The ten best classic superhero games

#3. Spider-Man (Genesis)

It is very important that I establish WHICH version of the 16-bit game I am talking about here. As you can see on the box, it clearly says Spider-Man. But it’s really Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin. Not only is there a Sega CD version with a “so awful it’s amazing” theme song and animated cut scenes that will make you wretch in horror titled The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin that’s actually worse, there’s also a later game on the Genesis simply titled Spider-Man that is based on the animated TV show and is terrible. It’s very confusing.

But this game featuring everybody’s favorite wall-crawler was so popular that it’s credited with helping the Genesis establish an early foothold in the market. And although it hasn’t aged fantastically, it’s pretty easy to see why. This is one of the few games that really got close to making you feel like you were actually Spider-Man. You shot webbing; you could swing; you had a web shield! Even more importantly, it remembered that hey, Peter Parker is a broke freelance photographer that needs to make money for his web fluid! This was incorporated in a pretty genius mechanic that had you snapping photos of criminal activities and supervillains in action in order to be able to replenish your web fluid. It worked very well. It was easily the best solo superhero game of the 8 & 16-bit era.