There's nothing 'Amazing' about this game.
However, there’s a catch to the title of ‘cheap cash-in.’ You see… almost all cheap cash-in games are made with a minimum of effort in order to maximize the amount of money that can be made from the game. And this means that almost all of those games will suck pretty badly.
Sadly, I wish this was one of the exceptions to the rule, rather than a prime example.
The game starts out with Spider-man receiving a call on a phone of some sort – even though it looks like a walkie talkie from the late 1980’s. The man on the phone reveals he knows who Spiderman really is (Peter Parker, of course), and that he has kidnapped Mary Jane. So, Spider-man sets off to rescue MJ.
Along the way you’ll run into the villains of the Marvel Universe that almost everyone knows and loves. Unfortunately, the problem is often getting there in the first place.
You see, apparently our hero Spider-man has suffered a major stroke from the revelation that MJ has been captured. Again.
I say this because it’s the only plausible reason as to why he controls THIS badly. It’s almost like the game refuses to listen to you at times – and the control scheme never helps.
You see, Rare (shocking, considering their talent shown later on in this same decade, as well as earlier in the previous one) decided to give our hero the ability to use several different webbing styles. You can fire the webbing as a bullet, in a spray, in a large spray that takes up the entire screen, or go web swinging over the enemies before you. Sadly, all of those actions are mapped to one button on the Game Boy – the B button.
All of those different functions apparently require longer or shorter presses on the button to shoot those differing sprays (with the web swinging activated in midair)… but it’s all arbitrary. Whichever webbing you want will not be given to you – it’s almost a guarantee, no matter how much you try.
Web swinging itself is… ok. It’s just short of walking on air while swinging your arms back and forth – and it’s almost impossible to jump off the webbing at points.
There’s also the ability to jump and punch things – as well as kick while jumping. Jumping is mapped to the A button, and you can bounce about like a moron on steroids, seeing as how each jump sends you up to the top of the screen – it’s almost as good as ducking in avoiding the enemies.
Sadly, punching and kicking is also mapped to the B button. You can see where this creates a problem when you’ve got about 5 or 6 different commands mapped to one button.
In addition to this spastic flailing of a control scheme, you also have to worry about web cartridges – dropped by defeated thugs and so on. However, you also have to pick them up before they hit the ground. Somehow, this means that they self-destruct or something. And why the enemies of Spider-man are carrying Spider-man’s equipment, I’ll never know.
The levels themselves are often somewhat basic. You start off on ‘the streets,’ a basic back alley filled with thugs, only to move on to building climbing.
Unfortunately, climbing the building is worse than normal side-to-side movement, seeing as how you are actually unable to move to avoid most attacks.
Other levels include the subway, rooftops (positioned so Spider-man starts off nearly off the screen, and often falls into the gaps between buildings), a park, more building climbing, another set of identical rooftops, and even the sewers.
As for the thugs that populate these levels, they’re rather basic. There’s a baseball bat thug, a shooting thug, a guy who pops out from windows and tries to bash your brains in with a club… However, the further you go into the game, the stranger the enemies. Bats try to assail you in the subway, for example. Meanwhile, the Spider-man enemy The Lizard has somehow been stuffed into the sewers, trying to claw at your ankles until you jump on the manhole cover.
Battling these guys is rather easy, in theory – but the act of doing so is often a crapshoot, considering how crappy the controls are.
Also, health can be recovered slowly – either in handouts from the enemy (which begs the question ‘why are they trying to heal their enemy’), or in cheeseburgers left out in the middle of nowhere – which makes no logical sense… but this game seems to lack that by the truckload.
Along the way, you encounter some of the best villains Spider-man has to offer… Mysterio, the Hobgoblin, the Scorpion, the Rhino, Dr. Octopus and even Vemon will take you on. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked heavily against you.
See, Mysterio floats about the arena – filling it with what appear to be some sort of mystical gas. Considering it causes heavy damage to your life bar, I’d guess it was his noxious farts.
The Hobgoblin just hovers about the rooftops, trying to hit you – and often missing if you just stand still.
The Scorpion just drops from above and tries to hit you with his stinging tail. At this point in the comics, it could hurl acid. Why he doesn’t turn you into an Amazing Spider-shake is beyond me, because it certainly would actually hit you.
The Rhino ignores all your webbing, and instead forces you to hit him from behind as he charges at you incessantly. Sadly, he’s almost a little taller than your best jump height.
Doctor Octopus walks back and forth like one of those shooting gallery ducks – only easier to thwomp on because he doesn’t actually do anything.
The final boss, Venom, seems to have Kevlar amour on – taking piddly damage from anything you throw at him – and is also the first boss to actively try to kill you.
In the end, all winds up nice in the end… but since you just went through the most mundane game in existence, why bother playing again?
Now… you’ll notice I didn’t notice music. Or graphics.
See, the game play is actually the best feature of this game – the sprites used in this game looking almost nothing like their comic counterparts. Spider-man moves stiffly and looks almost like a robot, whereas thugs just sit and shoot at you.
As for the sound, it’s almost as if there is no background music – I can only remember the boss music, because it’s the same five or six notes played over and over again. However, the most prevalent sound in this game is that of taking damage – it’s a dull ‘duun’ sound that I guarantee you will hear the most of all in this entire game.
In short, this game is literally abysmal. Even giving it the 1.6 I’m giving it is insanely generous. This game just isn’t worth even a download – just forget it.
I’d even recommend Off-World Interceptor Extreme over this game – and I gave that bomb a 1.8.