The bankruptcy of Adventure International, Adams’ publishing company, put a halt to those plans after only three entries, the middle of which featured Spidey (Hulk, and Human Torch and The Thing featured in the other two).
In 1984, he took a similar approach with Questprobe, a planned 12-part adventure series that would feature a different superhero in each episode. Scott Adams holds the distinction of being the first person to make an adventure game for PCs with 1978’s Adventureland. Variety was not this game’s strong point. Unfortunately, in the grand tradition of arcade games of the day, after completing a stage an almost identical building needed scaling and an identical Super Bomb needed diffusing. Upon reaching the top, Spidey had to get past the Green Goblin and defuse his “Super Bomb.” Web fluid was a resource to be managed, and, in a nifty touch, you could stop yourself from falling to your death by shooting a web onto a wall before you plunged too far. Players had to scale a skyscraper using the webhead’s signature abilities while dodging baddies with a penchant for sticking their heads out of windows. The fact that Spidey’s blue and red costume was somewhat recognizable while rendered with a few dozen pixels also meant that the visuals were considered impressive at the time. Although it was repetitive and simplistic, the game did, to its credit, explore the power fantasy of being Spider-Man – which, as we all know, largely revolves around swinging on webs and climbing buildings. The result was 1982’s Spider-Man for the Atari 2600 and Sears Video Arcade (essentially a rebadged Atari 2600 sold exclusively in Sears stores). For the first time the comic-book giant licensed out one of its characters to a game developer – the now-defunct Parker Brothers taking the honors. With video games exploding in popularity during the 1970s, Marvel saw a revenue source it could no longer ignore. Although he’s now starred in nearly 40 titles of his own, not to mention cameo appearances in everything from fighting to skateboarding games, Spidey’s gaming journey didn’t begin until the early 1980s. His video game life, however, was slow to start. Domination of the pop-culture world followed, with a now-heavily-memed animated series, big-budget (and a few extremely low-budget) movies, and countless action figure and lunchbox appearances. Though teenagers couldn’t necessarily relate to having their scientific mentor turn into a giant lizard, the fact that Peter Parker, Spidey’s true identity, still had to get his homework done while dealing with said giant lizard hit home.īy 1963 he’d been given his own comic, The Amazing Spider-Man, which continues to this day. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s creation – more relatable than the stoic, godlike superheroes of the day – was a runaway success with younger readers. This feature originally appeared in issue 101 of the Australian edition of Game Informer magazine. Almost immediately, it was clear that Spidey was destined for a greater fate than a throwaway appearance in a second-tier title. Spider-Man made his comic-book debut in August 1962, gracing the pages of Amazing Fantasy issue 15 with his striking costume, arachnid abilities, and a refreshing dose of youthful angst.