Atari 2600 Friday’s #21 – Spider-Man

It has been a long time since I have done one of these. I have to get my games back out of the cabinet. But for now, let’s pick one that is already out, Spider-Man.

The Story: You play as Spider-Man as he works to remove bombs from the top of skyscrapers in order to save the city from the evil green goblin.

From the Manual: “Spider-Man: “New York City–at the mercy of the GREEN GOBLIN! He’s booby-trapped the city’s skyscrapers with SUPER BOMBS! I must save the city NOW. But the GOBLIN will try to stop my every move. Criminals and time bombs–even the GREEN GOBLIN himself–stand between me and the SUPER BOMBS! Can I save the city in time?””

From the Box: “DRAMA! ACTION! SUSPENSE! In this exciting SPIDER-MAN adventure, the GREEN GOBLIN has set out to destroy New York City. Only you can save the bustling metropolis – because you’re SPIDER-MAN! Quickly slip into your costume, check your web fluid cartridges, and get set to web-swing through this most dangerous mission. The action begins on a booby-trapped skyscraper…Scale a building by shooting a web in any direction above you. Climb up, drop down – even swing from side to side! Capture criminals by swinging over the windows in which they appear. But watch out! They’ll try to cut your web. If they do, shoot another web fast, or you’ll fall! Keep an eye on your web fluid supply. If you run low, quickly capture a criminal to replenish your supply. Climb to the high voltage tower where the time bombs tick toward detonation. Defuse the bombs before they blow up…you’ll score points, and get extra web fluid! Watch out for your arch-enemy, the evil GREEN GOBLIN! He’ll do anything to thwart your mission – and keep you from diffusing the Super Bomb! The work of SPIDER-MAN is never done. To save the metropolis, move to another building – and face even greater dangers!”

The Gameplay: Okay, so how do we play Spider-Man. What we need to do is get to the top of the building, which gets harder the higher up you go. You can climb the tower by shooting webbing with the red button either straight up or at a diagonal up direction. You need to hold down the button to shoot the web and then release it at the desired length. This is important because you have to make the web land on the building itself, if it stops on a window or sky or anything non-building Spider-Man will fall. Now, you only have a limited amount of web-fluid (indicated by the line on the bottom right of the screen) so you have to swing over the criminals in order to catch them and replenish it. All the meanwhile being careful that the criminals don’t cut your web and make you fall. When you get higher up you will encounter times bombs that count down by turning from black to red, but you can diffuse these by swinging over them like the criminals. If you catch too many criminals or bombs the Green Goblin will start the timer on the super bomb at the top, so you will then have to hurry. At the top Green Goblin will get in your way of the superbomb, just remember getting hit by him makes you fall. You have to move up the building fast and safely, you have 3 lives total with an extra life every 10,000 points. When you finish one building, you will move on to a tougher one.

The Controls: Red button shoots web. Up + diagonals aim web and make Spider-Man climb the web.

Post Review: This game is pretty hard for the new player. I played two games of this before rage quitting. It literally took me into the second round to figure out how to even get the super bomb at the top after falling some twenty plus times. So, let me tell all of you how to get it because I don’t remember reading this anywhere. You have to sing over it like a criminal or bomb. If your web hits it you will fall.  Just remember there is very little tower there to get web onto and right below you Green Goblin is flying back and forth, touching him also makes you fall. So, there is very little room to maneuver in here. the only time I actually got the super bomb my web was about one pixel away which cause my character to hit it and count. It’s also very hard to stay on the building near the end of the tower. Most of my play was falling near the top and then dying because I ran out of web. I spent a lot of my time ignoring the points just trying to stay on the building and figure out how to get the super bombs at the top. For a lot of the tower, you can just web straight up, but this avoids points and web fluid. The real challenge is the very top with Green Goblin and the superbomb, I recommend anyone who wants to seriously play this game practice lower on the tower with swinging around and catching criminals/bombs. It’s a decent game, but you have to be patient and learn it.

The High Score: 280

August 23, 2014 Pickup

Now before you laugh, I did not find anything super cool amazing special this weekend. So instead I picked up what you see in the picture below.

Link’s Crossbow Training is pretty much the only Zelda game I can think of that I did not own yet, and to find a complete with crossbow version like this made it a must-have, especially when it’s pretty much the same price without the crossbow. F1-Race and F-zero are on my “I used to own these at one time, let’s get them back list”. I also decided to pick up three cheap SNES games. Clue because I love the movie, and it’s a fun board game. Space Ace and Shaq-Fu…well, I don’t know if I can justify these. Tetris, because Famicom games are awesome to have.

Like I said, nothing special, just a few things I didn’t have yet.

August 21, 2014 Pickup, Pac-man Board Game

I went to an antique mall the other night and picked up this glorious COMPLETE Pac-man board game. Everything is here and it looks great. I can’t wait to try playing it. I know Mr. Obsessive Compulsive who I haven’t seen in some time would love to play it. If we do get to play it, I can add to this about how much fun it is and some during play photos. (If you don’t know, I never record anything because I don’t have a video camera. I’d rather stick to text and photos anyway.) Here’s a picture of the box cover:

We did get to play this once last fall, and I was on hiatus here so I completely forgot about it. Forgot to take any pictures too. This game rocks. It’s all the fun of Pac-man in 4 player board game flavor. Setup goes a lot faster than you would think for having so many pieces. Pac-Man is pretty fast-paced, just roll your dice and move, then pass the dice on. 10/10 would play again.

August 16, 2014 Pickup

Got a few things this weekend, nothing special, but I haven’t been out in a while so here goes.

Another batch of Atari manuals. It will be great if I ever get back to my Atari Fridays. Speaking of which I finally found an Adventure cart, with the manuals I’ve been picking up and the box I’ve had for a while, that one is CIB. Among the Manuals This week is the Centipede Comic, why wouldn’t I want that.  You will also notice another Famicom Cartridge, this one is called SD Gundam Knight. Apparently as is obvious, it is a game for the SD Gundam series. The one GBA cart is Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team. Finally, yes, that is a Mario Galaxy Soundtrack. With some googling, It was a non-US club Nintendo Gold award. I am thinking it’s one of Europe’s from the Spanish and French on it, but I’m not 100% sure.

July 25, 2014 Pickup

Alright, sorry this is about a week later, but here is some cool stuff I picked up last week.

Boxed copies of Wheel of Fortune and Robodemons for NES. mostly complete, Wheel of Fortune is missing the manual but has a poster. Tron Deadly Discs for the Atari 2600. Plus, Sonic Shuffle for Dreamcast.

Also got this Dragon Quest 3 for Famicom.

And a whole stack of Atari 2600 Manuals I didn’t have. (Sorry, I always have issues holding a camera steady.)