10) Venom/Spider-Man Separation Anxiety (SNES, Sega Genesis, PC, 1995)
You know how they’re making a Venom movie with Tom Hardy? In 1995, this was the video game equivalent of that. A co-op beat-em-up (the best kind of beat-em-up!), you could play as either Spider-Man or Venom and you had to punch your way through mobs of Symbiotes to get to the most dangerous Symbiote of all: Cletus Kassady, the monstrous Carnage. This game occupied nerdy 90s kids for hours.
9) Spider-Man vs The Kingpin (Sega Genesis, 1991)
This was the first Spider-Man game to have a coherent story. Well, coherent may be a bit strong. It involved Kingpin framing Spider-Man for stealing a nuclear bomb and Venom kidnapping Mary Jane, but for the first time, players felt like they were proceeding through a real Spider-Man series and not just a series of brawls. It gets the jumping and punching as well as any of the 2D games of the era but with points for graphics, presentation, and especially originality. You could even take photos for the Daily Bugle in this one!
8) Spider-Man: Edge of Time (2011)
The concept of this game was pretty cool! It starts with Spider-Man dying! Then, in 2099, Miguel O’Hara, the Spider-Man of that era, goes back in time to rescue him. The game jumps between the two Spideys in a time travel adventure that emphasized cause and effect. Ultimately, the gimmick was the only original thing the game had going for it, and that wasn’t even all that well executed. What really makes the game fun though is the focus it has on its story. By not trying to do too many things, Edge of Time does a few things very well.
7) Spider-Man: Enter Electro (2001)
We keep discovering that Electro isn’t a great villain to lay an entire story on but fortunately, this game is packed with Marvel characters. The gameplay is pretty much identical to the earlier Neversoft Spider-Man game, and that’s a very good thing. While the gameplay sticks to what works, it doesn’t innovate on the formula and the story doesn’t shine like it does in the first. Still, as Ben Reilly has taught us, sometimes a clone of something great can achieve greatness.
6) Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage (SNES, Sega Genesis, 1994)
A ridiculously faithful adaptation of the comic series by the same name, this beat-em-up introduced legions of children to some more obscure Marvel heroes. The comic is utterly silly and the game is even more so, Â but in 1994 a game that let you team up with Captain America, Black Cat, Iron Fist, Cloak and Dagger, Deathlok, Morbius the Living Vampire and Firestar was just insane. The game doubles down on the Todd McFarlane style art and has one of the most memorable looks of any Spider-Man game. By taking a stupid story and making a stupid game, Maximum Carnage embraces the stupidity and comes all the way back around to brilliance.