Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace update

There was a point not too long ago when 2D side-scrolling games with licensed characters seemed to come out at least once a week. More than half of them were bad, and Spider-Man had his fair share of them. At first glance, Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace looks like it resembles two of the best Spider-Man side-scrollers: Spider-Man for the Sega Genesis and Spider-Man: Kingpin's Revenge for the Sega CD. If Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace can deliver gameplay as strong as those two games', then we're all in for a treat because the Game Boy Advance is capable of producing better graphics than we saw in either of them.

One can guess that Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace will involve a lot of web-swinging, platform jumping, wall-climbing, and fighting--and we know that Spider-Man will be able to use special attacks on enemies, use power-ups to upgrade his webs, and change into different suits (anyone miss his black costume?). At this point, the only character from Spider-Man's rogues' gallery that we know for sure will appear in the game is the title-character, Mysterio. As Spider-Man villains go, the fishbowl-headed Mysterio is admittedly pretty hard to get excited about, but his illusion powers could be used to summon the likenesses of more interesting opponents from Spider-Man's past and present. (And it's worth noting that a Spider-Man game hasn't been made in the last 10 years without at least a cameo from Venom.)

We'll have more information once we get a chance to play the game at the upcoming E3 in Los Angeles. Be sure to check back during the show for a hands-on report on this promising Game Boy Advance game.