Everyone has one of those childhood games that stays with them through their life, long after the first time you played it, and its memory still lingers even after all those years and games later. You’ll be sitting there and playing something like, I don’t know, Daredevil on the GBA as an oddly specific example, and the one thing going through your mind other than the usual existential dread (and definitely not anything about the game itself); the constant “hey!” that the henchmen in Spider-Man repeatedly say every time you start throwing fists. It’s said so casually that it’s like you just cut them in line or something, and they’re mildly miffed about the whole thing and are now trying to get your attention to escalate the situation. Does that incredibly personalized and specific example work for everybody?
I love this game, if you haven’t been able to pick up on that with my numerous mentions of it, specifically me constantly saying how much I wish I was playing it already throughout the Marvel retrospective. Just once or twice, I think, it’s hardly come up really. It's one such game that's stuck with me since I first played it back in the distant year of 2000 or so, as I think I actually played this relatively close to it coming out for once. I rented it first from my local Blockbuster (forever rest in peace, my king) for the N64, and I distinctly remember renting it alongside Quest64 of all games and also getting some Pizza Hut calzones which were the hottest food item of the time on the Canadian streets. That was a good night, let me tell you. I ended up entirely neglecting Quest64, as of course I did, and played Spider-Man throughout that entire weekend. Once the rental time ended, I returned it with a heavy heart, then set out to save until I could actually buy a real copy. Eventually the day came some time later, and I finally owned Spider-Man on the PlayStation this time no less, my favourite console.
It’s been a long time coming to cover Spider-Man. My plan way back when I first joined the illustrious Writer’s Guild here was to just cover this, and eventually the X-Men Legends games and the first two Ultimate Alliance games. Of course, that didn’t go as planned as then the idea of the whole retro Marvel retrospective came upon me one night in a moment of weakness, overpowering the mind that birthed it and pushing me into this masochistic agony of playing an endless barrage of mediocre ****ing shovelware. Like a shadow crawling across the floor, a hollow, distant presence that walks up my spine when the darkness is deepest, softly lulling whispers of “Octopus, don’t you need to know how every version of Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge plays? Shouldn’t you play all of them?” into my tired ears…
That’s the last exaggerated insanity comedy bit thing, I promise. This is technically part two (here’s part one) of the fifth generation Marvel games, but an article dedicated solely to this one game. There is no possible way I’d be able to contain my review to maybe a page at the most like in the standard multi-game article format, and I don’t want to do this game a disservice by trying to limit myself to that page length. So, let’s get into one of the most legendary and action packed old-school Marvel video games, a game that drips with excitement and love put into it and made by some passionate developers…after we talk about dry history stuff. Come on, you know what you were getting first when you clicked on an Octopus article. You shouldn’t be surprised; you did it to yourself.
The History; Wasn’t Neversoft ****ing Fantastic?
This particular game called Spider-Man was the lovechild of Neversoft, an amazing developer that of course got purchased eventually by Activision and forced into indentured Call of Duty slave labour after a single Guitar Hero game didn’t return five times its budget in sales, then got shuttered in 2014. Classic Activision, I ****ing love those guys.By 1998, they were known really only for one big series; Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, two games in at this point. I shouldn’t have to go into detail about how popular that series was, suffice to say it was the **** and I can personally confirm that everyone was talking about shredding some sick concrete or whatever. A relevant part of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 to this article is the inclusion of a certain secret character, who can in fact do whatever an arachnid can.
Dude, Spidey can shred!
This was a pure easter egg character. Several of the Neversoft staff were Spider-Man stans but they had no plans at the time to really do anything else with the wall-crawler outside of that fun little one-off secret appearance. Until they got purchased by Activision, that is. Neversoft found out that their new overlords still had the Spider-Man video game license, and looking to plan their next game, saw an opportunity. Shooting their goo, they approached the soulless demons that had assimilated grotesque imitations of flesh and bone; aka, the Activision suits. They got approved, and quickly started working on what was the dream game for many of their employees.
The chief calling the shots here was Chad Findley, the lead game designer, and the resident Spider-Man comic aficionado of Neversoft. It was his creative shot calling that allegedly led to many of the decisions in the game, and he held many hats across Spider-Man’s development as any good boss should. He put together the general storyline, and made numerous calls in regards to comic book authenticity, which is something he was very attentive to. Another prominent person involved was the company president, Joel Jewett, who was the one who really pushed Activision to let them get a go at the webhead, and has even been immortalized in the game itself through a cheat code that replaces J. Jonah Jameson’s model with him. This game is so ****ing cute, by the way.
“An assortment of freak-specimens, criminals and tunnel dwellers”? Oh my, colour me intrigued!
The game went through a lot of internal testing and prototyping, as detailed in this amazingly charming behind-the-scenes interview with Findley and Jewett I found. Also conveyed in that little video is just how much the team was putting into this game. This was the first time I think a Spider-Man game was made by a team who genuinely loved what they were doing, and put absolutely 100% into it. This game absolutely is a work of passion and small details, and just made with so much authentic essence and love. According to Findley, the game was very much a collaborative development, particularly in the writing department; they just got together and jammed out what they wanted to see, and made it work. This is something Neversoft did for just about everything they made in the good old days, honestly; the Tony Hawk games have that exact same juju, as do the early Guitar Hero games.
It’s also the first 3D Spider-Man game, and that came of course with a variety of challenges in that elemental transitional period of video game design. They had to design a new way to webswing, a new perspective on wallcrawling, and even make a new way to incorporate those into new 3D based combat. They had their work cut out for them, clearly.
Interestingly, a lot of the marketing for the game implied it was a tie-in to the legendary ‘94 cartoon, which the game is entirely not. I’m not sure exactly why this happened, but I’d guess it was just the usual marketing shenanigans trying to tie it into a very popular product at the time. Here's a commercial for the game which literally just pulled clips straight from the cartoon, for example.
Maybe it didn’t help that some of the voice actors from Spider-Man: The Animated Series reprised their roles, along with technically two from the always underrated Spider-Man: Unlimited which debuted only about a year before the game. Jennifer Hale reprises her very early role as Black Cat from the Animated Series in this, along with being the voice of MJ which she was for Unlimited. Efreem Zimbalist Jr. returns from the Animated Series as Doc Ock, but starring in the main Spider-Man role this time around isn’t Christopher Daniel Barnes of TAS, but Rino Romano from Unlimited. Whenever I read a Spider-Man comic or picture the character in my head, it’s Rino Romano’s voice I hear, likely saying “I’m already at full health!” over and over and over and over again. Honourable mentions to Josh Keaton from the Spectacular Spider-Man series and Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
The game first hit shelves for the PlayStation in August of 2000, then arrived on the N64 a couple of months later in November. Two more versions followed the next year, both being ones I honestly didn’t even know existed until researching for this review; there was one on the Dreamcast, and a Windows release. The three console versions are identical in content save for the cutscenes being reduced to a captioned slideshow on the N64, as befitting that console’s technical limitations. The Dreamcast version is of course much more impressive graphically, being much sharper and having a little more detail in the character models but is otherwise identical to the PlayStation version.
Of note is the PC port, as apparently it’s utterly terrible. It’s the same game in terms of content as the others, but its performance and stability seems very questionable from what I’ve gathered. It can’t run at anything above 20FPS, and the framerate is uncapped which makes it a nightmare to run on any modern hardware. I’ve heard that it also crashes if you simply skip cutscenes too quickly? Perhaps we just shouldn’t talk about the PC version. Shh.
Without further ado, let’s get into this absolute love letter to the character by some insanely talented developers. RIP, Neversoft. Does this game still hold up today after over two decades? Is its web-slinging a little imprecise and loose? Does Spider-Man really say “I’m already at full health!” that often? Do I still giggle at Black Cat’s hilarious face every time it comes onto the screen, with her face looking like two sizes too small for her head? We’ll get into it, yes, yes, and I’ll never stop laughing at it.
The Game; **** Yeah
For this review, I’ve played through the game once again on the PlayStation, my beloved. I thought about going through with the sharper Dreamcast version, but I just couldn’t betray my nostalgia like that. Besides, with the modern edge of graphical emulation settings I can get the formerly inferior PlayStation version to look just as good as the Sega version essentially. And I would never play the N64 version on sheer principle, so that was never even an option.Follow me on this one; you play as Spider-Man. The game opens with Peter at a science exhibit headed by Doctor Otto Octavius, aka Doc Ock, who’s claimed to be reformed and is now inventing for the good of the city. Suddenly, an imposter Spider-Man crashes the party and steals some tech, and of course Peter suddenly finds himself framed in a semi-familiar setup. Just as he sets out to battle through the inevitable gauntlet of villains, a strange choking green fog is unleashed on the streets alongside some cackling laughter…
It’s a huge mystery who the masterminds of this are, really. Who could this strange shadowy figure with robot tentacles possibly be…
The set-up itself is nothing overly new, nor is the path of the story itself; he battles the Sinister Six members (though they aren’t officially called that this time around), and you already know what to expect from the boss line-up. It’s not the actual story that’s so great, just the love and authenticity put into it; the fun factor. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and is filled with so much actual landed comedy and exciting little bits that you entirely gloss over the somewhat routine set-up. Not to mention the sheer volume of references and cameo appearances from other Marvel characters and Spidey side characters.
I could see Punisher being a secret card shark, I think he’s got to have a pretty good poker face. That bottle in front of Daredevil? ‘Superhero Juice’, and I’m not making that up.
Black Cat, Daredevil, Punisher, Captain America, Human Torch, Namor the Submariner. It’s also elevated by the quality of the writing. Not that it’s at all nuanced or eloquent by any stretch of the imagination, just that it’s consistent in characterization and authentic to the character’s comic book roots. Venom this time around isn’t just the same tired shtick of ‘I eat people I guess, rawr we are Venom’ but is instead much more in line with the Lethal Protector run (put into a slightly more kid friendly angle in this of course), seeing him as a very misguided antihero who is also very dumb. It’s fantastic.
There’s some great little moments throughout, such as Torch hanging out with Spider-Man on the Statue of Liberty just like in the comics, to Black Cat and her much too small face offering to fight the Rhino solo so Peter can go save MJ instead (spoilers, but that’s kind of a given in a Spidey story). That’s some loyalty, dude. Spider-Man turns down her offer in-game and he heroically goes to stop Rhino first, saying there’s no way she’d be able to on the Rhino alone. This is a nice little reference to a major comic arc for her back in the day when she desperately wanted to help Peter fight his villains, but routinely would get outclassed by the actual super powered opposition. She may have also just been doing it to get some brownie points with Peter, of course, but you know; it’s the thought that counts. She immediately gets bowled over by Rhino as soon as you show up. Like, literally in two seconds. Beautiful.
I’d honestly recommend anyone to watch the cutscenes of this game on YouTube or something similar if they don’t just play the game itself, some of them are greatly entertaining even on their own.
Of course, I generally put gameplay above story in a game so let’s talk about that.
It’s simple but effective, and you can do a few fun things to spice it up. There’s a punch and a kick button, and you can combine them to do some simple combos. There isn’t really that much of a difference between punching and kicking but it’s just there for some fun factor. You can also of course sling some goo, and in a few different ways even. You have your standard goo stream to tie enemies up (you can even defeat basic enemies if you hold it long enough), the other classic goo ball to shoot out, and you have two kinda new uses here as well; you can en-goo your fists to deal more damage with your punches, and fully encase yourself in goo to absorb some hits before exploding it out like a sticky tidal wave. Spider-Man goo’s people. Your web attacks are of course tied to a meter, but the game is fairly forgiving with how much goo fluid you have, as well as having refill tokens pretty commonly around the levels.
There’s also of course the webslangin’ itself. This was the first fully 3D Spider-Man game, and I think the biggest hurdle in front of Neversoft in making it was in taking those first swinging steps in that added dimension. It’s easy to implement Spidey swinging in a 2D sidescroller, but when making it in 3D you have to consider some different aspects.
Ah yes, NYC sewers, the area known for its vast cavernous caves of random jutting pipes and stalactites.
This game called Spider-Man managed something decent enough. By hitting one of the shoulder buttons when in the air, you begin swinging in a canned little animation; the webs don’t have to attach to anything of course, it’s a fifth generation game, pre-physics engines. That being said, you do have to be close enough to something to start swinging towards it which is kinda weird; the webs’ not attaching to anything, so why do you need to be in a certain range? It only comes up on the various roof top levels if you make a leap of faith towards a too distant building, but still. The game has an auto-aim web system, with it kinda aiming itself forward at the closest wall or building or corner that you’ll get briefly stuck on; you can hold down one of the shoulder buttons to get a manual aim crosshair, but it’s not really the easiest thing to use quickly. It’s not like the game will wildly veer you in the opposite intended direction or anything, but the lack of easy manual control does make it feel strange, like you're not really fully in control of Spidey and at the mercy of the game's whims.
It’s not so bad when you don’t need to have that much accuracy with it, which is most of the time thankfully, but there are a few specific sections that are made very frustrating due to this loose control. I still have issues with a Venom rooftop chase early in the game because of it. It’s likely one of the weakest aspects of the game but you do have to take it with the context that this was, again, the first attempt at a 3D webswing. Considering that there’s older 2D Spidey games with worse swinging, then it’s still impressive.
The levels have some good variety in their objectives as you make your way through. You fight a lot of the same bald henchman goon, some parasitic alien symbiotes paramilitary crime syndicate types, and even lizardmen. Some levels you’re running and crawling away from missile launching helicopters above the fog covered streets, or crawling around on the ceiling to avoid bank robbers mid caper, or battling the previously mentioned ‘freak specimens and tunnel dwellers’ in the sewer as every superhero game needs a sewer level, and of course the levels are punctuated with boss fights. These fights are easily some of the highlights of the game, with them frequently having well designed little gimmicks or shticks to them elevating them above a generic punch until one of you dies type scenario.
Except for Scorpion, who’s big scrap is a little boring. Sorry, Mac.
Tricking Rhino into charging into conveniently placed electric generators (ah, the super hero ‘big guy’ boss fight classic trope; this may even have been one of its first appearances), battling a giant multi-floor tall Mysterio, punching Carnage directly in his stupid deranged face so he falls into a shrieking sonic generator; they are routinely impressive and fun fights. Some favourites of mine are the two Venom fights, where he uses his invisibility (in his earlier appearances, he could actually turn invisible and is immune to Peter’s spider-sense, which was eventually entirely dropped from his character) to ambush you in an alleyway and a sewer control room. They’re great little fights with Brock frequently appearing directly behind you, and using his own goo to grab you off walls and mid web swing even.
I’d lick the Scarlet Spider outfit too, Eddie. Am I weird?
Graphically the game is so charming in that early PlayStation kind of way. The characters are chunky, the faces are jank, and the levels are filled with the usual early Sony texture warping and visible warbling seams. It’s entirely subjective of course, but I personally love that whole vibe. Taking into account when it came out, it’s at worst an acceptably fine looking console game. Its visual fidelity competition in 2000 was maybe something like MediEval 2 and The World Is Not Enough, and compared to those great looking PlayStation offerings Spider-Man holds its own. Spidey lacks any and all web-line detailing on his costume in this for I'm sure technical performances reasons, making it look that much more like he’s just wearing footie pajamas. Beautiful.
All this being said, here come the negatives. We’ve touched on one before with the web swinging, but the biggest and most immediately noticeable issue of the game other than that is the camera control, being that there's no ****ing camera control. The right stick does nothing in this game, and the only real control you have over where the camera is looking is through tapping a shoulder button to center it back behind you. It frequently gets in the way, and by frequently I mean constantly, but after a while you can learn to cope. Again you have to consider when the game was made; 2000 was still young for dedicated camera control with the right stick/other equivalent in a third person platformer.
The fog of course is so they didn’t have to model and render streets, letting them focus on the buildings to improve performance. At least they came up with an in-game reason for it, credit where it’s due.
There was Tomb Raider III that had a sort of camera control tied to the right stick (and maybe the two earlier ones, I cannot recall) and Mario64 with its C-buttons. And that was about it until the next generation, basically. That being said, I would still consider the game’s camera issues as the worst thing about the game, so I’m still factoring that in. I’m a fair ocean creature, even when faced with my own nostalgia.
Even after over 20 years of playing this game, I still lose it whenever I see Cat’s face. What did they do to you, Felicia? Why does your face look too small for your head?
One last huge thing before we close this review out; I have to stress just how fun this game is, and how much **** is loving stuffed inside it with soft caresses. There’s comic collectibles to find, a whole slew of bonus modes including a goo ball shooting gallery, time attack and some special missions, a whole swath of fun cheats to discover that you just don’t get in video games anymore (big head mode!). There’s even a version of the story you unlock with a code called ‘What If?’ mode, that replaces so much of the original game with pure comedy memes that it’s ridiculous. You race giant submarines, Carnage’s voice gets replaced by one of the devs’ nine year old kids in a frankly terrifying change, Mysterio literally has a fish swimming in his fishbowl head, Spider-Man at one point shows of his sick breakdancing moves, Black Cat apparently got injected with a dance drug and can’t stop dancing, Peter (that’s literally the dialogue in the game, not just me making a joke out of it). It’s a different version of the game that they actually recorded new dialogue for.
I hasn’t even mentioned the impressive assortment of alternate costumes, including my beloved Sensational Spider-Man outfit that Ben Reilly wore when he very briefly replaced Peter. They each come with some little gameplay bonus or drawback in the case of a few of them, and are very nice inclusions indeed. I may have only spent maybe a solid hour across this playthrough just going through the costumes, constantly going back and forth on which one I wanted to use and switching, as you can see from the screenshots. That’s pretty on brand for me, honestly.
I love this costume like you wouldn't believe.
Spider-Man is a fantastic ****ing game, basically, considering it’s context and when it came out. As the first Spider-Man game of its dimensional attributes, it really knocked things right out of the park. Did it age the best? I mean that’s a matter of opinion, but there is some stuff that hasn’t come out the nicest in the two and a half decades since the game came out. But, the game still packs a punch with everything else. It’s attention to adorable levels of detail, it’s pure fun factor, it’s comic book energy that radiates off of it, and just the fact that you can tell how much love Neversoft put into it; you can’t help but like it, an infectious sense of joy from this era of gaming that you don’t see a whole lot of nowadays. Giving this game a score is actually a hard one for me, since I really have to separate my subjective personal opinion from my usual attempt at an as impartial and objective score as I can give. I think the game truly earns its 8, even accounting for the two things that haven’t aged well in it; the web-swinging, and the camera.
The back cover doesn’t lie; you do fight a lot of sewer dwelling lizardmen.
What’s next after this absolutely standout video game in the Marvel series? The finale of the ‘Fifth Generation’ leg. There really weren't that many Marvel games this era, and I could have even realistically done a two-parter if I wasn’t compelled by forces I couldn’t resist to do this spotlight entry of the series. We have some actually good **** ahead of us too, mostly, bearing maybe one entry. We have four games in the conclusion, and even this game’s sequel, something I actually haven’t played for more than a couple hours; so look forward to that discovery as it’s very much new for me, too.
What If? Mode is something special, like a bizarre fever dream of pure memes. Just look at this; what the **** is this?
Until next time, true believers (can you believe that’s the first time I’ve used that yet after like a dozen articles or whatever?), and thank you for withstanding my rant about a silly PlayStation game for like 9 pages, pre-images.
Pros
- + So much love and effort has been put into this game.
- + Charming storyline, and actually landed comedy in the cutscenes.
- + Simple but effective combat.
- + High fun factor.
Cons
- - The web-swinging has not aged the best in the two-and-a-half decades.
- - Constant battles with the camera.
8
out of 10
Overall
Neversoft's Spider-Man is such an absolute love letter to the character and his comic book roots, and you just can't help but feel it when you play. Great characterizations and a big fun factor pull the game over the parts that haven't aged well, and it has such an infectious energy that you can't help but like it.
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The Sequel was nice too, wish we got another one by Neversoft.
