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Let’s talk about Spider-Man 3, the movie where Sam Raimi looked at “menacing single antagonist” and said no thank you, I would like three, please, and also I would like Peter Parker to dance down the street like he’s auditioning for a jazz-hands cult. It’s a movie that tried to do everything, mostly succeeded at doing too much, and somehow still made enough money that Activision looked at it and thought: yes, this deserves not one video game, but two, spread across seven different consoles, so that literally nobody in 2007 could escape it. Ambitious! Chaotic! Extremely on brand for the source material!

See, there’s the fancy version, built by Treyarch for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, where you get a whole open Manhattan to swing around in and the black suit shows up only when the story deems you emotionally ready for it, very mature, very earned. And then there’s the completely different budget cousin, built by Vicarious Visions for PS2, Wii, PSP, GBA, and DS, where you can slap the black suit on whenever you feel like being a jerk, the Wii Remote gets to pretend it’s a web-shooter, and the DS throws the D-pad in the trash entirely so you can beat up Sandman by poking a touchscreen like it owes you money. Same cover art. Same villains. Practically strangers.

Swinging in to help me sort out how many wildly different versions of one questionable movie a single franchise can generate is Harry Steele, co-host of Games on Film, the podcast where he and his brother Rory spend their days grading movies based on video games! Which means Harry has built an entire professional skillset around asking “did Hollywood mess this up,” and today, for one glorious episode, we get to point that same energy directly back at a video game and ask if it managed to mess up the movie right back. Poetic justice! Content symmetry! Whatever you want to call it, it’s happening!

So grab whichever suit you’re feeling today, pick a console, any console, apparently they all made their own decisions, and let’s find out if the Spider-Man 3 games handled three villains and seven platforms with any more finesse than the movie handled three villains and one dance number.Continue Reading

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Welcome web-slinging warriors and joystick jockeys to another thrilling episode of Play Comics where we untangle the sticky situation of comic-to-game adaptations with the precision of Peter Parker trying to explain away his sudden photography skills! This week we’re diving headfirst into the cel-shaded spectacular that is Ultimate Spider-Man, the 2005 game that took Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley’s comic masterpiece and somehow convinced every gaming platform from here to the Daily Bugle that they needed a piece of this web-slinging action.

Released across more systems than Spider-Man has quips in his arsenal—PS2, Xbox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS—this Treyarch-developed adventure let players experience both sides of the symbiote coin. Whether you were swinging through Manhattan as everyone’s favorite wise-cracking wall-crawler or stomping around as the terrifyingly toothy Venom, this game promised to deliver more comic book authenticity than J. Jonah Jameson has anti-Spider-Man editorials.

Joining us for this ultimate discussion are two absolute legends from the podcasting multiverse: Derek B Gayle and Doug Fink, the dynamic duo behind Walloping Websnappers and a whole constellation of other fantastic shows on the Glitterjaw Queer Podcast Collective that may not be directly relevant to our web-slinging shenanigans today, but are undeniably brilliant nonetheless. When they’re not busy dissecting every Spider-Man cartoon ever created or exploring the depths of various other pop culture phenomena, these two bring their encyclopedic knowledge of all things Spider to help us determine whether this game truly captured the essence of the Ultimate universe or if it just left us feeling like we’d been caught in one of Green Goblin’s elaborate schemes.

So dust off those early 2000s gaming controllers, practice your best Venom growl, and prepare for an episode that’s guaranteed to be more entertaining than watching Eddie Brock try to explain his sudden career change from journalism to alien symbiote hosting!Continue Reading

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Welcome back, web-slingers and button-mashers, to another delightfully unhinged episode of Play Comics! This week we’re crawling back to 2002, when flip phones were cutting-edge technology, everyone was still trying to figure out what the heck a “blog” was, and Activision decided the best way to capitalize on Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movie was to let Treyarch loose with a development kit and what we can only assume were several energy drinks and a prayer.

We’re diving deep into the pixelated web-slinging wonderland that somehow convinced an entire generation that swinging through New York City while your webs mysteriously attach to invisible sky anchors was totally normal. This PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and Game Boy Advance spectacular managed to squeeze Tobey Maguire’s voice into a polygonal suit while adding enough extra villains to make you wonder if someone at Treyarch had been hoarding Spider-Man action figures since childhood and finally found an excuse to use them all.

Joining us for this nostalgic journey through early 2000s gaming jank is the magnificent Chris Ferrell from All Things Good and Nerdy and The Official GonnaGeek Show! Chris brings his encyclopedic knowledge of all things delightfully nerdy to help us navigate the treacherous terrain between movie adaptation and comic book faithfulness. He’s the perfect guide for exploring whether this game captured the essence of everyone’s favorite wall-crawler or just gave us a really expensive tech demo for air-based web physics that would make actual physics professors weep quietly into their coffee.

So dust off those sixth-generation consoles, prepare for some seriously chunky character models, and join us as we swing into action with a game that dared to ask the important question: “What if we took a two-hour movie and stretched it into twelve hours of gameplay by adding every Spider-villain we could think of?” The answer, as you’ll discover, involves more air combat than anyone expected and enough stealth sequences to make you appreciate that this was made before every game decided it needed a mandatory stealth section.

Get ready for web-slinging, wall-crawling, and more mid-air punching than should be physically possible – it’s time to find out if this early millennium marvel holds up or if it belongs in the same category as those websites that still think animated GIFs are the height of digital sophistication.Continue Reading

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It all comes back to Spider-Man doesn’t it? The cultural saturation of the character in a lot of English speaking societies. The relatable nature of the character (and to be perfectly honest, most of the Spider people characters). The fact that the first Spider-Man trilogy was the first thing since the 90s Batman movies to really hit such a mainstream audience is no coincidence.

So how do we get a look at what Spider-Man means to people? Oh, I don’t know, maybe get a guest like Keifer from Select and Start to come and give us a look at what both this 2004 game and the movie that it ties in with? Yeah, that seems like a good idea. I should pat myself on the back for doing exactly that.Continue Reading

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One of the things that I really love about Spider-Man is how big the cast of other characters is, especially the crossover with other Marvel heroes. Maybe some of that is because he’s the first place I really saw that.

And maybe some of why the first Spider-Man game for PS1 is my all time favorite Spider-Man game in the whole world no question is because it’s the first one I really got to play through over and over and over. Listen in as Paul Csomo from Varmints joins the show to finally talk about what is possibly the game that I get asked about doing the most. Easily top 3 worst case.Continue Reading

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Spider-Man, we just can’t get away from him can we? Not that I’m complaining, he’s a popular character for a reason. This time around joing Chris and Kieran Shiach as they talk about the second Toby McGuire Spider-Man film and the game that came out alongside it. Yeah, we’re cheating a bit and jumping ahead. I think we’ll survive just this once.Continue Reading