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While playing the “far-away” mode I wondered why Spider-man didn’t just use his webbing like this all the time. When you are in “close-up” mode you can use a web spray attack that hits multiple enemies, but it uses some of your health. You can also jump and swing on a web to kick the bad guys in the face which I admit is cool. ~J.A. Laraque

Spider-Man: The Video Game

You know how some things from your childhood just don’t live up to your memory once you relive it as an adult? This is exactly what happened when I played Spider-Man the video game. When I first played this game in the arcades in the early 90’s it was the best thing ever. Today it is just strange and honestly not all that fun.

Spider-Man the video game was developed by Sega in 1991. It was released to the arcades where you could play as Spider-Man, the Black Cat, prince Namor the Sub-Mariner, and the Avengers Hawkeye. On the arcade cabinet you could play with up to four people which was really popular at the time. The style of the game was similar to Captain America and the Avengers which was made by the same company and released earlier that year.

Pretty much the story is to defeat a large rogue gallery of Spider-Man foes including Venom, Kingpin, Doctor Octopus, Electro, Lizard, Scorpion, Sandman, Green Goblin, Hobgoblin, and ultimately Doctor Doom.

When I first played it I believed it was so cool to fight all these bad guys from the Marvel comics, but honestly you spend most of the time fighting these random bad guys that look like a cross between the foot soldiers from TMNT and the shy guys from Super Mario 2. Worst of all they make this yelping and screaming sound all the time which gets super annoying.

There are five chapters in the game and at the end of each you face a boss. However, along the way you can end up fighting mini-bosses like Electro and Doctor Octopus. The gameplay is pretty much two fold. One is your standard side scrolling beat ‘em up where you try not to get surrounded by bad guys and use a lot of throws and jump kicks, kind of like you would if playing Final Fight. The second mode has the camera zoom away to where you become like one fourth the size. When this happens you can climb on walls and just shoot giant globs of webbing to take down enemies.

While playing the “far-away” mode I wondered why Spider-man didn’t just use his webbing like this all the time. When you are in “close-up” mode you can use a web spray attack that hits multiple enemies, but it uses some of your health. You can also jump and swing on a web to kick the bad guys in the face which I admit is cool.

There is a small cut scene before each level with a bit of voiceover work and some of the bosses have a line or two as well, but not much else. What’s funny is Captain America and the Avengers is the older game, but I liked that one much better. Honestly the Punisher beat ‘em up arcade game is the best in my opinion.

As far as I can tell the game was never ported to anything and even in many M.A.M.E packs you won’t find this game, but it is worth a go if you do find it. If nothing else you get to play as Black Cat.

For this game I played it all the way through so check out our YouTube Channel for the rest of the videos.

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