Summary
Spider-Manhas been one of Marvel’s most popular superheroes for decades. At this point, he’s been adapted into almost every medium and has received the video game treatment countless times. He’s appeared in well over 60 video games, which isn’t bad. Even more impressive, most of them are pretty good.
Some ofthe best Spider-Man gameshave been released in recent years, but the webslinger has been getting his own games since the days of the Atari 2600 and Odyssey 2. The web-head has had his own titles on nearly every console, which raises the question: which console has the most Spider-Man games? While building this list, we only counted games that focus primarily on Spider-Man, and to simplify things, ignored backwards compatibility but included remasters (not that they made a difference).
Spider-Man: Edge of Time
Spider-Man 3
The PlayStation 3 was one of the most popular consoles ever released, so it’s not surprising it received a fair few Spider-Man games. In total, the PS3 received 6 games, none of which were exclusive to the console.
The PS3 was around for a long time, meaning its Spider-Man catalog includes tie-ins to two different Spider-Man movie franchises, which is pretty wild. Early in its life cycle, it received the disappointingSpider-Man 3, while towards the end of its life, it received tie-ins to the Andrew Garfield movies. Arguably the best game in its Spidey catalog, however, isSpider-Man: Web of Shadows, which has some ofthe best symbiote gameplayin any Spider-Man game.
Spider-Man: Friend or Foe
Ultimate Spider-Man
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
The beloved PlayStation 2,the highest-selling console of all time, was home to one of the most popular Spider-Man games to have ever been released:Spider-Man 2. A tie-in to Sam Raimi’s film of the same name, it was the first open-world Spider-Man game and the first to give Spidey physics-based web-slinging. It was awesome.
The console’s other Spider-Man games aren’t quite as impressive. The movie tie-in to Raimi’s first film was okay, but was overshadowed by its sequel. The other Spider-Man games the PS2 received were lesser ports of the versions released on the PlayStation 3, meaning they didn’t look as good and were usually missing features.Spider-Man: Web of Shadowsis the worst example, since it’s basically a port of the 2.5D sidescroller released for the PSP rather than a scaled-down version of the PS3’s open-world game.
Amazing Spider-Man
Considering they were contemporary consoles, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Wii and PlayStation 3 shared a fair few Spidey titles. However, since the two were vastly different consoles, it also shouldn’t be surprising that the games themselves underwent some drastic changes.
Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, one ofthe best games with a playable Venom, was mostly the same as it was on other consoles.Spider-Man 3, on the other hand, received motion controls, which were fun when they worked. Other games weren’t so lucky. Generally speaking, the Spider-Man games on the Wii received worse review scores thanks to pared-down graphics and performance issues.The Amazing Spider-Manwas perhaps the worst example. To get it to run on the little Wii, its developers had to tear out its open world and dumb down some of its level design.
Spider-Man 2
Spider-Man: Battle for New York
The Game Boy Advance’s Spider-Man catalog might look familiar, but its games were very different from the versions sold for home consoles. That doesn’t mean they were bad, though. In fact, they tended to make the most of the handheld’s limited hardware and succeeded in doing their own thing.
All the games were 2D sidescrollers with variations of the same beat-em-up combat. No one is going to say these games hadthe best Spider-Man combat systems, but they were fun enough. The most interesting game here isSpider-Man: Mysterio’s Menace, a direct sequel to the beloved Spider-Man games on the PS1 and Game Boy Color.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 received all the same games, with one exception:Spider-Man: Friend or Foe. The exact reason for this was never announced, but it likely has something to do with how popular the PlayStation 2 still was, how difficult the PlayStation 3 was to develop for, and the fact that the Xbox 360 was outselling the PS2 at the time.
Fanboys might disagree, but outside that, all the games were basically the same, with only minor discrepancies between them. While we tend to rave today about how good Insomniac’s recent entries have been, both the PS3 and Xbox 360 gotWeb of Shadows,Shattered Dimensions,andEdge of Time, some ofthe Spider-Man games with the best stories.
The Nintendo DS was around for nine years and received a Spidey game for nearly every year of its life. As with the Game Boy Advance before it, most of the Spider-Man games for the Nintendo DS were side-scrolling brawlers that shared a name with their console counterparts but little else outside their stories. None of them looked very good (the screenshot above is a good case in point) but they did have some neat features.
Nearly all the games used the touchscreen in intuitive ways, mostly for inputting attacks.Ultimate Spider-Mandid this particularly well. The player could choose between controlling Spider-Man or Venom, with each character having completely different control schemes. While Spider-Man mostly took advantage of the upper screen and face buttons, using Venom meant getting good with the touch screen to aim his tendril attacks. Other games, likeBattle for New York,used the touch screen to cram in some extra mini-games. Maybe the coolest wasSpider-Man: Web of Shadows. It lost the open world of the home console ports, but gained a very cool metroidvania-style structure.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Technically, Microsoft Windows isn’t a console, but with 12 Spider-Man games made for it, the mighty PC can’t be ignored. These days, gamers tend to associate Spider-Man games with PlayStation, but the PC is way ahead. Aside fromMarvel’s Spider-Man 2, it has had every major Spider-Man release in the last few decades. That includes the originalMarvel’s Spider-ManandMiles Morales, two of the best open-world superhero games.
Sadly, it’s not all good news. Unless a player has an original disc hanging around (and a disc drive), it’s next to impossible to get their hands on most of these games these days. Even then, getting them to work on modern hardware isn’t easy. Thanks to old licensing agreements, it’s also unlikely we’ll ever see remasters or re-releases of any of them.
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is one of the biggest names in entertainment today. The superhero first appeared in the Marvel comic Amazing Fantasy #15 before becoming a leading figure in the Marvel comic-book universe.Spider-Man has also featured in numerous films and a plethora of video games, most notably Insomniac Games' Spider-Man (2018) and Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
