Like many collectors, I sometimes browse Ebay listings of cheap Game Boy carts in an effort to stumble upon something awesome. And one night the cover above caught my eye. I had completely forgotten about Spider-Man 2, but I knew the instant that I saw it that I had owned the game when I was younger. And how could I have not? Look at that cover! It has Carnage on it! And yet strangely as hard as I tried, I just could not recollect the game itself. I did a quick Google Image Search, and nothing jogged my memory. I could see the game was published by LJN who had been responsible for several games I have fond memories of, so I figured it was worth tracking down.
When the game arrived I tossed it into my Game Advance SP and within about two minutes I remembered Spider-Man 2 with a vengeance. Yes friends, this game is terrible. It is so unbelievably hard that I doubt anybody has ever had the skill patience to even make it past the first level. I know I never did when I was younger (and I was way more skillful patient when I was younger).
The game begins in an abandoned warehouse. You exit out a window and there's the Hobgoblin. Then he hits you with a pumpkin-bomb, you fall off the side of the building, quickly run out of webs while trying to make your way back up to the Hobgoblin and eventually somebody kills you or you just shut the game off in disgust. Seriously. That's everything that happens in this game. I mean, it's possible that there are other levels after this one. But I'm not sure they're needed, because this scenario is going to play out every time.
And yet what's really strange about this game is that I have no urge to get rid of it. I've gotten rid of far better games than this simply because I never felt like playing them. Perhaps there's a part of me that wants to hang on to the nostalgia associated with a game that infuriated the child version of myself nearly 20 years ago. Or maybe I'm just a masochist.
