For the first time you could explore all of Manhattan in a dynamic sandbox world, tackling random street crimes and webs-swinging from one edge of the island to the other. Then 2004 brought Spider Man 2, and everything changed. 2002’s Spider Man movie tie-in game followed the same limited level-based setup, but increased the scope of everything-graphics, scale, action, bosses-using the ferocious next-gen power of the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox. Soon Sam Raimi’s Spider Man movies dominated Spidey’s landscape, but the games continued to use Spider Man 2000 as the gold standard. I still remember renting that game from Blockbuster back in the day, my 14-year-old preconceptions snapping in half as I slapped that cartridge into my N64 and experienced the first game to truly get Spider Man right. It also helped that the game borrowed much of its thematic elements, visuals and even voice actors from the excellent mid-90s Spider Man animated series. Although the game was linear and level based, the environments were big enough to show off Spidey’s web slinging acrobatics, and the combat mixed hard-hitting button mashing with some pretty cool web powers. 2000’s Spider Man game for the PS1, N64 and Dreamcast was a revelation for true believers in the wall crawler. It wasn’t until the late 90s that the web-head escaped a checkered resume of samey 2D beat-em-ups and graduated into the glory of 3D polygons and textures. Like most superheroes, Spider Man has walked a rough path when it comes to video games.
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