The Amazing Spider-Man: Web of Fire (32X)

 

 This was the final official 32X release, and coming out in 1996, I think there are two assumptions that can be safely made about it. The first is that it coming out was something of an adherence to the lost cause fallacy: possibly the publisher specifically had a license to make Marvel games only for the 32X, and they were going to do it whether it made sense or not. The second assumption is that it probably sold incredibly poorly, which is backed up by its modern day rarity and insane resale value.

 

Is it good, though? Not really. It's not terrible, either, though. Like most Spider-Man games of the time, it's a 2D platformer, you climb and swing acorss the stages, and the boss fights are against existing Marvel villains. Unlike some similar Spidey games, it does have a few stages that are designed in such a way as to allow you to freely web-swing over large swathes of the stage at your leisure. In fact, these stages are so long, that it'd probably take an absurdly long time to get across them on foot. Unfortunately, there's also a few stages that fall into the usual Spidey-traps, like being a long corridor with a surprisingly low ceiling, or being a bunch of enclosed boxes with small entrances and exits.

 

The plot concerns a plot by Hydra, who have set up a big laser net over New York (the eponymous Web of Fire), and are holding the city to ransom, plus they've kidnapped Daredevil and put him in a birdcage for some reason. After you rescue Daredevil, you can summon him to throw sticks at your enemies! So each stage ends with you fighting a villain in Hydra's employ, and destroying a laser generator, until you get to the Hydra airship/submarine/base stages. The bosses are probably the most interesting part of the game, to be honest, as the roster's made up of some absurdly little-known jobbers. People like The Eel, Thermite, Tangle, and others. 

 

Web of Fire is a game you mgiht want to look into out of curiosity: its rarity, status as the final 32X game, and weird villain roster are all points of interest (and what drew me into playing it). But if none of those things interest you, there's nothing else in the game that will, either. I played it way past the point of enjoyment to get screenshots, but there's no reason for anyone else to do that. And definitely no reason for anyone to pay £500+ for a real copy!

Fearless Pinocchio (Arcade)

 It had been a while since I last updated MAME, but a couple of months ago, Fearless Pinocchio caught my eye, and got me to finally undertake that minor chore. A previously unknown 2D fighting game by IGS with cute, stylised graphics suddenly appearing on the landscape would naturally get my attention. It's kind of a bittersweet game to learn of, though, as it's not actually a fighting game, but a machine for dispensing the tickets that are so important to all the depressing seaside arcades that have replaced fun games with low-quality prizes.

 

Still, it's at least pretending to be a fighting game, and there are some things worthy of mention. It's single player-only, and there's only one playable character, the eponymous Pinocchio. He's on a quest to rescue Geppeto, who has been kidnapped by Captain Hook, for some reason. Hook's the last boss, and to get to him, you've first got to fight two of his henchbeings, randomly selected from a pool of five. There's a genie, a witch, a grim reaper, the Queen of Hearts' card army, and the Big Bad Wolf. All the characters are well-drawn and animated, and full of personality.

 

The stages are also full of cool little details, even if there's only four of them shard amongst the six opponents. The woods have a little mushroom/candy house where Little Red Riding Hood and the three little pigs apparently live together, the graveyard has the witch's hut (I guess she and Death are neighbours?), plus a beanstalk with a depressed-looking giant watching the fight. Wonderland's the weakest stage, looking a lot like it's cobbled together from clipart, and Hook's ship has his pirate underlings, and far in the back, a Peter Pan who looks dangerously close to Disney's version standing around and doing nothing to help.

 

You fight using a joystick and one attack button, and while you do have specials and supers, they just seem to be activated by holding a direction and pressing the button a lot. I do really like the super where Pinocchio does the samurai movie thing where he dashes past his opponent while drawing a weapon, with the opponent taking damage after a second or two's delay, but his weapon is a big wooden mallet rather than a sword. The fights have only one round, and no matter what the situation is, if time runes out, you lose. I guess, true to its nature as "not a proper game", it just exists to have the shortest possible time between coin inputs.

 

It's really a shame there's no "legitimate" version of this game. A lot of work clearly went into designing and animated the characters, and six playable characters plus a boss wouldn't be too bad for a first entry in a series, especially if they added a background for each one, and especially if the characters looked as good as they do in the game that exists. I guess the best we can hope for is that someone rips all the sprites and puts something together in MUGEN or something. As always with this kind of shady gambling game, I think it's worth playing a few credits in MAME just to see it, though I don't think it's worth putting any money in if you encounter it in the wild. Or maybe it is? I don't know if this is some kind of emulation error or something, but every time I played, no matter how well or how poorly I did, I always got a screen telling me I'd won ten tickets. If a real machine is the same, it might be a cheap/quick way to grind for that cheap plastic tat upon which you've got your eye.