Before you accuse me of horrible
namespacing and even worse crimes, this is the official name of the game in question - it bears this name to differentiate it from all the other licensed
Spider-Man games out there, and in an attempt to stake a claim that this is the 'true'
video game adaptation of
Spidey.
A four player scrolling beat-'em-up arcade game by Sega, released in 1991. Taking the roles of Spider-Man, Black Cat, Submariner and Hawkeye (not the one from M*A*S*H), the players duff up a number of Marvel villains, including Sandman, Dr. Octopus, Hobgoblin, Kingpin, Venom and Dr. Doom. Each player has a special move, and Spidey can swing from web ropes and stick to ceilings with gay abandon. There is a definite air of 'old-skool' Spidey about the game, with the choice of characters and the style of the cut-scenes being reminiscent of classic (or at least considerably old) comics.
The game uses a System 32 board, which allows for sprite scaling to be used liberally. At certain stages in the game, the view 'zooms out' to roughly double the normal distance, and a (usually very easy) platform section has to be traversed. Another nifty technical feature is the large amount of memory given over to sampled speech, allowing important events in the game to be narrated after a fashion by the characters. And of course we get the immortal lines:
"Spidey-sense tingling... signalling danger! Trouble up ahead... let's go, Spider-Man!"
(Why does Spidey refer to himself in the
third person, eh?)
I used to love this game as a kid, partly because I was gulled into thinking that the neat scaling effect could be called into play dynamically, instead of being triggered at set points. There are technically better scrolly fighters out there, but this gains extra kudos in my book for involving Spider-Man.
Emulable via Modeler.