's Mysterio. He's like, Spider-Man, you and he, you get a full life bar charge up all the way that's like the announcement of Final Boss Fight Time. It's charging up. You go over to him and punch him once, and he immediately falls down and it's over. Like, the boss fight is over at that point. Because Mysterio is just a dork in a costume.

All he has is tricks. And once you get through those tricks, you got to beat. It's such a fun of the scene. Also, there's a bunch of cutscenes from Blur Studios in this one. It's one the first where they had real cutscenes, not just in-universe stuff. So those look a little better. They've aged better, though they certainly don't look good. But they've aged better.

But what people really remember about the game, not those missions. but all the shit you did around the city like all the crimes you stop all the missions you have to get balloons for a little kid you get to hear Bruce Campbell quotes as you find his hints around the city and most of all

the enchanting music of delivering pizzas this is also in the earthworm gym game in the Peter Puppie levels when you're bouncing him on the marshmallow because it's so random So they obviously... I'm just going to let this play for the entire episode now.

No, it's fun in the game because they definitely read the script and saw there's a scene in it where Spider-Man delivers pizza. So obviously you make that a level of the game where you just swing around Manhattan and deliver pizza. Well, I remember... It's not integrated sort of like the side missions in Grand Theft Auto. No, no, it's just... It's one of your early story missions is deliver pizzas.

You can pick those back up again. There's more than one pizza delivery mission. But that's one of the first things you do in the game. So that music is stuck with people who play this game for a very often. There is a reference to it in the Marvel Spider-Man as well. Really? Wow. Okay. People caught that you could go to some building in New York City that has a pizza delivery place. You stand next to the door.

You can hear the pizza music play. Is this music the new Spider-Man theme from the old cartoon? It's going to show up in every reference. And this one's even better because it's public. domain. They don't have to. Yes, by some Italian guy, probably. And there was that annoying stuff, too, just like, oh, the balloon, get my balloon, Spider-Man, says the little kid. It was so annoying. It was back when all of these side quests throughout a city were a novelty, instead of just, when you start your new open world game and 9,000 icons appear,

you're like, oh, dear God. You realize how soon you're going to die in the grand scheme of things. At least I do. You ask yourself, like, how many of these are escorts missions? Oh, boy. How many of these are stealth missions? And meanwhile, at the same time, Vicarious Visions was working on the PSP port of it, which was a much more direct, level-based Spider-Man game. Because PSP couldn't handle an open-world. Yeah, there wasn't a lot of open world on PSP. Whatever happened to Elder Scrolls travels anyway.

Engage could handle it. What's PSP's problem? It's in the same place the Bioshock Vita game is. Ken Levine's sitting on it. But that spider, yeah, Spider-Man 2 was such a huge deal to my first. friends too, especially like if you one thing that I noticed if you didn't have a PS2 then you weren't

really getting as many of these open world type games. So Spider-Man 2 might have been your first exposure to it. You weren't playing Grand Theft Auto perhaps but now when you see Spider-Man do it and it made a T-rated experience of Grand Theft Auto that all these kids could play. So it was a

monster, monster hit especially on the PlayStation but it was on everything. It was on the GameCube and Xbox as well because that's just Activision roles. Though there were some in both Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, there were some tiny exclusives given to the PlayStation 2 just because Sony, it's Sony's movies.

Sure. And they would go on to use the font for their PlayStation 3. Yeah, so I feel really stupid for missing out on this because it's very much the kind of game I would have enjoyed in 2004. I think you would have loved it. I don't know why I didn't play it. I guess I just assumed, oh, another Spider-Man. Oh, I mean, a movie tie-in game.

this is kind of the, at the time, it was the height of movie tying games. Like, they were all bad. Yeah, like, I worked in the press at this point, so I don't know how it slipped past me because people were, I'm sure, playing it like at the next desk to me, and I was just like, whatever.

I can't explain it. This is bizarre to me. And, like, it was the Arkham Asylum of its time. Now, if you play it now, obviously, there is some, the polygons are pretty sharp, the textures aren't that great. and the worst parts of it is the Spider-Man movie stuff that's holding it back. You just have to see Toby McGuire.

You have to sit through a boring Toby McGuire voice or having to see like, yes, yes, you really love your wife, Doc Oakh. Boo-hoo. I want to deliver pizzas and you're getting into the way of this. But it was also, it had the promise of just the endless game, like just how fulfilling it was to web swing is Spider-Man just through Manhattan. It never got old. To show you how big a deal Activision felt Spider-Man was right then,

and they knew how big a deal it was, they took two years off in between Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. From this point onwards, Spider-Man is an annual at least once-a-year release for Activision. They're going to learn all the right lessons from this, I swear. And so the very next one, there's no Spider-Man movie. What else can you adapt? the most popular Spider-Man comic of the early 2000s, Ultimate Spider-Man.

And this was a really cool game. It is actually aged worse than a regular on Spider-Man, too. But 2005, what's cooler than cell-shading? It had never really been done for a comic book adaptation before. So this cell-shaded Spider-Man game adapts the Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley comic book, Ultimate Spider-Man, makes it look straight off of the comic page, like puts comic strip borders around cut scenes, just has all the characters look like ripped off the page.

It's amazing. Again, Brian Michael Bendis is credited as a lead storywriter on this. Like, this is his story, and he worked really hard on this. Brian Michael Bendis is a bit of a gamer-type guy who has been involved in a lot of other games, and also was involved in Sony's powers. I remember exclusive show power. The far too long presentation about that at 1E3, I was there in person.

Oh, God. I'm sorry. But a problem, though, that this had was the problem I would face all later Spider-Man games that said in the oral history, when they played, they liked Spider-Man 2, but the Activision execs, some felt that the web controls were a little too difficult for folks, and so they always kept dumbing him down or fucking with him. And so this had basically the same web controls, but a bit easier to comprehend, but also in that ease, you just lose a lot to it.

And that's kind of where it went from there. But the cool parts about this game was not only that you felt like you were playing a comic book, it was ripped straight off the page. This had like the shimpiest Spider-Man ever because he's like a 15-year-old kid, like a scrawny kid.

So he looks very different from the Spider-Man you're playing as. And it also was the first one that really felt like it took place in a while set in the real Marvel U, like Wolverine, he, Human Torch, Nick Fury, they're all in this game. But the biggest selling point

was it for the first time since separation anxiety, you could play as Venom in this game. And Venom could do all the things that, like, Goody Two Shoes, Spider-Man, couldn't do in video games, mainly murdering people. And one of the

first things you do is Venom in the game, which they pointedly chose to do, is eat a child who asks you to get his balloons for you. It's like, you guys hate the balloon mission? So do we. Venom eats him. He kills his kid. I mean, I guess it's because of Marvel's image or whatever, but it's funny how much they held back on Venom when he was so popular, just letting you be Venom. It's hard to believe they would fire James Gunn after that.

Well, I will say Venom doesn't like chew a child. When Venom eats someone in these games, it's to, he absorbs them into his body and they never get back out. He poops them out as an egg and you can throw the egg. It's like when a Muppet eats somebody on the Muppet show. Exactly. It's very similar. What Muppets are you watching? Is this like the special Vore version? I don't know. Muppets seem to eat a lot of other Muppets on the Muppet show. Muppets were the original Vores.

Yeah. I heard this on, boy, this is to get into Muppet commentary here, but I remember. No, let's go for it. Why not? The original Muppet script writer says you end a Muppet show's seen three ways. Are two ways. The Muppet either explodes or they are eaten. There's no other ending for a Muppet sketch. I guess I haven't watched Muppets in a while.

There's some sick shit happening in there, Jeremy. Evidently. Now I understand a lot more about the internet. Frank Oz is a filthy mind. But yeah, the game looks really cool. And the Vandem Thing was also Activision and Trey Arc. This was still Trey Arc, jumping on another popular trend from games at the time. They did GTA, and this was again, this basically just sell shaded the Manhattan.

They built for Spider-Man too with minor alterations. But the other thing was then, you know, you play as the art. and Halo 2, wouldn't it be interesting to play as the villain and the hero at the same time and switch off at interesting moments? They form a dramaturgical dyad, Henry. Did this game come out before or after Shadow the Hedgehog? So, I mean, Shadow was in 2001 Sonic Adventure 2, of course, so when you can play as him. Yes, but you couldn't shoot down the police with gats.

You couldn't kill cops until 2005's Shadow the Hedgehog. So everyone was drinking from the same horrible little cup. This game is burned in my memory because it came out the holiday season. I was working at Blockbuster Video. So when we got copies of this early, as well as Gunn, I don't know what the deal was. We got the most copies of Activision Games of any publisher. And I remember one night it's like, well, okay, we closed at 11. You got to stay an extra hour to lay out all, to completely rearrange the video game shelves,

to make room for 40 copies of Spider-Man. The ultimate Spider-Man. I had no idea. It was that popular. I guess it was riding off the success of the last game. Oh, yeah. It was still a huge success just riding off of the success of Spider-Man, too. And it has, it looks, it looked gorgeous at the time.

Some, if you see the Spider-Man in Venom models, they still look really good. When you see Peter Parker and Mary Jean talking in some cutscenes, that's when it becomes poser technology, basically. It's an episode of Xavier Renegate Angel. But it's a fun game that will also let Treyar cut loose in ways that a movie license wouldn't let them do. Okay, so that same year is Ultimate Spider-Man. Spider-Man appears in his first game that doesn't have his name in the title, and it was the giant fiasco Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects.

At least they named the game accurately. They really did. It was a real fuck up to, why would you ever put Imperfect in the name of your? game. You're just asking for reviews to shit all over you. That was the era where SEO didn't matter and your title for your review could be as snarky as possible. Oh, those were the days. I miss it.

But yeah, so I actually remember this game got announced by it being mocked in Penny Arcade because it was announced like, EA finally working with Marvel. And we're going to do a crossover game where all your favorite EA characters,

original EA characters, meet up with your Marvel faves. And Penny Arcade joked of like, so what, it's going to be John Madden and Spider-Man? What is it? You have no, EA has no original characters, which in 2005, they really didn't. Yeah, they didn't even have a Mirror's Edge back then. No, or John Dead Space. They didn't have...

John Dead Space. But so, they, the Capcom lost the Marvel Fighting License. EA, I believe, outbid them, so they got it. EA is trying to show off that they've got the Marvel games. So they make their own 3D fighter. And that is really similar to Powerstone, except way less fun. It is not, I'm a Power Stone fanboy. This game was way worse than that.

You know what they should have done is get the license and then pay Capcom to put Capcom characters with the Marvel characters in a Powerstone engine game. Isn't Infinity War all about Power Stones? Yes. Good God. I watched the video for this because, boy, I have no memories of this. I think this was a race from history, just the memories of this game. Well, one of the most interesting things I remember from playing it the first time was the opening cutscene where they show that like the Marvel universe is being invaded by these powerful monsters

and they're so powerful. They kill Captain America, the Hulk and the Punisher, which is the game at the start telling you, hey, did you think you're going to get to play as these three popular characters in this Marvel game? You're not. They're dead. We paid for them to appear, but you will not play as them. So instead of the Hulk, you get the thing, which, hey, I love the thing, but...

I'd rather play as the thing than the Hulk. Most people would pick the Hulk. He's like the Jewish Hulk, right? He is, he has been Bar Mitzvud. He is a Hulk who's been Bar Mitzvud. I've seen him on Jack Kirby's Hanukkah cards. But, hey, who wants to play as those guys? When you can play as Hazmat and Johnny Ome, right?

Johnny O. Are these real? Those are two of the original creations for EA's side of thing. You know, like, those are game pro editors, not video game characters. Were they at least created by, like, a Marvel artist of the times? Marvel artists were involved in it, and technically they exist in the Marvel universe. They appeared in an in-canon comic book tie-in, but you'll never see them again in the comics. But they, so, so it's just a very, it's also so drab.

It's so 2005 and incredibly drab. Yeah, it's very brown and, like, muddy greens and, yeah. It's gross. Is this the fighting game equivalent of Iron Man and Exo Man of War in heavy metal? It really reminds me of the second 3D Prince of Persia game or just like, ooh. Like this stained album has come to life, man. Which really made Spider-Man not fit in at all either. Like, he's trying to say Zingers while punching Venom, and it's just...

Was there like an original Godsmack song in this game? I don't think they... Well, no, I bet EA tracks did have something in this. I bet. But the game was a big flop. The Man of Critic had it at about six, which is not what EA wanted. And from what I've read in the past about how Marvel reacts to a bad review of a game, I think this explains why this was the only game EA put out with Marvel.

I think they probably canceled the deal after that. Though there was plans for a sequel to it called Marvel Destruction that the EA Chicago team who worked on the Def Jam games was working on. EA was working on Marvel Destruction, just in their own terms. And EA Chicago, when it shut down, this game then leaked out their pitch for a more intense 3D combat type game. That definitely looked better than Nemesis, but just never came together. So then in 2006, there's no mainline Spider-Man game, but he does get to appear in Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which I feel like we can do its whole own mini episode about the X-Men Legends games.

Yeah, I've heard those are extremely good, and I feel like there is room in our world for a new one, but I feel rights-wise, it would be impossible to just make one of those. I think it's just unfortunate that it's, I'm shocked they got to now thinking about it. They got to make it in the first place because it's just, it's so niche, like the idea of like, Baldur's Gate, but with X-Men. That's what X-Men Legends wanted to were, or Diablo. They're both the dungeon-crawling, top-down RPGs. Yeah, it was like the Baldur's.

Gave for PS2, the original one, which was a more like a Diablo-like. And Ravensoft did an incredible job with them. It also was interesting because, like, because it was top down, you kind of, you could see the heroes, but the camera wasn't focused right on the

heroes, which seems anthetical to playing a licensed game like that, where you want the heroes in your face. That's what you're paying for. You want to see Wolverine there. But it also really opened it up to a ton of, like, different costumes and tons of lore thrown in, lots of storytelling. They couldn't do it in a non-r-R-P-D-style game.

Was this the closest they've ever come to making a Secret Wars game? Actually, yes. So Ultimate Alliance is Secret Wars. Well, not exactly, but it is a big, sprawling event comic. So when I was playing the first two X-Men games, I was like, this is fun, and I definitely love the X-Men, but why aren't all the Marvel characters in here? and that then is what happens in Ultimate Alliance.

As of 2006, virtually every major Marvel hero in it, other than the Hulk, because he was under Vivendi at the time, so they couldn't have the Hulk in there. Other than the Hulk, they all appear in it. You go to Wakanda, you go to Latvaria, you go into space, you go into Mephisto's hell, you do all these things, and it's just, in Atlantis too, and just see everything in Marvel. It was this bonanza of fan service and tons of character costume unlockables, too.

The game was so much fun. It was also one of the first next-gen games I played because I didn't get an Xbox 360 until 06. So I played it on the 360. Though this was on every fucking system imaginable. Yeah, it was huge. It was even on a GBA, had a GBA port as well. And they were all lots of fun. Raven Software did a really good.

job with them. How is the GBA port? Yeah, I know. Well, you know, they're not going to get that kind of money for a GBA game to do an actual top-down. It's just the handle lover in my heart wants something good. And yeah, it was just tons of silly comic book fun with some really cool DLC that included like solo missions for the biggest stars of it and also lots of cool costumes. Spider-Man had lots of cool costumes and even Hulk eventually. And vicarious visions would take over the series with number two, which was less good. I was sad when Raven Software gave it up, but they were busy working

on the X-Men Origins Wolverine game. Ooh, the final cover of EGM. Oh, God, that's right. Yeah. And that game adapted Civil War. Spider-Man is still in that. The Civil War comic, not the movie that would come out seven years later.

The only downside to it, though, is that it got a lot more straight lace and less silly and had way fewer playable characters in it. It was very similar to what happened with the Civil Wars was serious business. People died. Penance had to put himself in like a self-punishment mutilation SMN costume. Come on, man.

It was hardcore. He can't have fun then. Nope, no fun. And it also had the real like Unreal 3 kind of sheen to it of just like everybody's face looked like an Unreal 3 kind of face. And it just was a lot more brown and textured in that way. And also, Stanley plays a senator in that game. too. That's his cameo role.

And it's a fine game if you were waiting for another one of those. But the first one is my favorite just because of how silly and wide ranging it was. Very similar to what happened to after the Neversoft Spider-Man. Marvel was like, oh, you got to do that once? Tone

it down. You went too crazy. He gave people too much. And these are two of the few that you could actually buy right now at the time of this recording. So, my personal theory is that when Sony got the exclusive rights to Spider-Man games, they then, part of the deal, Activision giving that up, they were like, Marvel then loosened the screws and let them re-release the Ultimate

Alliance games as PS4 and Xbox-1 ports. Who knows how long it's going to stay available? I bought them just to have them, so I'm like, well, you can't take these away. Yeah. But they're on the digital storefronts now. two of the rare old Marvel games that are still for sale. So we have about 10 minutes left, Henry. Let's try to wrap up the rest of these games of the lightning round here.

And they're all not very interesting. No, they're all pretty crummy. Spider-Man's crumbiest movie turns into one of his crumiest open-world games. That's Spider-Man 3. And wasn't there like some sort of strife over the production of that movie, too? Like Sam Ramey didn't want to direct it. There are too much studio interference, things like that. They were forced to have Venom.

Every actor was tired. They hired Bryce Dallas Howard to be Gwen Sour. Stacey, she got pregnant halfway through the film so she couldn't do any of the action scenes, so they rewrite the ending. So Mary Jane is held captive again, even though Kirsten Duntz was like, please don't have me get kidnapped at the end of another movie, please. And she got kidnapped again at the end of another movie. And this game is way worse than two.

There's a really dumb bit where you're like, you're web swinging around the city with Mary Jane and you have to catch hearts in the air. It's like the pop-by arcade game. It really is. Is there a, is there like a rhythm mini game where you're angsty Peter Parker at the piano bar? No, see, they didn't know that dumb stuff would be in it. So it's, they don't do that stuff either. I mean, if you're going to do Spider-Man 3, at least have fun with it.

Spider-Man does become a bad boyfriend to Mary Jane and, like, says, hey, don't go and grabs her arm. She's like, you're hurting me. And that scene is just uncomfortable to watch now. Also, the game ends of Spider-Man, straight-up murdering venom. Like they fall off the building together. Spider-Man webs himself up and holds on while he lets Venom fall and Venom is impaled on a bunch of like raised construction spike stuff

and just dies right there. It's just like, what a bummer. This is sad. Though Sandman gets a better ending instead of just evaporating into sand, which is what he did in that movie. So it also, guys, look, that game was the first one to have Spider-Man QTEs and look up Spider-Man's most epic fail to see the funniest scene ever

of Spider-Man failing at huge. Oh, this I got to see. All right, so then we had Spider-Man friend of foe. I'm going to say, friend. Friend. This is a baby game made by the cool Canadians at next level. They take so much crap from everyone.

They took, they got to pay those bills, so they just take a lot of jobs. They do good work. Was this for people with bad ideas? Yeah, an 0-7? Yeah, was Punch out their first Nintendo game? Yeah, and I think that was 09? Yeah, that was 09.

So this is them still paying their dues. And it's just a baby game that re-does the three Spider-Man games as a more multiplayer brawler. So this was an attempt to basically do like a Lego game before those existed. Yeah. Hey, babies, new games too. Now this would just be a mobile game. Like, they wouldn't even bother with this. Then in 08, we get Spider-Man Web of Shadows on everything.

And Web of Shadows was the last really good Spider-Man game before Marvel Spider-Spiderman in, my opinion. From watching the videos of the 360 PS3 version, I'm not going to say it's anything like this, but the combat seems more like a platinum game than other Spider-Man games. It had the best. Actually, I like the combat in that more than the one and even the PS4 game right now. Like, it's, it has really good combat that also takes place running up buildings and like in the air.

Combat was the real focus of it, made by Shaba games. And web swinging, though, sucks compared to Spider-Man too. you swung off of the air again. But it also was heavily influenced by Mass Effect and Biocococ by having like, you'll make choices as Spider-Man and you'll get a different ending. Will you swing off into the sunset with Mary Jane

or will you be a violent loner at the end? But it was really cool that at a press of a button like just clicking in on R3, you change from red suit to black suit and back again with completely different combat and move styles. It was a really neat idea. Unfortunately, though, it was judged as a failure by Activision, and they shut down Shaba Games after that.

And Shaba Games was working on a game called dubbed Spider-Man Classic at the time, which was going to be retelling classic Spider-Man comic stories in game form in a more level-based style leaving behind the open world, which then is what actually happened with the next game when Activision's Montreal studio, Binox, took over with Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions. That game is kind of fun.

You get to play as four different types of Spider-Man and four different universes. We have four different types of battle gameplay styles. And it's a much more boss-centric thing. Also, they definitely had a memo that said, we want a first-person Spider-Man game. So there's some tacked-on first-person segments in there. Weird. Weird.

And then B-Nox just made three more Spider-Man games. which rates crappier than the last one. I remember I had two demos from the B-Nox guys of the Amazing Spider-Man, the Amazing Spider-Man two movie games, and they were mad. They were two of the, like, grumpiest guys I've ever. They were mad at my questions about Spider-Man

because I was like, so you just swing from the air in this one? They're like, I do not know why people keep asking about the swinging from the air. I thought Canadians were friendly and polite. These are French Canadians. Oh, never mind. They're the opposite. They're mirror universe, Canadians with goatees.

And so the amazing Spider-Man 2, the video game in 2014, which did come out on current gen systems, that was it for Spider-Man games. Spider-Man was kind of quietly retired. 2014 was the end of the Activision deal officially. That's why multiple games got delisted at the end of it. Like, Deadpool was only on sale for like nine months and got delisted thanks to the end of that deal. Spider-Man was still appearing in other team-up games like the Marvel's Capcom 3. Marvel Heroes

the free-to-play Diablo game. The Lego Marvel Games Marvel Superero Squad, but he wasn't starring in his own games. That all changed in 2016 with the announcement of that not only was Spider-Man joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he was finally getting

his own game again, developed by Insomniac for only the PlayStation 4. And Sony was advertising that game two years before it released. to like, hey, get a PS4, you'll play Spider-Man someday. No, it was fun for the 2016, 2017, and 2018 E3s to all be about games that are out in 2018. That was really cool of Sony to do that.

But the game rules. Like, it's the first game I've ever platinum, and I don't platinum games, I'm just not into that, but doing everything I'd rather, I don't play as many new games as I used to. So if I'm going to, I'm not going to be trying to get everything in it. but just being Spider-Man and doing Spider-Man things and exploring Manhattan and getting in fights.

Doing the things of Spider-Can as were. Doing the things of spiders can are always fun. It's such a great game. And they definitely learned all the right lessons from Spider-Man 2. And the bad Spider-Man games after Spider-Man 2 were the lesser ones were definitely goofies for them to also learn from in that case. So we have to wrap up any final, final thoughts. I wish I had more connection to these games.

but I think I will eventually play that Insomniac game when it's like 20 bucks, which will be soon because it's a new game. But, yeah, I mean, that sounds very interesting. And I probably would have liked the Ultimate Alliance games if I had gotten into them at the time. They seem like the highlights for me and, of course, Spider-Man too. But I don't have that much experience with these games, and they're very hard to play now, which is why I brought Henry on board because he has experience with all of the games.

Anybody else have any final thoughts on these? By what you mean me? Sorry, I don't. Henry, too. I mean, I guess I should have played Spider-Man too when it was new because I don't have any excuses not to have played it. It's my kind of game and everyone else loved it. And I guess I blew it, guys.

I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to tell you who reviewed it, but I couldn't find it. But it's probably not online anymore. Why save anything online? Who cares? It's probably Matt Leone. Or Brian Intahar who works in Ensomia.

He was with EGM and in 2004 there was no integration between. I don't think he was at EGM yet, actually. Okay. I can't believe, yeah, it's still, I can't believe that the sports guy then when, from EGM has now gone out to be like the director of the Spider-Man game, doing all the interviews about the Spider-Man game, which like, hey, Brian, you know, if you're looking for somebody else who knows a lot about Spider-Man, if you're listening now. No, you're stuck in the podcasting industry, Henry.

No, but my first love is Spider-Man. Go podcast until you die. Having so many former peers directing massive blockbuster games that are well-received makes me feel like a real underachiever. No. I didn't even play Spider-Man, too, and he's making Spider-Man. My God. They gave up on true art, which is journalism.

We are the true artists of the world by commenting on things that other people make. That's right. Well, I guess my last thought is, Bob, you're welcome to come over to my place and play Ultimate Alliance with me on the couch if you want. Let's live stream it someday, someday. Let's wrap up everybody. We'll tell you all of our personal information after this little plug for Retronauts, the Patreon, of course. This show is supported by Patreon. Go to patreon.com slash Retronauts.

And for only $3 a month, dear Lord, anyone can afford that. But for three bucks a month, you can get every episode a week ahead of time and add free at a higher bit rate. It's the ultimate premium way to listen to Retronauts and you help us eat and travel and do recordings and you help support the show in so many great ways. So please go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts. to find out how to help the show. There are incentives on top of that if you want to give more. But at three bucks a month, you can just get all the stuff ahead of time,

and it sounds better, and you'll be happy, too, in every way in your life. And if you can only afford a buck a month, hey, a little tip would be nice, too. And as for me, I am Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo, but I will let Henry tell you all the other stuff that we do on the side because we have our own podcast outside of Retronauts, and we all exist in a big, happy universe. Sure do.

Hey everybody, I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. You can follow me there. Me and Bob are working overtime on Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon. Talking Simpsons is our chronological exploration of every episode of The Simpsons from the beginning. We are deep into season 8th at the time of this recording. We recorded one of my favorites ever just recently. And we do What a Cartoon, where we go through a different episode of a different cartoon each week. We did G.I. Joe not too long ago with Jeremy.

And The Max with Jeremy, too. You can listen to that episode as well. And if you liked all this superhero talk, me and Bob, with the previous Retronauts guest, Gary Buh, did the Spider-Man animated series from 1994. Or you can hear our X-Men animated series episode of What a Cartoon with Matt McMuzzles from Super Best Friends. And that is patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

Both the Retronauts and the Talking Simpsons help us all live. And Jeremy, how about you? You've got stuff going on, too. I don't really have any pitches. After all that. You've got videos, you've got books, you've got your own health spa. Sure, you're thinking of Konami. Oh, right, right, right, right.

Your own love, Mattels. This has been J. Jeremy Jameson, and you can find me at Retronauts.com. He wants pictures of fish, dude. That's right. Yes, it's too late. The book is already gone off. Damn it. Yes, I'm demanding pictures of Spider-Man at Retronauts.com or on Twitter as GameSpite.

And that's pretty much it. Thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you next time with a... brand new episode of Retronauts. Thank you for listening.