|
|
|
|
|
|
Looking Back: Spider-Man for Atari 2600
2008-03-21 14:56:17
|  |
When the idea of putting this blog together for you came up, it as obvious that it would be a great place for Justin and I to inform you on the latest happenings with Marvel games on the horizon, like “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk,” from the licensor's perspective. That's a given. And when the question arose as to what else we can do on a regular basis that might interest Marvel gamers (and ourselves, as we're the ones writing this), my love for classic gaming sparked an immediate suggestion: Let's go back and play all of the Marvel videogames ever made. Better yet we can tell people how those games might be different if we had held our current positions back then. (Game quality wasn't exactly the biggest of concerns for Marvel back in the day...)
Though we'll probably jump around a bit chronologically when it comes to when each game was released, “Spider-Man” for the Atari 2600 seems like the best place to start. After all, it was the first Marvel game. And, given its time, it actually wasn't so bad.
“Spider-Man” comes from the day when, if you wanted any sense of story from a game—if a game even HAD a story to begin with—it was all in the manual. Though it’s easy enough to gather from the gameplay that you’re Spider-Man up against the Green Goblin, reading the manual is essential to actually understanding what you’re doing. And, lucky for us, Spidey himself gives us the lowdown:
"New York City—at the mercy of the GREEN GOBLIN!” He tells us, excitedly. “He's booby-trapped the city's skyscrapers with SUPER BOMBS! I must save the city NOW. But the GOBLIN will try to stop my every move. Criminals and time bombs—even the GREEN GOBLIN himself—stand between me and the SUPER BOMBS! Can I save the city in time?"
Oh, no! Not just bombs! SUPER BOMBS!
But on to the gameplay itself: Every level plays exactly the same, only faster and with a different-colored (yet identical) building to scale—and eliminate the SUPER BOMB! There’s an obvious “Donkey Kong” influence here, as you web-sling upward (that’s what your single Atari 2600 button is used for) en route to—you know what’s next—the SUPER BOMB! (You can’t not put an exclamation point after that.) Your webs can only cling to the stone part of a building, though, and webbing a window will send Spidey downward to death unless you can shoot another web to stone and save him.
Curiously—and this is something you kind of need to read the manual to understand—all of the bad guys you see peering out of windows can’t harm you at all. In fact, you’re supposed to try and web-swing over them, supposedly to “capture” them. When this happens, they simply disappear...which of course yields the question: Where do they go once Spidey rounds them up? And for that matter, why were they making themselves so easy to round up with no intention of actually attacking? Whatever the case, you get 30 points for each one.
Same deal with the time bombs Spidey mentions in the manual. They can send you toward the pavement if they explode at just the right time, but otherwise, you’re free to simply pass by them, which disarms them right away.
Before you get to the SUPER BOMB(!), you must then pass by the Green Goblin. And it’s really that simple—he doesn’t throw anything at you or anything. As Gobby bounds back and forth like a paddle from “Breakout,” all you have to do is pass him so that he doesn’t ram you or slice through your webline. And then you’ve reached the SUPER BOMB! And you get to do it all over again. And again. And again.
But like I mentioned earlier, “Spider-Man” itself is actually kind of fun in a “stupid Atari 2600 game” kind of way. There’s something mildly hypnotic about the whole “scale a building and capture bad guys without falling” style of play.
That said, here’s where I introduce what I’m sure will turn out to be my favorite part of these retrospectives:
WHAT WE’D CHANGE
The most important part of the job for Justin and I is to make sure Marvel games pay off on the Marvel license in the context of solid gameplay. Here’s a rundown of the issues I had with “Spider-Man” that just wouldn’t have cut it if Justin and I had been working with Parker Bros. back in 1983 (you know—aside from the fact that we’d both be 10 or under).
1. Wall-crawling. Though the web-slinger is indeed a web-slinger in “Spider-Man,” the wall-crawler is not a wall-crawler. Your only option when scaling a building is to web your way upward, even when there’s a clear path on which to crawl.
2. Glass-clinging. If Spidey was unable to cling to glass with his webs, he’d be one sloppy web-slinger. An easy fix would have been to simply make them all open windows, or you could even explain in the manual that the Green Goblin has coated all of the windows with some sort of anti-web gel.
3. Different, taller buildings. Of all the buildings in NYC to terrorize, you really think the Green Goblin would go for the same-looking 20-story building over and over again? Perhaps he might be more interested in something a little more taller and iconic, like the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building? Maybe?
4. Better web fluid reference. The timer at the bottom of the screen is supposedly the amount of web fluid Spidey has left, but it ticks down no matter what. It's just a timer. Attach it to the SUPER BOMB!
5. Hostile bad guys. Sure, you can still have Spidey capture bad guys hanging out of windows—why not? But put them there for a reason. Give ‘em guns, baseball bats, rocks...something!
6. Hostile Green Goblin. Seriously, just watching Gobby go back and forth makes me want to play “Breakout.” Make him throw stuff at you. Like, I dunno, maybe...
7. Pumpkin bombs! So many bombs in this game, yet none of them even remotely resembling a jack-o’-lantern—not even the SUPER BOMB!
So, do you have any memories of this game? Is there anything else you’d change about it? Let us know...
(Images borrowed from AtariAge.com.)
|
It doesn't even say which Green Goblin he is :(
Posted by Fetsur on 2008-03-21 15:03:27
What I would have done.
I would have allowed Spidey to scale walls, but he would have been slower at it than swinging up the walls. On regular henchmen, it would make sense to do as Cbaker described. Only other thing I would change (if were a programmer that is) is the addition of Hobgoblin working with Green Goblin.
Posted by Aziroth on 2008-03-21 15:51:51
rember the good old days
ya i can remeber that game even tho i was not alive but ya i played it before and it was hard i kept fallling but ya good times good times
Posted by skunkyp on 2008-03-21 22:01:34
first marvel game i ever played was spiderman one for the playstation 1... It was a terrible game but i liked it because it had spider man in it. ofcourse playing it became obselete once i found out the cheat code: eelnats.
Posted by oblitz on 2008-03-22 13:44:46
i also remember a bat man game on the super nintendo. i sold it after i realised you coulden't jump half a foot in the air and would costantly get your feet caught on every thing
Posted by oblitz on 2008-03-22 13:46:36
yeah i played Spider-man 1 for PS1 and i thought it was really good, a lot of costumes and stuff
Posted by folf on 2008-03-22 20:08:09
The best spider-man game of all time is gotta be maximum carnage. I remember watching the commercial (probably 9 years old then) when they had the infamous "paint the town red" line, during the Spider-man TAS days. This Atari game stinks like sh**. The Ps1 spidey game was bad ass with all them costumes but the web slingin lacked. & that's why the new spidey games are just so much fun(Ps2-Ps3 vers.), but i want them to re-do a good side-scrolling spidey game for the DS, cause "Friend or Foe" stinked like sh** as well.
O Yeah! Sega Genesis also had a bad ass game called Spider-man Vs the Kingpin good game as well.
Posted by Islam on 2008-03-23 19:37:34
Atari
Yeah, the hardest thing about the Atari game WAS the web swinging. I often found myself wildly flailing with my webs toward anything that would let me stick to it. Honestly, the key to it, when I was young with a very little kid's reflexes, was to NEVER swing to the sides. It was much easier to time the web shots straight upwards at the same rate to avoid the windows, over and over, until you got to the top. Though that lattice-work at the apex of every building was a pain that usually ended up sending me another 1/4th of the way down the building.
I agree on most of your suggestions. Some better explanations would have been helpful. And yeah, a timer on the "super bomb!" makes a lot more sense than a timer on the web fluid that apparently is slowly disintegrating in your web shooters.
Posted by PseudoSherlock on 2008-03-24 08:52:22
AVGN
It seems like you're not the first to do a review on this game. A guy some people may know called the "Angry Video Game Nerd", in a video compiled of various Spider-Man games.
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/18686.html?type=flv
Posted by ronch on 2008-03-26 01:29:59
Enter a response to this blog post:
|
About this blog:
A behind-the-scenes look at Marvel’s current and upcoming video games.
 | About the author:
Justin Lambros is the Vice President of Interactive for Marvel, overseeing and coordinating all video games for the House of Ideas.
|
Comics
Marvel.com
Movies
Others
Video Games
|
|
|
|
|
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
save this link
