The Amazing Spider-Man for Game Boy is a side-scrolling action platformer that tries to capture the web-slinging thrills of the comic book hero but falls short. While its swinging mechanics are a fun start, the game is plagued by repetitive level design, frustrating enemy encounters, and a limited moveset. This Spider-Man adventure feels more like a chore than a triumph, offering only a brief and lackluster experience for fans of the wall-crawler.
i remember being jealous because one of my elementary classmates had this game. tried it again almost 25 years later and yeah... it's not great.
could've been worse tho. there's some cool music in here too.
could've been worse tho. there's some cool music in here too.
Conman’s Last Hunt
Entry 3
I don’t really have it in my bones to hate any Spider-Man game, but I’m also not an idiot. This is a clunky beat-em up platformer with like two moves and lethargic gameplay (I guess my opinion on Rare platformers is consistent).
The thing that saves it for me here is the overall presentation. I think the various stages and bosses give this life, with the little dialogue/cutscenes being a goofy highlight. It’s not One More Day, but it’s far from Spidey’s best.
Entry 3
I don’t really have it in my bones to hate any Spider-Man game, but I’m also not an idiot. This is a clunky beat-em up platformer with like two moves and lethargic gameplay (I guess my opinion on Rare platformers is consistent).
The thing that saves it for me here is the overall presentation. I think the various stages and bosses give this life, with the little dialogue/cutscenes being a goofy highlight. It’s not One More Day, but it’s far from Spidey’s best.
This game is just plain bad, not horrible but bad. The controls and stiff and coupled with boring gameplay and bad music, there isnt much reason to play it. Although it is an early gameboy game and mimicks the style of better games like the first TMNT game.
I don't know what I expected, but The Amazing Spider-Man for Game Boy was almost just as bad as the Amiga / Commodore 64 game which I had played a month prior.
This one came out in July 1990 for the Game Boy exclusively and was developed by Rare (who developed a different rather below average game in 1990 as well, Captain Skyhawk).
My first immediate complaint about the Commodore 64 game was how it looked like Spider-Man had back issues and how the assets used didn't have much to do with Spider-Man. The moment gameplay started for this Game Boy game, I noticed how Spidey walked like he was having back issues yet again, however the use of multiple Spider-Man villains and the typical Spider-Man quick-wittedness in dialogue at least gave me some Spider-Man vibes here.
That doesn't take away from the fact that this game was a bad one in pretty much any way you can think of, but here is a one-by-one rundown of it all.
____________
STORYTELLING
Mary Jane has been kidnapped by 6 villains, apparently, and Spider-Man needs to save her. He learns about this when Mysterio calls him by phone. Mysterio then is the boss of the first stage. The second stage begins with Hobgoblin giving him a call, the third stage boss is Scorpion and so it goes 6 times until the game ends.
The plot is not really of importance, but what this game does that I found fun was how every conversation is just filled with a bunch of one-liners and insults that Spider-Man and his enemies throw at each other. Spider-Man called Mysterio a "Fishbowl Face", Hobgoblin a "Pumpkin Brain", Scorpion a "Tail-Twirler" and so on. They are not necessarily clever or big zingers, but I can imagine especially younger players getting a kick out of it, so I see it as a plus.
Still, there isn't much here overall.
GAMEPLAY
There are two types of stages in this game. The first is the most common: Moving Spider-Man to the right in a horizontally scrolling 2D Action game with limited platforming. The other appears twice and involves you moving Spider-Man vertically up the wall of a tall building.
During the side-scrolling sections, platforming is really limited to jumping and web-swinging. Web-swinging has got to be working randomly, because I barely ever got it to work even though I always pressed the button like the manual says. Hold B. And yet, every 10th press or so actually started the animation, which sees you progress through the level up in the air, where you can't be hurt by most enemies and can actually swing over boxes that you would be unable to jump over.
Ugh, this just felt like a drag throughout. Spider-Man walks weird and slow, you can only throw a punch or shoot webs (at least until you run out of web fluids) and graphically this game is so simple that you can't even make out what kind of items the enemies drop when they die. Even the manual calls it "stuff" multiple times, so it literally is a bunch of pixels that they drop.
There is a level like this on a random street, but also on a train, but they play the same apart from the fact that Spider-Man crouches down automatically on the train to not get smashed by a brick wall.
The wall-climbing stages include rocks falling from above which you have to avoid and enemies looking out of windows to try to hit you. Pretty straightforward and easy. Not that fun.
Boss fights have some similarities but differences as well, but all of them have pretty simple patterns that you need to figure out and then counter attack until they die.
Later stages then include a whole bunch of crap coming across the screen that pretty much forces you to stay in place for a few seconds at a time before moving to avoid taking damage. You'll probably take damage anyway.
The game is also so feature-barren that bats that fly above you don't even fly down to attack because there is no ability to defend against it, so you literally move forward for several seconds while they just fly above your head.
It's just not that fun of a game to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Standard sound design for the most part, but really low quality of the sound at some others, like for example the disgusting sound the poison dust of Mysterio makes. Music meanwhile was almost completely bad. I thought the Intro Theme was OK and the Boss Battles theme was definitely the highlight, but everything else - which mainly means the main stage theme which is on repeat almost throughout - is really bad. Not only does it sound low quality, but there are parts which almost got me nauseated. Check out Stage Theme 1 starting at 0:27 on YouTube to know what I mean. I didn't like it. Luckily the game is on the shorter side.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Game Boy games often don't look that good, though there certainly are many better looking one's than this game and some that look pretty good, like Donkey Kong Land III. What makes that game stand out despite the technical limitations of the handheld console to me is the detail in animations. This game game had so few that you could count them with two hands, and it didn't look good or detailed in any way, but also not terrible since it is, after all, a Game Boy game.
ATMOSPHERE
The conversations did most of the carrying as far as hitting that Spider-Man atmosphere goes. Apart from that, there is nothing special here and with this soundtrack, I'd almost recommend playing it on mute, if at all.
CONTENT
It's on the shorter side. I've played for 1.5 hours and got to the final boss, where I died and decided it's not worth it to push on. Play the first two levels and you've pretty much seen what this game has to offer, which isn't much. If you really get a kick out of the conversations between Spidey and the villains, that might be enough motivation to push on, and the game being short is a blessing if you are more hardcore than me and are looking to beat all of these games, but there isn't much here in both quantity and quality.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Two different styles of stages with an increasing amount of different enemies on screen as you go. You don't really become stronger as you go, there aren't any power up items to look for, the pace is slow and it all comes together to provide you with a bad and unrewarding experience overall, at least in my opinion.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Web swinging, if it works, looked cool I guess and I liked how they at least tried to make the game stand out with all those light-insult-battles between Spider-Man and the enemies, but there isn't anything here besides that that stood out and was innovative in any way.
REPLAYABILITY
Apart from trying to beat your high score, there isn't any replayability here.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times. There was one big problem though, and that was that the aforementioned "Web Swinging" literally worked at random. Very weird. And it not working often means you will take damage in the meantime.
OVERALL
The game has one saving grace, and that's the interactions between Spider-Man and the villains. But that's just a tiny portion of this game, and the rest of it is simply filled with slow-paced, poorly-animated, feature-less platforming.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Maurice Molyneaux for VGCE, Issue 19 (Aug 90): "Spidey has a number of weapons and defenses at his disposal." | Now that's just a lie.
- Gideon for GamePro, Issue 11 (June 90): "The gameplay is top-notch, and the funky Spiderman theme is a groove."
This one came out in July 1990 for the Game Boy exclusively and was developed by Rare (who developed a different rather below average game in 1990 as well, Captain Skyhawk).
My first immediate complaint about the Commodore 64 game was how it looked like Spider-Man had back issues and how the assets used didn't have much to do with Spider-Man. The moment gameplay started for this Game Boy game, I noticed how Spidey walked like he was having back issues yet again, however the use of multiple Spider-Man villains and the typical Spider-Man quick-wittedness in dialogue at least gave me some Spider-Man vibes here.
That doesn't take away from the fact that this game was a bad one in pretty much any way you can think of, but here is a one-by-one rundown of it all.
____________
STORYTELLING
Mary Jane has been kidnapped by 6 villains, apparently, and Spider-Man needs to save her. He learns about this when Mysterio calls him by phone. Mysterio then is the boss of the first stage. The second stage begins with Hobgoblin giving him a call, the third stage boss is Scorpion and so it goes 6 times until the game ends.
The plot is not really of importance, but what this game does that I found fun was how every conversation is just filled with a bunch of one-liners and insults that Spider-Man and his enemies throw at each other. Spider-Man called Mysterio a "Fishbowl Face", Hobgoblin a "Pumpkin Brain", Scorpion a "Tail-Twirler" and so on. They are not necessarily clever or big zingers, but I can imagine especially younger players getting a kick out of it, so I see it as a plus.
Still, there isn't much here overall.
GAMEPLAY
There are two types of stages in this game. The first is the most common: Moving Spider-Man to the right in a horizontally scrolling 2D Action game with limited platforming. The other appears twice and involves you moving Spider-Man vertically up the wall of a tall building.
During the side-scrolling sections, platforming is really limited to jumping and web-swinging. Web-swinging has got to be working randomly, because I barely ever got it to work even though I always pressed the button like the manual says. Hold B. And yet, every 10th press or so actually started the animation, which sees you progress through the level up in the air, where you can't be hurt by most enemies and can actually swing over boxes that you would be unable to jump over.
Ugh, this just felt like a drag throughout. Spider-Man walks weird and slow, you can only throw a punch or shoot webs (at least until you run out of web fluids) and graphically this game is so simple that you can't even make out what kind of items the enemies drop when they die. Even the manual calls it "stuff" multiple times, so it literally is a bunch of pixels that they drop.
There is a level like this on a random street, but also on a train, but they play the same apart from the fact that Spider-Man crouches down automatically on the train to not get smashed by a brick wall.
The wall-climbing stages include rocks falling from above which you have to avoid and enemies looking out of windows to try to hit you. Pretty straightforward and easy. Not that fun.
Boss fights have some similarities but differences as well, but all of them have pretty simple patterns that you need to figure out and then counter attack until they die.
Later stages then include a whole bunch of crap coming across the screen that pretty much forces you to stay in place for a few seconds at a time before moving to avoid taking damage. You'll probably take damage anyway.
The game is also so feature-barren that bats that fly above you don't even fly down to attack because there is no ability to defend against it, so you literally move forward for several seconds while they just fly above your head.
It's just not that fun of a game to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. Standard sound design for the most part, but really low quality of the sound at some others, like for example the disgusting sound the poison dust of Mysterio makes. Music meanwhile was almost completely bad. I thought the Intro Theme was OK and the Boss Battles theme was definitely the highlight, but everything else - which mainly means the main stage theme which is on repeat almost throughout - is really bad. Not only does it sound low quality, but there are parts which almost got me nauseated. Check out Stage Theme 1 starting at 0:27 on YouTube to know what I mean. I didn't like it. Luckily the game is on the shorter side.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Game Boy games often don't look that good, though there certainly are many better looking one's than this game and some that look pretty good, like Donkey Kong Land III. What makes that game stand out despite the technical limitations of the handheld console to me is the detail in animations. This game game had so few that you could count them with two hands, and it didn't look good or detailed in any way, but also not terrible since it is, after all, a Game Boy game.
ATMOSPHERE
The conversations did most of the carrying as far as hitting that Spider-Man atmosphere goes. Apart from that, there is nothing special here and with this soundtrack, I'd almost recommend playing it on mute, if at all.
CONTENT
It's on the shorter side. I've played for 1.5 hours and got to the final boss, where I died and decided it's not worth it to push on. Play the first two levels and you've pretty much seen what this game has to offer, which isn't much. If you really get a kick out of the conversations between Spidey and the villains, that might be enough motivation to push on, and the game being short is a blessing if you are more hardcore than me and are looking to beat all of these games, but there isn't much here in both quantity and quality.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
Two different styles of stages with an increasing amount of different enemies on screen as you go. You don't really become stronger as you go, there aren't any power up items to look for, the pace is slow and it all comes together to provide you with a bad and unrewarding experience overall, at least in my opinion.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Web swinging, if it works, looked cool I guess and I liked how they at least tried to make the game stand out with all those light-insult-battles between Spider-Man and the enemies, but there isn't anything here besides that that stood out and was innovative in any way.
REPLAYABILITY
Apart from trying to beat your high score, there isn't any replayability here.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times. There was one big problem though, and that was that the aforementioned "Web Swinging" literally worked at random. Very weird. And it not working often means you will take damage in the meantime.
OVERALL
The game has one saving grace, and that's the interactions between Spider-Man and the villains. But that's just a tiny portion of this game, and the rest of it is simply filled with slow-paced, poorly-animated, feature-less platforming.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Maurice Molyneaux for VGCE, Issue 19 (Aug 90): "Spidey has a number of weapons and defenses at his disposal." | Now that's just a lie.
- Gideon for GamePro, Issue 11 (June 90): "The gameplay is top-notch, and the funky Spiderman theme is a groove."
the difficulty spike between the rest of the game and the sewers + doc ock is insane. also
FUCKING RARE?
Played on mGBA emulator.
FUCKING RARE?
Played on mGBA emulator.
This game is a whole half hour long or so (It took me 27 minutes), so there isn't a lot to say here. I commend Rare for trying to give this game some meat with a unique boss at the end of each world in a bit of a Mega Man style, but it wasn't exactly uncommon on the original Game Boy (Super Mario Land 1 had this as a launch title, let alone many other games) and the fights are fairly bad. They range from stupid simple (stand to the far right vs. Green Goblin and unless you miss hitting him on the pattern you cannot be hit) to extremely frustrating (The final boss, my god). Probably the most annoying thing is that this was a beat 'em up / platformer hybrid, but your attack range feels tiny: I particularly found it difficult to hit bosses without taking damage back, sometimes without it even being during their attack but just due to the hitbox of it being so small that I got too close and got hit. I would not have beaten this game were it not for the fact that when you die and get to full health, boss HPs retain their damage. I was on my very last continue when I won.
Basic enemies have this issue where due to your range, all fights are one of two things: The enemies just run into your fist (the bats in the subway level and some other flying enemies) OR they come at you and due to your range you either have to hit during a small window before they ever attack or get hit, there's very few alternative attacks and the jumping is too chunky to reliably dodge opponents. The low enemy variety also makes it overall boring. The wall climbing segments I think are actually a neat idea, the spidey-sense warning of falling objects as a kind of obstacle course dodging is a good implementation of the idea but they make the obstacles fast enough that you really can't react to it and some randomness in the patterns led to parts where I think I had no choice but to take a hit. It's also too easy to one hit kill yourself by jumping on these parts and I don't know why you have to jump into a window when you reach the top to finish the stage...especially since you always then end up on the rooftop rather than inside. Web-slinging was also inconsistent even once I realized the odd control scheme and led to a pair of unfortunate deaths.
There's only two good things about this game: The music with David Wise on the team is kinda boppin' and the cutscenes are cheesy in an intentional, old Spidey cartoon way that frankly makes them pretty funny. Why does Spider-Man answer the phone in his house dressed as Spider-Man? It's not worth playing the game for but, hey, it is something!
Basic enemies have this issue where due to your range, all fights are one of two things: The enemies just run into your fist (the bats in the subway level and some other flying enemies) OR they come at you and due to your range you either have to hit during a small window before they ever attack or get hit, there's very few alternative attacks and the jumping is too chunky to reliably dodge opponents. The low enemy variety also makes it overall boring. The wall climbing segments I think are actually a neat idea, the spidey-sense warning of falling objects as a kind of obstacle course dodging is a good implementation of the idea but they make the obstacles fast enough that you really can't react to it and some randomness in the patterns led to parts where I think I had no choice but to take a hit. It's also too easy to one hit kill yourself by jumping on these parts and I don't know why you have to jump into a window when you reach the top to finish the stage...especially since you always then end up on the rooftop rather than inside. Web-slinging was also inconsistent even once I realized the odd control scheme and led to a pair of unfortunate deaths.
There's only two good things about this game: The music with David Wise on the team is kinda boppin' and the cutscenes are cheesy in an intentional, old Spidey cartoon way that frankly makes them pretty funny. Why does Spider-Man answer the phone in his house dressed as Spider-Man? It's not worth playing the game for but, hey, it is something!
Welp, it’s been long enough, and I’ve been told I am not allowed to have fun today, so I figured it is about time to check out another one of Marvel’s… INCREDIBLE games that they threw out onto store shelves for a quick buck back in the day, and hey, since I went back to the X-Men lineup of games previously, I figured it would only be appropriate that I go back to another one of Marvel’s heroes that I have covered in the past, Spider-Man, or Web-Bitch as I like to call him. He usually has at least one or two games out there that are of either decent or, in rare cases, incredible quality, but then most of the time, you have games like Return of the Sinister Six, which makes me never want to trust Spider-Man with anything ever again. But hey, that was just one bad game, right? I mean, SURELY he would get things right the second time, right?........... yeah, probably not, but we will see if that is the case with The Amazing Spider-Man on the Game Boy.
Out of all the Spider-Man games that I could’ve chosen from, this one was all the way on the bottom of my list, as I know damn well how bad these licensed Game Boy usually are, and this one was probably gonna be no different. However, it then caught my attention when I learned that this game was actually made by Rare, the same guys who would go onto making games like Battletoads, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, and plenty of others. I don’t know how they ended up being the ones to make this game, but either way, it did make me curious as to how the game would turn out with them behind it. So, I played through the whole thing, and I will give it this… it is LEAGUES better than Return of the Sinister Six, but aside from that, there is not much else going for it. It is still a bad Spider-Man game, one that not only comes with its own serving of licensed game bullshit and cheapness, but also manages to do nothing else to separate itself from many other pieces of media that involve the character.
The story is just another Thursday for any superhero, where a gang of Spider-Man’s most deadly villains have captured Mary Jane and threaten him with her life, so it is up to him to swing on out and stop them before it is too late, which is a story that’s about as compelling as watching a dust ball rolling across the floor. The graphics are Game Boy graphics, and the sprite work is… passable, but to its credit, I can at least tell what most things are, and again, it looks a whole lot better than that other Web-Bitch game that I played at one point, the music is incredibly forgettable, where I can’t recall a single thing I heard throughout my entire playthrough, but I have some faint memory of it not annoying me at all, so it has that going for it at least, and the gameplay/control is just as basic and sloppy as it sounds, with some mechanics that take some getting used to, but all in all, it does the job for playing this slog of a game.
The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Spider-Web-Bitch-Man, go through a set of 6.75 levels, each taking place in a different location throughout New York, punch, kick, and web up many different enemies that you will come across, while making sure that you don’t let the game fight back against you so that you can actually do any of this properly, gather different capsules along the way to not only heal yourself when you need it, but also give you extra juice for your webs so that you can continue swinging and webbing to your heart’s content, and take on plenty of familiar foes in several boss fights, which can range from being as cheap and full of bullshit as you would expect, all the way to… the Rhino boss, where he just runs back and forth a bunch until you punch him to death. Great job with that one, guys. But anyways, you get everything you could ever expect out of a cheap Spider-Man game from back in the 90s here, and instead of being a completely unbearable experience all the way through, it is… a little unbearable all the way through, which is a blessing at this point.
If there was a checklist out there that could mark off every single little thing that a licensed game like this would do to ruin your day, then this game would check off a lot of those boxes, because a lot of these problems do pop up in one shape or form throughout your adventure. These problems include horrible combat, where you basic punches and kicks are delayed and feel really heavy, making it hard to tell whether or not you are hitting an enemy, or even when you should throw a punch or kick, awkward moves, where some moves like the different types of jumps you can do take a lot of time to get used to because of how bad they are, unfair difficulty, which sees countless enemies being thrown your way to create some sense of challenge, when it reality it is just an excuse to turn Spider-Man into a bloody corpse on the floor, and unfair sections, where all of those elements I just mentioned before are paired together with terrible platforming sections that I swear are impossible to get through without some sort of save states. It is all here, folks, and if you are able to stomach this stuff like I can, then chances are that you will have a bad time, but not to the point of wanting to rip your hair out. However, for any average gamer, one that would rather have a Spider-Man game like the ones that Insomniac are being forced to make until the end of time, you give them this for 10 minutes, and they will chuck it in the trash at the 5-minute mark.
However, to be fair, there were actually some parts of the game that I actually did kinda like. In-between some of the main levels, there are some stages where you are climbing up a building to reach your destination, which are a nice change of pace, and are simple enough to get a grasp on, even if some of that nonsense I mentioned earlier does get sprinkled in from time to time. Alongside that are these cutscenes that play in-between each level, which just has Spider-Man talking with one of villains while the two of them throw bad comic-lines back and forth at each other, which are funny to watch just for how low-effort they are. And finally, one thing that I am REALLY grateful for… whenever you die in this game and still have an extra life or two, you don’t get sent back to the beginning of the level, but instead, you respawn right where you died, and THANK GOD FOR THAT. Seriously, I can’t even imagine how you would be able to beat some of these levels without that kind of handicap.
Overall, despite some funny cutscenes, some fine levels here or there, and a very generous handicap, I can’t say this is anything more then just yet another cheap-ass Spider-Man game that was made for a quick buck to cash in on the superhero’s popularity, not only incorporating every single licensed game trick in the licensed game handbook to piss you off, but also not having its own identity when it comes to the gameplay, being as boring and generic as you could possibly imagine. Don’t bother checking it out, whether you are a fan of Spider-Man’s other games or not, because it really serves no purpose other than just to exist, and it doesn’t deserve any of your attention. Hell, let me be the one to play for you instead, just so I can warn you about the dangers of these games… which I am gonna have to do anyway, considering that this game apparently got two sequels, and I can already tell that they are gonna be… sigh, SO MUCH FUN! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, Spider-Man… Spider-Man… gonna go splat like a spider can…
Game #561
Out of all the Spider-Man games that I could’ve chosen from, this one was all the way on the bottom of my list, as I know damn well how bad these licensed Game Boy usually are, and this one was probably gonna be no different. However, it then caught my attention when I learned that this game was actually made by Rare, the same guys who would go onto making games like Battletoads, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, and plenty of others. I don’t know how they ended up being the ones to make this game, but either way, it did make me curious as to how the game would turn out with them behind it. So, I played through the whole thing, and I will give it this… it is LEAGUES better than Return of the Sinister Six, but aside from that, there is not much else going for it. It is still a bad Spider-Man game, one that not only comes with its own serving of licensed game bullshit and cheapness, but also manages to do nothing else to separate itself from many other pieces of media that involve the character.
The story is just another Thursday for any superhero, where a gang of Spider-Man’s most deadly villains have captured Mary Jane and threaten him with her life, so it is up to him to swing on out and stop them before it is too late, which is a story that’s about as compelling as watching a dust ball rolling across the floor. The graphics are Game Boy graphics, and the sprite work is… passable, but to its credit, I can at least tell what most things are, and again, it looks a whole lot better than that other Web-Bitch game that I played at one point, the music is incredibly forgettable, where I can’t recall a single thing I heard throughout my entire playthrough, but I have some faint memory of it not annoying me at all, so it has that going for it at least, and the gameplay/control is just as basic and sloppy as it sounds, with some mechanics that take some getting used to, but all in all, it does the job for playing this slog of a game.
The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Spider-Web-Bitch-Man, go through a set of 6.75 levels, each taking place in a different location throughout New York, punch, kick, and web up many different enemies that you will come across, while making sure that you don’t let the game fight back against you so that you can actually do any of this properly, gather different capsules along the way to not only heal yourself when you need it, but also give you extra juice for your webs so that you can continue swinging and webbing to your heart’s content, and take on plenty of familiar foes in several boss fights, which can range from being as cheap and full of bullshit as you would expect, all the way to… the Rhino boss, where he just runs back and forth a bunch until you punch him to death. Great job with that one, guys. But anyways, you get everything you could ever expect out of a cheap Spider-Man game from back in the 90s here, and instead of being a completely unbearable experience all the way through, it is… a little unbearable all the way through, which is a blessing at this point.
If there was a checklist out there that could mark off every single little thing that a licensed game like this would do to ruin your day, then this game would check off a lot of those boxes, because a lot of these problems do pop up in one shape or form throughout your adventure. These problems include horrible combat, where you basic punches and kicks are delayed and feel really heavy, making it hard to tell whether or not you are hitting an enemy, or even when you should throw a punch or kick, awkward moves, where some moves like the different types of jumps you can do take a lot of time to get used to because of how bad they are, unfair difficulty, which sees countless enemies being thrown your way to create some sense of challenge, when it reality it is just an excuse to turn Spider-Man into a bloody corpse on the floor, and unfair sections, where all of those elements I just mentioned before are paired together with terrible platforming sections that I swear are impossible to get through without some sort of save states. It is all here, folks, and if you are able to stomach this stuff like I can, then chances are that you will have a bad time, but not to the point of wanting to rip your hair out. However, for any average gamer, one that would rather have a Spider-Man game like the ones that Insomniac are being forced to make until the end of time, you give them this for 10 minutes, and they will chuck it in the trash at the 5-minute mark.
However, to be fair, there were actually some parts of the game that I actually did kinda like. In-between some of the main levels, there are some stages where you are climbing up a building to reach your destination, which are a nice change of pace, and are simple enough to get a grasp on, even if some of that nonsense I mentioned earlier does get sprinkled in from time to time. Alongside that are these cutscenes that play in-between each level, which just has Spider-Man talking with one of villains while the two of them throw bad comic-lines back and forth at each other, which are funny to watch just for how low-effort they are. And finally, one thing that I am REALLY grateful for… whenever you die in this game and still have an extra life or two, you don’t get sent back to the beginning of the level, but instead, you respawn right where you died, and THANK GOD FOR THAT. Seriously, I can’t even imagine how you would be able to beat some of these levels without that kind of handicap.
Overall, despite some funny cutscenes, some fine levels here or there, and a very generous handicap, I can’t say this is anything more then just yet another cheap-ass Spider-Man game that was made for a quick buck to cash in on the superhero’s popularity, not only incorporating every single licensed game trick in the licensed game handbook to piss you off, but also not having its own identity when it comes to the gameplay, being as boring and generic as you could possibly imagine. Don’t bother checking it out, whether you are a fan of Spider-Man’s other games or not, because it really serves no purpose other than just to exist, and it doesn’t deserve any of your attention. Hell, let me be the one to play for you instead, just so I can warn you about the dangers of these games… which I am gonna have to do anyway, considering that this game apparently got two sequels, and I can already tell that they are gonna be… sigh, SO MUCH FUN! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, Spider-Man… Spider-Man… gonna go splat like a spider can…
Game #561
Kind of a janky action platformer that I thought was let down by the level design in later levels and the frustrating web slinging movement. It's a pretty early Game Boy release though and I still had some fun with it.
De todos os 5 jogos do Homem-Aranha que vieram até esse, é de longe o menos pior, ainda assim tá bem longe de ser bom, é só um joguinho de plataforma genérico qualquer.
É um jogo cheio de probleminhas, por exemplo, eu acho que é péssima a forma como o Homem-Aranha recebe dano no jogo, já que é meio que "progressivo" o dano que vem, não é imediato, e isso gera umas situações bem chatas, nesse mesmo ponto de como você toma dano, e apesar de ter tempo de invencibilidade eu sinto que ele é mal feito, dá pra se meter em umas posições que você quase toma 100/0 facilmente, e geralmente essas posições raramente soam como culpa sua, é mais de mal posicionamento do jogo em si, na fase final, por exemplo, tem lugares onde soa impossível não tomar dano de alguma forma porque é coisa demais na sua tela, e posicionadas de uma forma horrenda, torna muito frustrante, e pra um jogo que eu senti ser bastante punitivo, e não de uma forma agradável, é algo bem ruim.
Eu também não gosto de como a teia funciona no jogo, ela é limitada, cada vez que você usa você gasta, e o problema nisso é que muitas vezes você é forçada a usar pra se movimentar pela fase; e como o recurso é limitado e difícil de pegar já que você só consegue droppando de inimigos e não são todos os inimigos que droppam, pode muito bem acontecer uma situação onde você não consegue seguir em frente simplesmente por não ter mais fluído de teia e zero formas de conseguir, não chegou a rolar comigo, deve ser mais comum de acontecer na fase 5 que te obriga a gastar muita teia pra se movimentar entre os prédios, e nessa fase não tem forma ALGUMA de conseguir mais, você simplesmente pode travar no jogo por conta do sistema dele; e só não é muito divertido ser o Homem Aranha e não poder fazer o que o ele mais faz. Eu acho que talvez seja porque pensaram que o ataque com a teia seria muito forte pra lidar com alguns bosses, mas além de pensar que isso não importa, eu ainda que o jogo não perderia sua dificuldade por isso, você ainda precisa desviar dos ataques dos bosses, e isso já é um desafio, além de que as teias dão menos dano que os seus socos neles, já estava balanceado o suficiente sem ter que limitar seus recursos, foi uma péssima decisão.
E a jogabilidade em geral, mesmo tirando esse parte da teia já não é mil maravilhas, ela funciona, mas é meio travadona, as vezes lenta, mas pelo menos dá pra usar de boa, não existem muitos problemas pra bater nos inimigos, você consegue controlar o pulo do boneco até que bem, por mais que a física dele seja um pouco estranha de início, você se acostuma, de qualquer forma não é uma jogabilidade muito agradável, ela só não é tão problemática na maior parte dela, digo na maior parte porque pra iniciar o web swing ou dar um pulo mais alto é bem ruim, meio confuso, você tem que andar pra um lado e segurar o botão de pulo, o problema é que as vezes não funciona, e eu não fui capaz de compreender o motivo, não é como se eu estivesse errando o movimento, eu tava fazendo a exata mesma coisa do que de todas as vezes que funcionaram, só que dessa vez o jogo parecia decidir que não ia funcionar, em muitas vezes essa aleatoriedade em funcionar ou não funcionar do movimento pode irritar bastante, é dano que você não devia tomar e toma por não ter subido pulado direito (Na boss-fight do Rhino isso incomodou bastante), lugar que você vai morrer por ter que usar esse tipo de pulo e ele só decidir não ir, eu morri umas vezes nas fases 2 e 5 por conta disso.
E eu já não gosto muito do level design do jogo, algumas fases são simplesmente sobrecarregadas de elementos, a fase 4 por exemplo, tem tanta coisa acontecendo ao mesmo tempo, inimigo vindo de cima, inimigo vindo de baixo, coisa que cai do céu, inimigo atirando em você, é um inferno, tem vez que você bate no inimigo que vem do bueiro e dá uma quicadinha que te leva a tomar dano de um dos inimigos que vem voando; muitos pulos tem como obstáculo um inimigo atirando pra você ter que desviar das balas, mas as vezes também tem inimigo vindo por cima e você se mete numa situação em que você toma dano de qualquer forma, indiferente da decisão que tome, e é uma situação bem incontrolável, os inimigos só foram mal-posicionados mesmo. E não é só aqui, na fase 5 tem tanta coisa que te leva pra morte direta vindo ao mesmo tempo, e as vezes vindo do nada como os inimigos que te batem saindo da janela na parte horizontal da fase e que são extremamente chatos de matar, parece depender de sorte se você vai conseguir hitar eles antes de você tomar algum dano, enquanto você tá na parte vertical que é subindo o prédio eu também acho que tem umas partes horríveis onde o jogo simplesmente joga tanto elemento na tela que fica impossível, é inimigo voador demais indo e voltando de ambas as direções, os caras que ficam na janela te batendo, é bem merda; e a fase final ela é simplesmente o ápice do design mal feito, tem 3 tipos de obstáculos na fase, os crocodilos que vem e vão aleatoriamente, uns inimigos que ficam atirando em você na diagonal em cima dos canos e que caem quando você passa por baixo, umas bolas que saem das paredes e também dão dano, tem uma situação onde existe um lugar pra sair bola da parede que tá a 1 centimetro de distância de um inimigo te atirando e que vai cair em você assim que você chegar do lado, não dá pra desviar pra trás (o que só funciona as vezes inclusive) porque tem uma bola pra te dar dano do lado, ir por baixo pra ter mais tempo é impossível, já que a velocidade é reduzida na água do esgoto, e também tem os crocodilos, então ou você toma dano da bola ou você toma dano dele caindo, ou do crocodilo, ou do tiro que ele tá dando, e muitas vezes de tudo, e essa não é a única situação assim na última fase, ela toda pode terminar soando bem, bem injusta.
A única coisa que eu tenho pra falar que eu achei legal mesmo são as boss-fights, elas capturam bem o vilão que você tá lutando contra, e por mais que sejam simples e até repetitivas as vezes, ainda são a melhor coisa que tem no jogo.
Sabe, o jogo não é a pior coisa do mundo, e diferente dos outros 4 que vieram antes desse, ele não chega a ser ofensivo ou me causar sequelas psicológicas, como The Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America in Doctor's Doom Revenge fez. The Amazing Spider Man é só um jogo de plataforma genérico e cheio de problemas, que ao menos não são tão gritantes, existem alguns minúsculos acertos, mas nada que seja suficiente pra fazer com que eu acho o jogo ao menos medíocre, ainda foi uma experiência ruim jogar isso aqui.
É um jogo cheio de probleminhas, por exemplo, eu acho que é péssima a forma como o Homem-Aranha recebe dano no jogo, já que é meio que "progressivo" o dano que vem, não é imediato, e isso gera umas situações bem chatas, nesse mesmo ponto de como você toma dano, e apesar de ter tempo de invencibilidade eu sinto que ele é mal feito, dá pra se meter em umas posições que você quase toma 100/0 facilmente, e geralmente essas posições raramente soam como culpa sua, é mais de mal posicionamento do jogo em si, na fase final, por exemplo, tem lugares onde soa impossível não tomar dano de alguma forma porque é coisa demais na sua tela, e posicionadas de uma forma horrenda, torna muito frustrante, e pra um jogo que eu senti ser bastante punitivo, e não de uma forma agradável, é algo bem ruim.
Eu também não gosto de como a teia funciona no jogo, ela é limitada, cada vez que você usa você gasta, e o problema nisso é que muitas vezes você é forçada a usar pra se movimentar pela fase; e como o recurso é limitado e difícil de pegar já que você só consegue droppando de inimigos e não são todos os inimigos que droppam, pode muito bem acontecer uma situação onde você não consegue seguir em frente simplesmente por não ter mais fluído de teia e zero formas de conseguir, não chegou a rolar comigo, deve ser mais comum de acontecer na fase 5 que te obriga a gastar muita teia pra se movimentar entre os prédios, e nessa fase não tem forma ALGUMA de conseguir mais, você simplesmente pode travar no jogo por conta do sistema dele; e só não é muito divertido ser o Homem Aranha e não poder fazer o que o ele mais faz. Eu acho que talvez seja porque pensaram que o ataque com a teia seria muito forte pra lidar com alguns bosses, mas além de pensar que isso não importa, eu ainda que o jogo não perderia sua dificuldade por isso, você ainda precisa desviar dos ataques dos bosses, e isso já é um desafio, além de que as teias dão menos dano que os seus socos neles, já estava balanceado o suficiente sem ter que limitar seus recursos, foi uma péssima decisão.
E a jogabilidade em geral, mesmo tirando esse parte da teia já não é mil maravilhas, ela funciona, mas é meio travadona, as vezes lenta, mas pelo menos dá pra usar de boa, não existem muitos problemas pra bater nos inimigos, você consegue controlar o pulo do boneco até que bem, por mais que a física dele seja um pouco estranha de início, você se acostuma, de qualquer forma não é uma jogabilidade muito agradável, ela só não é tão problemática na maior parte dela, digo na maior parte porque pra iniciar o web swing ou dar um pulo mais alto é bem ruim, meio confuso, você tem que andar pra um lado e segurar o botão de pulo, o problema é que as vezes não funciona, e eu não fui capaz de compreender o motivo, não é como se eu estivesse errando o movimento, eu tava fazendo a exata mesma coisa do que de todas as vezes que funcionaram, só que dessa vez o jogo parecia decidir que não ia funcionar, em muitas vezes essa aleatoriedade em funcionar ou não funcionar do movimento pode irritar bastante, é dano que você não devia tomar e toma por não ter subido pulado direito (Na boss-fight do Rhino isso incomodou bastante), lugar que você vai morrer por ter que usar esse tipo de pulo e ele só decidir não ir, eu morri umas vezes nas fases 2 e 5 por conta disso.
E eu já não gosto muito do level design do jogo, algumas fases são simplesmente sobrecarregadas de elementos, a fase 4 por exemplo, tem tanta coisa acontecendo ao mesmo tempo, inimigo vindo de cima, inimigo vindo de baixo, coisa que cai do céu, inimigo atirando em você, é um inferno, tem vez que você bate no inimigo que vem do bueiro e dá uma quicadinha que te leva a tomar dano de um dos inimigos que vem voando; muitos pulos tem como obstáculo um inimigo atirando pra você ter que desviar das balas, mas as vezes também tem inimigo vindo por cima e você se mete numa situação em que você toma dano de qualquer forma, indiferente da decisão que tome, e é uma situação bem incontrolável, os inimigos só foram mal-posicionados mesmo. E não é só aqui, na fase 5 tem tanta coisa que te leva pra morte direta vindo ao mesmo tempo, e as vezes vindo do nada como os inimigos que te batem saindo da janela na parte horizontal da fase e que são extremamente chatos de matar, parece depender de sorte se você vai conseguir hitar eles antes de você tomar algum dano, enquanto você tá na parte vertical que é subindo o prédio eu também acho que tem umas partes horríveis onde o jogo simplesmente joga tanto elemento na tela que fica impossível, é inimigo voador demais indo e voltando de ambas as direções, os caras que ficam na janela te batendo, é bem merda; e a fase final ela é simplesmente o ápice do design mal feito, tem 3 tipos de obstáculos na fase, os crocodilos que vem e vão aleatoriamente, uns inimigos que ficam atirando em você na diagonal em cima dos canos e que caem quando você passa por baixo, umas bolas que saem das paredes e também dão dano, tem uma situação onde existe um lugar pra sair bola da parede que tá a 1 centimetro de distância de um inimigo te atirando e que vai cair em você assim que você chegar do lado, não dá pra desviar pra trás (o que só funciona as vezes inclusive) porque tem uma bola pra te dar dano do lado, ir por baixo pra ter mais tempo é impossível, já que a velocidade é reduzida na água do esgoto, e também tem os crocodilos, então ou você toma dano da bola ou você toma dano dele caindo, ou do crocodilo, ou do tiro que ele tá dando, e muitas vezes de tudo, e essa não é a única situação assim na última fase, ela toda pode terminar soando bem, bem injusta.
A única coisa que eu tenho pra falar que eu achei legal mesmo são as boss-fights, elas capturam bem o vilão que você tá lutando contra, e por mais que sejam simples e até repetitivas as vezes, ainda são a melhor coisa que tem no jogo.
Sabe, o jogo não é a pior coisa do mundo, e diferente dos outros 4 que vieram antes desse, ele não chega a ser ofensivo ou me causar sequelas psicológicas, como The Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America in Doctor's Doom Revenge fez. The Amazing Spider Man é só um jogo de plataforma genérico e cheio de problemas, que ao menos não são tão gritantes, existem alguns minúsculos acertos, mas nada que seja suficiente pra fazer com que eu acho o jogo ao menos medíocre, ainda foi uma experiência ruim jogar isso aqui.
Un juego bastante sencillo y con una jugabilidad divertida es lo que nos ofrece Rare con The Amazing Spiderman para la GB de Nintendo. Aún con sus limitaciones más que evidentes en todo el apartado técnico, es un cartucho que entrega una buena experiencia con algunos toques de humor y mucha acción. Nuestro amigo arácnido tiene los movimientos suficientes como para convencernos de que en realidad es él y su desenvolvimiento en los niveles es muy acertado. Es un juego muy corto con una historia tan sencilla como la de Super Mario, pero pues no hay que pedir mucho a una de las primeras consolas portátiles de la industria.
Known more for their heights during the N64 era, Rare's stint making licensed games for publishers like the infamous LJN is an often overlooked period in the developer's history. So much so in fact, that the gamers who take it upon themselves to dig through the earliest recesses of the legendary British studio's catalogue are often surprised to find the titles like this bog-standard side-scrolling brawler based on the Marvel property that fail to live up to their more notable works.
As someone who already has an aversion to straight 2D beat 'em ups where all of the action is limited to a single plane and you don't even have so much as the ability to change lanes, the way your most effective method of movement, jumping, is so unreliable here basically doomed it from the get-go with me. Not only does it make evading damage more of a pain than it needs to be, but in the infrequent instances where actual platforming is required clearing expanses is kind of a crapshoot. There were times where I couldn't get over obstacles greater than waist-high and a boss battle that requires you to leap to a ledge above the supervillain in order to avoid his gradual march back and forth is a touch maddening. All this on top of the fact that it's designed to swarm players with random crap every second, an unfortunate holdover from the Stamper brother's (Rare's founders) ZX Spectrum days.
It doesn't get everything wrong though. The story, as bare bones as it is, does at least include some amusing cutscenes of the web-head trading verbal jabs with his foes in a manner that expertly captures the same quippy nature of the comics. Graphically, it has nice looking sprites that make it even more attractive than either of its two sequels. Special praise must also be given to the music which is banging, as well as that there are a few ideas present like Spider-Man's potentially life-saving, limited use ranged web attacks or the pair of wall crawling segments that show they did TRY to create something special and interesting.
Far from "Amazing" though, this isn't worth playing regardless. The trial-and-error approach required so that you'll be aware of what's coming next and therefore won't burn through your lives and continues too quickly before reaching the final boss is hardly any fun. Particularly when somewhat struggling with the controls. All in all, this is just a reminder of how once upon a time everyone's favorite arachnid-themed superhero had a reputation similar to Batman's old standing in gaming, where you simply couldn't count on him to star in anything that wasn't terrible. So unless you're passionate enough about the video game medium to truly want to see as much of what is has to offer as possible, this is a piece of shovelware better left forgotten in the annals of history.
4.5/10
As someone who already has an aversion to straight 2D beat 'em ups where all of the action is limited to a single plane and you don't even have so much as the ability to change lanes, the way your most effective method of movement, jumping, is so unreliable here basically doomed it from the get-go with me. Not only does it make evading damage more of a pain than it needs to be, but in the infrequent instances where actual platforming is required clearing expanses is kind of a crapshoot. There were times where I couldn't get over obstacles greater than waist-high and a boss battle that requires you to leap to a ledge above the supervillain in order to avoid his gradual march back and forth is a touch maddening. All this on top of the fact that it's designed to swarm players with random crap every second, an unfortunate holdover from the Stamper brother's (Rare's founders) ZX Spectrum days.
It doesn't get everything wrong though. The story, as bare bones as it is, does at least include some amusing cutscenes of the web-head trading verbal jabs with his foes in a manner that expertly captures the same quippy nature of the comics. Graphically, it has nice looking sprites that make it even more attractive than either of its two sequels. Special praise must also be given to the music which is banging, as well as that there are a few ideas present like Spider-Man's potentially life-saving, limited use ranged web attacks or the pair of wall crawling segments that show they did TRY to create something special and interesting.
Far from "Amazing" though, this isn't worth playing regardless. The trial-and-error approach required so that you'll be aware of what's coming next and therefore won't burn through your lives and continues too quickly before reaching the final boss is hardly any fun. Particularly when somewhat struggling with the controls. All in all, this is just a reminder of how once upon a time everyone's favorite arachnid-themed superhero had a reputation similar to Batman's old standing in gaming, where you simply couldn't count on him to star in anything that wasn't terrible. So unless you're passionate enough about the video game medium to truly want to see as much of what is has to offer as possible, this is a piece of shovelware better left forgotten in the annals of history.
4.5/10
Holy hell this game was trash. Barely worked the way it was supposed to. Impossible to make jumps reliably.