This isn't a horrible GBA game. It had decent graphics/art style along with a good frame rate and responsive actions. You can play as both Spider-Man and Venom which is nice, and face a couple bosses in Sable and Carnage.

The game is a standard side scroller beat em up with minor exploration / maze like levels to get through. There are also some hidden power-ups and abilities in lots of the levels that you can collect if you want which vary from more web canisters for Spider-man or a new jump and slam ability for Venom. The Animations for attacks were well done as well, you can mix in a couple combos when varying punch and kick. Venoms crouch attack he opens up into a giant mouth and chomps enemies lol.

If I had this game as a kid I'm sure I'd keep coming back to it. That's all that matters in a GBA game to me.

Good game. Great controls especially compared with spiderman 1 and 2 on GBA. Had a lot of fun with this one.

My main complaints and why it's a 7 and not like a 9/10 is a certain fight near the end that will break your brain trying to figure out how to win. (Hint: idk lmao) and also there were only like 3 bosses and 2 you fight twice.

Will check out the PS2 version next.

[GBA Version] No matter how close Vicarious Visions get to making a good game, they absolutely fumble it before the end zone every time because they just SUCK at making fun enemies. Every single enemy they make always gets the drop on you, always gets the first hit, always knocks you down, for half your health bar, no matter if you try to dodge, or if you sneak up on them. The game feels good, but if every single level you have to deal with their terrible annoying enemies, it's gonna get frustrating after a while. No matter the quality of the rest.

While I have an affection for handheld spider-man games, Ultimate Spider-Man on GBA is shockingly bad- It feels like they blatantly missed the clearly simple gameplay loop.

On paper, all a Spider-Man GBA game needs is to do a few short things: Bad guys to beat up, short swing sections, and using your powers to climb through buildings to complete missions and find stuff. It's really basic, but that's not an inherit bad thing. Spider-Man 3 was basically this game but good. The biggest problem is the horrible combat. Enemies take 2-3 hits before falling to the ground, and you have to wait for them to get back up. 90% OF ENEMIES NEED TO GET BACK UP. Once they get up you have 1 second to hit them, before they hit you. And enemies can hit projectiles to go through other enemies, but not you. So prepare for lots of unfair hits. Also, the Molotov throwing enemies are ridiculous in how they have a huge blast area and I still haven't figured out how to get near them guaranteed without getting hit.

Playing as Venom is slightly better. He's a bit stronger, and has a better stun move. His feeding mechanic adds some strategy, figuring out how much of the enemy you should hurt. But overall, he's not that much different compared to Spider-Man.

Graphics are probably the best part of the game. The opening company logos and brief video at the start is charmingly "gameboy-esque", and the visuals are really nice reflection of Ultimate's art direction on consoles. Bright and colourful, but not overkill. Venom's running animation is distractingly goofy, but all else looks good.

Overall, it's a terrible mix of being too simple so you don't have much ways to fight, but it's too hard to enjoy mind-numbingly in short bursts. It also costs around $20 to get a physical cart, which is way too much for this game.