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Video Game: Spider-Man
aka: Spider-Man

Spider-Man is one of numerous video games to feature the eponymous Marvel Comics character. However, this page is about the game simply bearing ol' web head's name & came out in the year 2000, developed by Neversoft and using the same game engine as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 and ported to the Dreamcast and PC. For the game that was released as a tie-in to the Sam Raimi film, go to Spider-Man Trilogy.

The game begins with the allegedly reformed Dr. Otto Octavius showing off a brand-new project of his at a science expo, when all of a sudden, a familiar hero clad in red-and-blue tights bursts in and steals his invention... except that Peter Parker is in the audience, watching the heist unfold. Spider-Man then finds not just the police on his tail, but every villain in the city is on a simultaneous crime spree, including Venom, after the imposter-Spidey destroyed Eddie Brock's camera and ruined his chances of getting a good shot of Spider-Man red-handed. In addition, all of New York is blanketed by a mysterious fog, and it's up to Spider-Man to sort it all out.

A sequel, titled Enter Electro, was released soon after, by Vicarious Visions.

Spider-Man provides examples of the following tropes:

  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Seriously, Spider-Man can web-swing inside the sewers. As in "building-to-building" swing on the surface.
  • Alien Invasion: Played With. Ock's plan is to invade New York with Earth-born alien symbiotes.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Unlockable costumes in the first game include the symbiotic black suit, the costume from Spider-Man Unlimited, the Scarlet Spider, Ben Reilly's Spider-Man costume, Spider-Man 2099, Captain Universe, Peter in civvies, the Amazing Bag Man, and Quick Change Spidey (Peter in civvies, only with his mask and gloves on). Although most of this costumes are purely cosmetic, some of them gave you slight handicaps or advantages; Quick Change Spidey only let you use two web cartridges, the symbiote suit has infinite webbing, Captain Universe deals double damage and is invincible, etc.
  • Animal Motifs: Rhino lampshades the recurring animal motifs of Spider-Man Rogues Gallery at the end.
    Rhino: So... I'm a Rhino, you're a Scorpion, and he's an Octopus... What's a Mysterio?
  • Banana in the Tailpipe: Spidey shuts off the bad guys' fog and compares it to this. In the What If? mode, the tailpipes actually have bananas on them.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: Dr. Octopus and Carnage.
  • Big "NO!": Mysterio gives a particularly long one after being defeated.
  • Bland-Name Product: A Pork'n'Donuts billboard.
  • Boss-Only Level: "Rhino's Rampage" is just the boss fight with the titular villain.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: The Captain Universe costume. You've beaten Hard Mode, so you probably never even needed a costume with invulnerability, unlimited webbing, and double damage (the only thing it can't do is turn invisible).
  • Bullfight Boss: Rhino again. Spidey even shouts "Toro, Toro!"
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Venom. He doesn't realize that it can't have been the real Spider-Man who raided the expo since he bumped into Peter whilst the heist was going on until Spidey points this out to him, and when asked for suggestions on who might have wanted the stolen technology, he suggests Namor, Thor, and Galactus, in an attempt to piss off Spidey. Oh, and after the Daily Bugle, Venom is entirely concerned with surfing the Web rather than doing anything useful. After you defeat him in the sewers, he almost immediately becomes comedic relief for most of the rest of the game — and even then, the chase scene is one giant screwball sequence.
  • Composite Character: Venom is an (at first) villainous character bent on revenge on Spider-Man, but borrows much of the humor from the "lethal protector" era of the character even before teaming up with Spider-Man.
  • Continuity Nod: All over the place:
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Stopping to fight Monster Ock will result in him beating Spider-Man's face in.
  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: In the boss fight with Carnage, Peter posits that Doctor Octopus created the sonic machine so that Carnage would have a harder time betraying him.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Venom wants to kill Spider-Man for roughly half the game. Once you beat him, however, he joins you in your mission and even helps you escape the exploding lab and into the Quinjet.
  • The Dev Team Thinks of Everything:
    • If you actually manage to get out of Venom's line of sight in your first fight with him (usually via exploiting a glitch that puts you under the arena), he starts yelling, wondering where you are.
    • If you fall in the paper machine in the Daily Bugle, you actually die.
  • Easy-Mode Mockery: The difficulty level Kid Mode changes the game so it's Easier Than Easy mode; some areas are now automatically completed for the player. A good example is in the one of the sewer levels. The player normally has a path of pipes to navigate, but in Kid Mode, a cutscene is shown where Spider-Man swings towards the pipes, then the camera shows him arriving at the end of the path. Also, instead of X then R2 to swing, the player now has to press X twice.
  • Enemy Chatter: At the Race to the Bugle level, you can hear some mooks chatting if you go to the right building. Scorpion won't stop walking though.
  • Everything-Is-Smashable Area : When you fight the Scorpion, you can destroy absolutely everything in Jameson's office. As a matter of fact, destroying everything on the first room is a requirement to get a comic book, and throwing destructible things at the Scorpion is how you're supposed to defeat him.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Carnage
  • Foreshadowing: A billboard featuring Carnage is prominently displayed in the first level.
  • Guide Dang It: A number of the collectible comic books, which require backtracking or entering specific areas after activating a trigger. One especially prominent example is the comic at the beginning of the sewer levels: Spider-Man needs to fight the first two lizard mutants, walk far enough down the cavern to say that they must be some of The Lizard's experiments, and then run all the way back down the cavern to collect it.
  • He Knows About Timed Hits: Black Cat gives tips during the first level.
  • Heroes Gone Fishing: We get to see Captain America, Spidey, Daredevil and The Punisher chilling out playing cards at the end, while Black Cat and the Human Torch dance.
    The Human Torch: Look at me!!! I'm on fire!!!
  • Hero with Bad Publicity: Spider-Man, due to being framed by Mysterio for theft and kidnapping. The cops even send attack helicopters armed with machine guns and rockets to bring him in.
  • I Fought the Law and the Law Won: During the Police chase, the helicopter is invulnerable and the cops will keep respawning when defeated, so your only option is run.
  • Impact Silhouette: When Venom leaps through a billboard at the end of his race with Spider-Man, even his tongue leaves a silhouette-shaped hole in it.
  • Improvised Weapon: You can hurl barrels, print copiers, vases, and fellow thugs at enemies.
  • Ironic Echo: Spider-Man tells Mysterio that it's impossible to control the symbiotes. When in prison, Mysterio tells everyone how stupid Doctor Octopus's plan is as "no-one can control the symbiotes".
  • Laughing Mad: Carnage. A lot.
  • Level in Boss Clothing: The attack helicopter and Monster Ock are too powerful for Spider-Man to take on, so he spends their respective fights running away.
  • Mook Maker: The symbiote generators.
  • Ominous Fog: Much like Silent Hill before it, this was implemented due to graphical limitations, and likewise justified, though in a different way: The fog is being pumped into the city to make the New York citizens less resistant to symbiotes.
  • One-Man Army: In the second level, Spider-Man takes out a couple dozen Jane Syndicate bank robbers with assault rifles. In the final level, he also infiltrates Doc Ock's secret underwater base, plowing his way through symbiotes and the automated defenses (laser turrets and electrified floors) in the process.
  • One-Winged Angel: After defeating Carnage, the symbiote uses Doctor Octopus as its host, resulting in a creature able to tear through solid steel and support structures with ease, snarling and grunting at Spidey inhumanly as it chases him. Thankfully, the symbiote still retains its traditional weakness, so the exploding base ends up ripping the symbiote off Octavius.
  • Police Are Useless: Or, at least, they're against Spider-Man for the entirety of the story due to him being framed for stealing a reformed Octavius's device. Weirdly, they deploy heavily armed SWAT teams and attack helicopters to apprehend Spider-Man for theft, but just kind of ignore other things, like a couple dozen assault rifle wielding robbers storming a bank and taking the staff hostage, or Rhino running around wrecking things, or the Scorpion.
    • Well, they do send 2 helicopters to the bank, which promptly get shot down...and then nothing else.
  • Shameless Self-Promotion: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is everywhere.
  • Shout-Out: Several, to both other games and various pop culture references.
  • Story-Driven Invulnerability:
    • When you race against Venom, you can't damage him at all.
    • Nor, when fleeing from Monster Ock, can you actually try to fight him off.
  • Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Spidey runs into several other NYC-based heroes in both games, but none manage to do anything significant to help him though Captain America does a Justin Time rescue at the end of the first game.
  • Talking to Himself: Most of the villains and supporting characters in the first game are voiced by Daran Norris and Dee Bradley Baker.
  • Turns Red: Mysterio does it twice. First, he adds floors that occasionally spark to the stage after you take out the six initial conduits. After you take out two more conduits, his globe will glow, and there will be electric floors moving around.
  • Useless Useful Stealth: The Unlimited Spider-Man unlockable costume allows you to become invisible, except against bosses.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • Beating up thugs? Funny enough. Beating up thugs while invisible to the naked eye? Oh, yeah. And if you have unlimited webbing, you can play with them even more. It's really fun doing this to them.
    • On some rooftops, you can web throw thugs off the building. If you punch/kick them off, they'll stop in mid-air, stand up, look down, and then fall screaming to their deaths Looney Tunes style.
  • Villains Out Shopping: In the ending, the bad guys all play cards in jail.
    Rhino: Hey, I got a Bingo! Ha ha! ...Wait, I made a mistake...
  • Villain Team-Up: Carnage, Doctor Octopus, Mysterio, and Rhino team up to take over New York. Scorpion has this to say about it after they all get thrown in jail:
    Scorpion: You mean to tell me that all of you were working together, and you still couldn't stop Spider-Man?
    Mysterio: It's not my fault. Doc Ock's plan was horrible!
    • It also annoys Spider-Man.
    Spider-Man: What is this, the Bad Guy Olympics!?
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: So, did Spider-Man and Venom just decide to leave the Lizard locked-up in the sewers?
    • Also Cletus Kasady after losing the symbiote, did Spider-Man just let him die in the underwater base explosion?
  • What If?: Played for Laughs. A code allows you to change the game to What If mode, showing a lot comedic changes, such as crashing through a skyscraper including a more sequential sequence of gags, the captured Black Cat dancing when she's captured and Carnage sounding like a baby, as well as The Lizard refusing to tell you where to go if you come back to him three times. You also get a few more cameos, such as Ghost Rider tearing down a nearby skyscraper.
  • Wolverine Publicity: Many of Marvel's major heroes (Human Torch, Captain America, Daredevil, and a few others) appear here. Wolverine also gets a cameo appearance on a billboard that states they're going to interview him.

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Space Channel 5Sega DreamcastStarlancer

alternative title(s): Spider-Man
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