The two "The Amazing Spider-Man" games from 1990 sucked. That's the only way to put it when I've ranked them worst and 5th worst out of the 55 games I played for this challenge. So when I heard that today's game, Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin, developed by Technopop and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis in 1991, not only was single-handedly responsible for convincing Marvel not to revoke the Marvel licensing deal with Sega, but also was sold to over 2/3 of Sega Genesis owners at the time, I figured that this game would fare much better.
It did fare better. It's like the elite version of the 1990 Spider-Man games. Unfortunately, those games were crap. And the elite version of crap is simply 'elite crap'. That said, here is my review for the Sega Genesis version from 1991.
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| The main menu |
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
In terms of its storytelling, this game resembles the 1990's Game Boy version in that you get some dialogue between Spider-Man and his enemies between stages, which is a good choice because Spider-Man's got a personality that can add some charm to the game when used. Unlike that game though, you don't have a conversation with an enemy before you fight them, but rather after you do.
You see, Wilson Fisk - The Kingpin - gets on TV and tells the citizens of New York City that Spider-Man planted a bomb that will explode within 24 hours. The Kingpin offers $10,000 to the person who captures him. $10,000? That's it. Oh wait, the manual calls it $500,000. That makes more sense.
The Kingpin receives the support of Dr. Octopus, the Lizard, Electro, the Sandman and more. Each of them he gives a key, all of which Spider-Man has to collect to disarm the bomb.
I am reviewing the Sega Genesis version as I said, but if you do want to play this game, play the Sega CD version if you can. It comes with fully voice acted cutscenes, which are surprisingly well-done considering its 1991 we're talking about. Peter Parker comes across as if he's in his mid-40's though, just as an fyi.
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| The Kingpin spreads lies about Spider-Man, who didn't expect to have a picture taken of him at that moment |
GAMEPLAY | 6/20
This is a side-scrolling platformer, the likes of which you've seen plenty of before. The difference here? You're Spider-Man! This comes with all the Spider-Man perks, such as using your webs to glide through the screen. Shooting webs. Crawling around like a Spider to fit in tight spaces, like a vent. Sticking to walls. And yeah, that's all.
I give credit to this game for actually giving you a proper web-slinging mechanic where you can actually properly glide through the screen in a somewhat fluid motion. I can't really say anything negative about this in particular.
But everything else about the controls is just a mess. Often, you need to climb up, and to do so, you latch onto walls by holding the jump button in mid-air. Then you walk up and let go of the jump button whilst pointing up in order to jump over whatever it is that you're holding, as you can't just crawl over, say, a crate. You can crawl to the top of the side of the crate and then need to jump over it. Meh, but whatever. But then the jump over the crate is just so unresponsive and often doesn't even end up in a jump that I've damn near lost my mind. The worst thing was when an enemy was on top of such a crate. The warehouse enemies of the first level for example just point forward and relentlessly shoot every second. Shot, shot, shot. Since you're roleplaying as incompetent Spider-Man, you can't hit them from below or diagonally upwards like in Super Castlevania IV, no, you have to jump up and get on their level to hit them. But in doing so, you are always exposed to those bullets and get hit by them seemingly every single time. I'd lose half of my health bar just trying to stand up on a goddamn platform. Even worse is when they shoot you and you fall dozens of feet downwards because the bullet makes you fly backwards a couple feet.
If you get near these same enemies, they'll whip out a knife and stab towards you. Even if you manage to get behind them during this swing, and even though the knife doesn't actually connect with your body, you still take damage. What?
Then there is this annoying feature that I don't like in any game that does it, which is that the game expects you to fall down without even seeing what's down there. So often enough, you fall on top of a rat or a dog without even being able to see it and taking damage. Then you need to kick the rats to kill them, but those kicks need to be perfectly timed or you miss it by a split-second and the rat runs through it to hit you.
I think that's the rant over with. It's just a terrible control scheme that still somehow is 100 times better than what the 1990 games produced. Doesn't make it good though, just less crap.
To finally give you a bit of a better idea on how this game works, you go through 5 or 6 stages overall and defeat a boss at the end. Those give you their keys and you need those to defeat the Kingpin at the end and disarm the bomb. The bosses aren't overly difficult, I've managed to beat two pretty easily before giving up because of how frustrating the rest of the level is.
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| Have fun getting up there without taking a hit and bouncing right back down at least once |
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 3/10
No voice acting. This was not a pleasant auditory experience. The sound design and even some of the tracks had that metallic harsh sound to it that I feel like was rather common with the Genesis based on the Genesis games I've played, and even if it wasn't present in the music, it still didn't sound any good. The most pleasant and cheery track is ironically the 5 second tune that plays when you die. The sound effects for pretty much every action just doesn't sound good. The wind-like sound that plays whenever you jump got especially annoying really quickly since you need to constantly jump in order to climb walls, but the sounds of shots, of your own attacks, of rats, the forklift and of damage, among other things, was just unpleasant through and through.
This is no indictment of the Sega CD version, which by all indications sounds really, really good, but again, is not reviewed here.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 4/10
I had to look twice at times to figure out whether I was playing a game on a 16-bit console or not. The levels are designed rather simply. You are in a sewer, so here is a sewer that looks pretty much the same everywhere. You are in a warehouse, so here are some crates and barrels in the background. You are outside so here are some same looking bland gray buildings, and with some windows flashing in a golden color. Apart from some of the color use here and certain effects like Sandman's arm extending or him losing shape and then gaining it back again, the effort here just seems to be lazy.
This is also another Spider-Man game where I'm not too happy with the design of Spider-Man. Once again he is hunched forward when he is supposed to just stand tall. The enemies manage to have proper posture, so why is Spider-Man always hunching forward in these games? And why is there red coloring beyond the black outline of his body? It's like a child drawing over the lines.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 4/10
The use of actual dialogue and cut-scenes help add some charm and to actually give you the sense that you're playing a Spider-Man game. Some levels are very tight in that Spider-Man can't really do a lot other than crawl around and some levels are out in the open where web-slinging shouldn't even be possible, and overall mostof the levels don't really have a Spider-Man feel to it.
CONTENT | 4/10
As you can tell by now, I don't find the content to be of particularly high quality. What you get with this game is 5 or 6 different stages with boss fights at the end of each that all do have their own sets of different challenges and therefore feel distinctive. There is also a little mini-game where you need to take pictures of as many enemies as possible, which at the end of each level gets you paid by the Daily Bugle, which basically means that your web fluid replenishes based on how many dollars you made. Other than this, there isn't much here and the length of the game is mainly stretched by how awful this controls.
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| Web-slinging over that for-some-reason-invincible dog like a champ |
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Pretty average stuff, you go through levels that don't offer unique environmental challenges and are rather bland to defeat a final boss at the end of each. It's not different from most of the other platformers / Action games of this time.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
Bonus points for adding a somewhat fluid web-slinging mechanic to a Spider-Man game, but other than that this is just a below-average 2D action game.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No reason to replay this, after beating it.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 39/100
3/3 as far as terrible Spider-Man games are concerned for this challenge. This one ranks best out of all three, which you'd expect considering this released for the Sega Genesis and sold really well according to one of the developers, but the Sega Genesis version truly sucks. The worst offender would be the controls, though this is not a treat from the audio-visual end either. If you want to play this game, check out the Sega CD version, which at least adds some cut-scenes and has much, much, much better sound.
(all images courtesy of Mobygames)
