The Amazing Spider-Man

"WATCH as Spider-Man jumps off a building for NO reason."

Back when I got this game, {1990} I had no idea who Spider-Man was. After playing it for a little while, and then gave it up. However, a few years later, I finally started to get into Spider-Man, and he turned out to be one of my favorite ''super heroes.'' I loved how human he was and how he struggled with his powers.

Because of this, I picked up the game once again and went about playing it. Little did I realize that the years I spent loving Spider-Man couldn't prepare me to face this nightmare once again..

Plot-
Score: 1
Reason: This plot is just too basic to be good. Mary Jane is kidnapped and Spider-Man has to go off and save her from a cast of villains. Yes, it's from 1990 and yes, it's a Game Boy game, but, come on, even Final Fantasy had a better plot.

Music-
Score: 1
Reason: Why does it get a 1, you ask? Simple. Three minutes after turning off this game, I can't remember a single music track from this game. No, I'm not being funny here. I can't, for the life of me, remember a single sound effect from this, either. That's really rather sad, isn't it?

Graphics-
Score: 5
Reason: The character sprites are pretty tall in this, but most of them have very little detail. However, the backgrounds, while pretty bland and basic, normally fills most of the background area.

You might be saying: ''But Aeolus! It's the background, it's supposed to fill the background area!''

You see, I don't consider white to be background. If there are no lines in it forming some form of shape, it's just an empty space that serves no purpose. In this game, however, there are very few cases of this, and that's only when Spider-Man is hanging out on roof tops.

Control-
Score: 3
Reason: The controls in this game are pretty laggy. Jumping takes about half a second to start, and when you do jump, you have little control over the distance and speed. Walking is pretty slow and firing is even worse, not only does it take a little while, but you can't control the shot that comes out. It can be a solid ''bullet'' {as I call it} a ''solid web'' and a ''scatter web.'' It would be nice if you could use a ''scatter web'' to take out enemies that are above you and a long distance away, but when you fire, all you get is a ''bullet.''

Roof hopping is the WORST thing in this game. There are times where there is a massive gap between roof tops, so you have to go ''web slinging,'' but, the problem is, you have little or no control over if you can do it or not. So, more often than not, you're jumping to your death. I've used every life and continue on one level more times than I want to remember.

Fun-
Score: 1
Reason: This game just isn't fun. If you're not jumping to your death from a roof top, then you're getting your head smashed in by a guy with a baseball bat hanging out of a window on the side of a building. Not even Spider-Man's ''witty'' remarks to the bosses are funny. This is NOT the Spider-Man I'd like to remember.

Difficulty-
Score: 9
Reason: This game is pretty hard because of the lack of ''web slinging'' control on the roof top levels and the general laggy controls.

Overall-
Score: 3

Bottom Line: If you love Spider-Man and just want to collect everything with ''Spider-Man'' on it, then look for it. If you want a decent Game Boy game to pass the time, but hate dying over and over because of bad controls, then please, if you this game in a store, run as FAST as you can in the opposite direction.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/03, Updated 07/25/03