When starting out on this venture, I decided to do some research to see just how many licensed games there were… Too many, is a very general (but true) answer. I knew there were a lot of god awful games too, and that’s why I decided to do this. So, to start out, I decided to do a few games in one shot, jumping right into some Spider-Man games. Some. I’m not really sure how many Spider-Man games there are out there, mostly due to the fact that I’m too lazy to count. So, I picked what I assumed would be the worst, skipping over classier picks like Maximum Carnage or Separation Anxiety.

First up? Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six, for the NES. Now, I may be mistaken, but I’m almost positive there wasn’t a game previously that featured the Sinister Six, so the “Return of…” might be a little superfluous. This game would later show up on a few Sega systems, and I really wish I had ventured down one of those routes instead of this NES garbage. I understand that it’s probably a little difficult to make a Spider-Man game, especially one that doesn’t make the player suicidal. Return of the Sinister Six is one of the Spider-Man games that could leave you pricing razor blades. Initially, I thought the game was awesome, because never before had I realized the sheer power of Spider-Man. Like, I knew he was strong, but this game is the Wolverine: Origins of Spider-Man games in terms of violence… I tapped the attack button to knock out a thug…only to see him EXPLODE! Every comic book, movie and video game based on Spider-Man in the last twenty years has LIED to me. They never showed the destruction or utter disdain for humanity the ol’ webhead was really capable of.


He fucking OBLITERATED that guy.

Unfortunately, this is the only good thing the game has going for it. The controls are awful, which could be expected when you only have two action buttons to work with. One button is for jumping, one is for attacking…unless you’re jumping, in which the attack button may result in you flipping, or shooting a web shot, or web swinging. I assumed hitting the jump button twice might result in web slinging, but that clearly makes too much goddamn sense. Originally, I didn’t think that there was web slinging, but while trying to punch Electro into people-particles, I somehow found myself swinging from a white line. Let it be noted that this action wasn’t what I fucking intended to do. But listen, I’ve been playing video games for twenty some-odd years, I can adapt. So, here I am, adapting, then all the sudden Spider-Man starts climbing up the fucking back wall! WHY?! I’d ask how, but I’m fairly fucking certain nobody fucking knows!


I'm not entirely sure how or why you're fucking climbing that, but I guess that's what you're doing right now.

Team both of those curveballs with a goddamned swan-dive-back-flip-thing that serves no purpose and you’ve got a Spider-Man game that leaves you feeling like you’re playing as a retarded Greg Louganis with a “glandular disorder”.

Next up is Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge, though if you try and Google it, you’ll find that the title is Spider-Man/X-Men…I don’t think I’ve seen a forward slash in a title since Face/Off. Judging from Arcade’s Revenge, and Face/Off, the forward slash in the title is pretty much a telltale sign of the caliber of the product (i.e., shit). The first level of the game is pretty abysmal, wherein you move around in a building maze collecting little gadget things. Why? How does this propel the story? It fucking doesn’t. It’s clearly just used at a device to weed out those –casual- fans, people who aren’t completely down with Spidey, or the X-Men. Only if you’re totally devoted to the merry mutants would you finish this bullshit.

You’d think after that stupid goddamned level that the game would get a little better (the smart people decided that it wouldn’t and turned off the console), but it doesn’t. The game really succeeds in making you hate Arcade as much as everyone else in the Marvel Universe does, he really comes off as an annoying asshole. Each character gets two or three levels, the most terrifying of which are left to Wolverine, which involves clowns. Overall, the game isn’t too bad, it just isn’t very good. Just when you realize how one character controls, you have to play as someone else. What’s with Storm suddenly only being able to swim? If you’re going to throw in water levels, why use Storm? She shoots out lighting…Elementary school science tells us that water conducts electricity, hence she would fucking kill herself when she’s shooting lightning bolts underwater. It just doesn’t make any sense, why not make it just a flying level? It really just seems like another game developed by LJN, which fails to satisfy anyone.


This guy is throwing fecal matter. That's what minions do.

After finishing both of these games, I’m left to realize that I should be drinking much more alcohol when I play (as well as noticing I wasted a Friday night). Next up on the docket is The Spider-Man Fiasco Part 2, where I’ll play through even more poorly realized and even more poorly controlled Spider-Games…See what I did there?