The Amazing Spider-Man: Lethal Foes (SNES)

 It's really strange that this game didn't get a worldwide release. I can only assume that Acclaim had some kind of stranglehold over Spider-Man console games outside of Japan, because this is a lot better than any of their efforts. It is, as was the fashion at the time, a 2D platformer, and of course, you play as Spider-Man, and you traverse various stages, at the end of which are various iconic villains, or sometimes The Beetle or Alistair Smythe, since it was the mid-nineties, after all. (Despite the game's title, and the presence of The Beetle, it's not actually and adaptation of the "Lethal Foes of Spider-Man" miniseries, which I read a couple of weeks ago specifically to find that out. It's pretty good, by the way: it focusses mainly on infighting and fueds between various B-level Spidey villains).

 

An interesting twist that might make the game seem harder than it actually is when you first play it, is that you aren't expected to fight every enemy. Until you get to the boss of each stage, your real enemy is the time limit. They're a lot tighter than you'd expect from what seems like a typical action-platformer, and some of the stages are fairly maze-like, too. So you've got to find your way through the stage as quickly as possible, and only bother fighting enemies when they're actually in your way. I wonder if this was an attempt at a simple kind of stealth-over-combat style of game? Either way, it's different, at least.

 

In accordance with all of the above, you have a lot of movement options! As well as walking, running, and crawling on the ground, you can also cling to walls and ceilings, plus any walls in the background behind you, too. You can also web-swing, which is something that's in surprisingly few 2D Spider-Man games. It feels really good to do, too! You just hold one of the shoulder buttons, and you'll web-swing in that direction. There's a massive downside to this, though: a lot of the stages are set in cramped locations like sewers or laboratories or subway tunnels, and there's not enough room to swing. How disappointing!

 

The bossfights are pretty good, too. The villain sprites look great, colourful, detailed, and shaded in a really nice comicky way. And hitting them feels great! I don't have much more to say about them, to be honest. I've played through about three quarters of the game, and the villains so far have been: The Beetle, The Lizard, Mysterio, Alistair Smythe, Green Goblin, and the guy who's currently stopping me from getting any further, The Scorpion. A very mid-nineties line up, and though I know Venom does show up later, it's nice that the game doesn't solely rely on symbiotes like a lot of Spider-Man stuff from the time did (both of Acclaim's beat em ups, for example).

 

This is a game that's definitely worth a look for people who want a nice, old-fashioned 2D Spider-Man game with some of its own little twists to the typical platformer formula. Though there's very little text in-game, and there's definitely no language barrier to playing it, you might as well emulate it with the translation patch, since the prices for real copies are completely ludicrous.