''The Amazing Spider-Man'' is a

platform game A platform game (often simplified as platformer and sometimes called a jump 'n' run game) is a sub-genre of action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are charac ...

featuring the

Marvel Marvel may refer to: Business * Marvel Entertainment, an American entertainment company ** Marvel Comics, the primary imprint of Marvel Entertainment ** Marvel Universe, a fictional shared universe ** Marvel Music, an imprint of Marvel Comics * ...

comic book character

Spider-Man Spider-Man is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he first appeared in the anthology comic book '' Amazing Fantasy'' #15 (August 1962) in the ...

. The game was developed by Oxford Digital Enterprises and released in 1990 for

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

and

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

, and later ported to

IBM PC compatibles IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Si ...

, and

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...

. The title was published by

Paragon Software Paragon Software Corporation was an American video game developer based in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Founded on December 12, 1985, by Mark E. Seremet and Antony Davies, the company was best known for games developed around licenses from Marv ...

in North America and by Empire Software in Europe.

Plot

The plot involves Spider-Man's wife, Mary Jane, being kidnapped by

Mysterio Mysterio (Quentin Beck) is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, the character first appeared in ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' #13 (June 1964). He is primarily depicted ...

. To save her, Spider-Man must navigate through various environments and puzzles divided into separate acts, representing Mysterio's obsession with film. The various rooms are often parodies of film genres.

Development

In December 1990 issue of British gaming magazine ''

The One The ONE is a shopping centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong. It is built on the site of the former Tung Ying Building at 100 Nathan Road. It was developed by Chinese Estates Holdings and opened in 2010. Owner Joseph Lau Luen-hung g ...

'', Rick Yapp from Oxford Digital Enterprises was interviewed about ''The Amazing Spider-Mans development. Yapp explained how platforming was added during the development stage of the game and it was not included in its original design: "The platform idea wasn't part of the original brief. It just seemed to fit in quite nicely with the ability to swing on webs properly. And we thought a straight

beat 'em up The beat 'em up (also known as brawler and, in some markets, beat 'em all) is a video game genre featuring hand-to-hand combat against a large number of opponents. Traditional beat 'em ups take place in scrolling, two-dimensional (2D) levels, ...

was a bit boring for someone of Peter Parker's intelligence". Yapp also added that Spider-Man's sprite was downscaled to make room for more animations: "The reason we've done that is that we can have a massive animation table in there. Because he can be shown in all orientations, such as walking along ceilings and crawling up walls, there's 256 frames of animation just for the Spider-Man sprite". ''The Amazing Spider-Man's'' movie studio setting was partially concepted due to the team wanting to incorporate movie references into the game. ''The Amazing Spider-Man's'' music is stated to be "not really" based upon music from previous Spider-Man media. The MS-DOS version of the game supports

AdLib Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval. The company's best known product, the ''Ad ...

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio i ...

s and enables game's speed manual setting, thus allowing faster computers to run the game faster. All ports of the game have a feature where, in specific rooms, the player may save the game to

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

as opposed to the hard disk.

References

External links

*
''The Amazing Spider-Man''
at Hall of Light Amiga database 1990 video games Amiga games Atari ST games Cancelled Amstrad CPC games Commodore 64 games DOS games Platform games Superhero video games Video games based on comics Video games based on Spider-Man Video games developed in the United Kingdom Empire Interactive games {{platform-videogame-stub

Plot

Development

See also

References

External links