Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six

The Good
Spider-Man is, agruably, one of the most popular super heroes around. By 1992, he had been the star (or guest star) of several video games, except the NES. When this game came out, fans were eager to see what was in store for them...

The Intermission scenes that occur before each level are nice, borrowed from the comic book min series.


The Bad
In 1990, LJN did the smart thing and had the first Spider-Man game for the original (black and white) Game Boy developed by the folks at Rare. The result was a great action adventure game with impressive graphics, sound, storyline and playability.

Yet, the subsequent Spider-Man titles for the original Game Boy and the NES version, were all developed by B.I.T.S. Now, I am sure that the folks at B.I.T.S. did their best, but every Spider-Man game they developed turned out to be a huge mistake.

While the artwork on the game's cover is taken from the mini-series from the early 1990s, the game's storyline is reduced to a few sentences about how the Sinister Six is plotting to take over the world. The intermissions at the begining of each level are impression, but the ending is a letdown and it keeps getting worse;

• The graphics and sounds are just slightly above average, and musical notes tend to repeat often. In fact, if you pause and unpause the game, the music restarts. Killing enemies often results in their odd explosion.

• Control is horrible. For some, insane, reason 'B' was made the jump button, while 'A' was made the punch and action button. Spider-Man does not start out with the ability to shoot web projectives, and web catridges only provide about ten shots. Yet, you do have an unlimited amount of webbing to swing from.

You can climb onto certain flat surfaces in the background, but your wall crawling abilities serve little purpose and the jump kick is often difficult to perform on cue.

Spider-Man can only take about a dozen direct hits and then he is dead. Period. No health restoration. No extra lives or continues. Either you beat the game in one setting or you start all over from scratch.

As is the case with the original Game Boy version of Spider-Man 2, B.I.T.S decide to have Spider-Man collect certain objects in the game to advance.

While it is not a horrible idea, it lends itself to situations that greatly undermine Spider-Man's strength and thus would never exist in the comics.

Why not simply take a cue from the 1990 Amazing Spider-Man Game Boy or, even, Sega Genesis title? The NES is capable of much better then this and LJN-BITS let alot of fans down.

The Bottom Line
Spider-Man Return of the Sinister Six seems to be a game that is grossly underdeveloped. As if, LJN grabbed the game away from BITS, before it was even half way done.

Comic book fans waited a long while for Spider-Man to appear on the NES, and what we got was a let down.