When I was a litle kid, I wanted to be Superman. The Man of Steel was my hero. Then I realised that there was no way I could ever be Superman; I wasn't actually born on Krypton, Barnsley actually. Spiderman - now he was born a weed, a wimp, a nerd, a geek. Only to be bitten by a radioactive spider, and turned into Spiderman. Now that could happen to any one of us, at any time. So it was that I became.... well, actually I'm still waiting to be be bitten, but hope springs eternal. Spiderman games have always been a bit of a mixed bag. The recent additions to the series, as spin-offs from the movie franchise ahve failed to inspire the gaming world, and the previous 50 Spiderman games on Gamespot from the past 20 years have hardly hit the headlines. Although I have fond memories of the C64 game. Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's revernge stands out though. Stands out for two reasons. 1. It is hard. I mean rock hard. I don't mean: Halo on Heroic, type hard. I mean: pull your hair out, throw the controller at the screen, "Why aren't there any health bonuses anywhere" hard. 2. The music is out phenomenal. For the SNES. Alright. So game music now is CD quality, written specifically for the games, by big artists with huge budgets. But in 1992 the SNES had to manage with music on cartridges - limited memory for music. The music for S-MatXM:AR (Whoa - crazy acronym) simply blew me away. When reviewing games of this age there's the difficult choice of reviewing the game by today's standards, or by the standards of the day it was released. I'm going to take the easy road and do a bit of both. In the day, the graphics were on the upper end of the scale - reasonably big sprites, well animated, plenty going on on-screen. No slowdown, no sprite flicker. But no fancy mode 7 graphics to amaze us with (Apart from Gambit's stage, more of which later). I recall it came out at the same time as Super Probotectors (Super Contra in the US) and I was far more impressed with the graphics on Konami's effort. The sound I've already intimated at. Fantastic sound track. I particularly love Gambit's theme. I still play this game to this day, and I always (Always) play Gambit's level first. Rock guitars and thumping beats were just not on the map in SNES games - I urge you to go back and listen to the music to Final Fight, then the music to Arcade's Revenge; a stark contrast between the beeps and whistles which accompany Haggar and Cody, and the guitars and drums which form the backdrop to Gambit's card throwing, leaping of faith. Sound effects were adequate, to good. Certainly Spidey's squelching webs were convincing enough. The game itself started with the player controlling Spidey - accessing Arcade's lair. The first level had to be easy, to allow access to the cool stuff inside. And it was easy. A gentle entry into the game. So far, so Peter Parker. Then, the player gets a choice of which character to play as next: Gambit, Spiderman, Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine. Now it get's tough. Sipderman - a huge warehouse to swing around, difficult because it's so easy to get lost. And one hit takes off more than half your energy. Gambit - Card throwing superhero sets off along a horizontally scrolling platform section. Just behind him is a Mode 7 giant metal wheel, spinning around and chasing him up the course. Not content with the "Spinning Wheel of Death" (TM), there is no floor, so miss a platform and you die. Add to that the recurrent Leaps of Faith; where there is no obvious platform to land on, just jump and hope, and the pixel perfect requirement for landing, and you've got a pretty tricky level. The music was ace though - have I mentioned that? Storm - She's in an underwater maze. She can only hold her breath for a cetain length of time, but there are air pockets around the place. But, there's only one route through the maze which will work, and if you run out of oxygen, you die, and you're back to the beginning of the level again. Wolverine - In a toy factory. Obviously. FIghting clowns etc. For some reason Wolvie is very small, and the toys are huge. He has the Adamantium claws, which we can retract. Unfortunately he doesn't have the regenerative powers, which is a shame as the level is rock, with a couple of hits killing the Yellow Spandexed one, and there's no health anywhere. Cyclops - in a mine. He's in a mining cart, there's things to shoot, but if anything hits the cart, it derails, and you plummet to your doom. Possibly even harder than the Gambit level. So it was hard. I don't know anyone who ever finished the game. Seriously, I'm no gaming genius, but I'm no slouch either, and at age 16 I was at th peak of my powers (Street Fighter II, level 7, no continues, no loss of any round, any character. God I was boring) - and I once got past the Spiderman level, only to be confronted by another, even harder warehouse. But was it fun? I think it was a challenge, and whilst it was happenning it was fun. But I remember getting disheartened by it. There's only so many times you can fall off a mine cart and still gegt back in again. The longevity provided by the difficulty is somewhat offset by the infuriating aspect of it all - I never stuck with it. But I do still go back to it; but that's nostalgia for you. So, I could still be bitten by a radioactive "Something" and become "Something"-Man. This is more likely than me finishing Gambit's level, that's for sure.
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