COMIC BOOK ARCADE FLYERS

Comic book superheroes, huh? They’re not just for kids and dorks any more! Okay, so maybe that’s a bit harsh, but superheroes are now one hundred percent mainstream, and as someone who spent a lot of their youth enjoying superhero fiction (although not necessarily comics) it’s an interesting time for the concept of costumed weirdos punching each other. There have been plenty of mis-steps – I knew Suicide Squad was going to be bad but I was definitely not prepared for just how bad – but there’s a lot of enjoyable live-action superhero stuff out there these days. It’s bizarre to me that I can be watching a superhero TV show and think to myself “oh cool, Captain Cold’s in this episode, nice,” but that’s the world we live in these days. It was all different when I was a kid, though. I didn’t have any comic book stores nearby or the financial resources to keep up with monthly series (except the Real Ghostbusters comic, thanks mum) so most of my superhero exposure came from movies, cartoons and, of course, videogames. This is all a roundabout way of saying here, let’s look at some arcade flyers from comic book videogames!

X-Men, Konami, 1992

(images from The Arcade Flyer Archive, click for bigger)

Let’s begin with a prime slab of comic book art that fuses the powerful nostalgia streams of nineties Marvel and arcade beat-em-ups with Konami’s much-loved X-Men. The game itself might not be quite as much fun to play these days as you remember, but that’s a minor consideration because hearing Magneto croak “Welcome to die!” could transform any game into a masterpiece. Just looking at this artwork means I’ll have “Here Comes the Hero” stuck in my head for hours to come. As for the artwork itself, there’s not much to say about it, honestly. It’s just a nice, large image of all your favourite X-Men characters, plus Dazzler. The most striking thing about it is that I don’t remember Wolverine wearing a huge red belt, but apparently his brown suit did indeed feature a huge red belt. Funny how memory works, huh? And what’s that belt supposed to be holding up, his skin-tight lycra suit? Wolverine’s the best there is at what he does, and what he does is promote the importance of adequate lumbar support.

The Japanese flyer feature the same heroic X-Men in a different pose, overshadowed by the leering face of Magneto. The Master of Magnet looks like he’s just seen someone drop a twenty pound note and he’s about to stand on it until they walk away and then pinch it. As for the rest of the characters, they look good and dynamic, although poor Nightcrawler has to suffer the indignity of having text obscuring his face. If you’re thinking that the art looks like an animation cell, that’s probably because X-Men: The Arcade Game was famously based on the semi-failed cartoon pilot Pryde of the X-Men.

There’s also this flyer, which really gets across the grandeur of the full six-player X-Men cabinet. “Play X-Men today at an arcade near you! No excuses!” it says, and yeah, sure, unless the arcade bought the six-player cabinet and then had to close down because the floor collapsed.
If you’ve ever been lucky enough to enjoy the full six-player X-Men experience - sorry, "eXperience" -  please don’t tell me, because I’d just be jealous.

Spider-Man: The Videogame, Sega, 1991

It’s your friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler, and he’s got his own arcade videogame! That’s right, Spider-Man : The Videogame, the game all about Spider-Man starring Spider-Man and three other people Spider-Man knows. Let’s face it, neither Black Cat, Sub-Mariner nor Hawkeye are in the same league as Spider-Man, are they? I’m sure they all have their fans, and I bet Black Cat has plenty of fan “art,” but Spidey’s definitely the star here. Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the artwork  on this flyer look a bit old-fashioned for a game released in 1991? That’s not a complaint, it’s a classic look for the characters featured here, even if Namor’s raw sexual magnetism is making me a little uncomfortable.
There’s some interesting text down there on the bottom-right. Describing the characters as “three heroes and a heroine” seems like an unnecessary distinction, but I do like Dr. Doom being called “an incarnation of evil.” An incarnation of good common sense and benevolent leadership who is forever being slandered by the accursed Reed Richards might be more accurate, but this description is much less cumbersome.

The US flyer goes with a daft pun, which makes sense to me because there are two things I associate with Spider-Man: radioactive spider blood and bad jokes. The pun is then re-used at the end of the blurb, because if a joke was lame in the first place it can only get better with repetition. In fact, you could say there’s so much value in that pun that it’s really got legs, oh no, I’ve fallen into some kind of meta void.
Speaking of voids, I spent far too long looking at the background thinking it was some kind of abstracted Spider-Man mask before realising the magenta part is the silhouette of an arcade cabinet and the blue bits are supposed to be the trails of the swooshing screenshots. I was looking for depth where there was only ugly graphic design.

Superman: The Video Game, Taito, 1988

The Man of Steel gets a pretty boring flyer for his eponymous arcade adventure, but then I suppose Superman is so iconic that all you need to sell the idea of a Superman game is an image of Superman bursting though a paper sheet like a winning contestant on Gladiators.

The European flyer is a bit more engaging. Superman hurls a meatball into the depths of space, which at least gets a flicker from the needle of the interesting-o-meter because now I’m thinking of the phrase “intergalactic bolognese.” He also breaks apart some chains with a smile on his face. You see, he’s happy because some villain was dumb enough to attack Superman with regular metal chains and not a kryptonite-powered death machine.

Batman, Data East, 1990

After Superman, logically the next superhero to check up on is Batman, and of course he also got his own arcade game. It’s not that great, from what I remember. As you can see, it’s based on Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie, which means this flyer contains little more than Michael Keaton doing a kissy face. Seriously, what is with that expression? Batman looks like he’s just seen the kid in front of him buy the last scoop of chocolate ice cream and while he’ll settle for raspberry ripple he’s not happy about it.

Batman Forever, Iguana Entertainment, 1996

The streets of Gotham City are paved with gold, plus cobblestones and fondant-coated cakes shaped like the Bat-Symbol that act as impromptu manhole covers. You know, if Gotham’s streets were paved with gold it’d explain why so many criminals are obsessed with the bloody place. As much as I like Batman, I was something of an over-analytical kid and it always bothered me that all these crimes took place in the city that’s home to the World’s Greatest Detective. Like, c’mon, man: Akron, Ohio has banks too.

Batman, Raw Thrills, 2013

Here’s a surprisingly modern Batman arcade game, a racing-combat title where you hare through the streets of Gotham – thankfully not paved in gold, because that’d play havoc with the Batmobile’s traction – and chase down some of Batman’s famous foes. I’ve seen this game in action, and the strange thing about it is that it still has the same feel as an arcade game from the late nineties / early two thousands. It’s something to do with the way the action is framed, punchy and hyper-kinetic in a manner that you don’t see in console games. Presumably it’s designed that way to grab the attention of potential customers, as though the enormous glowing Bat-Symbol wouldn’t do that on its own.
I’m especially interested in the claim that you can control “every Batmobile ever” in this game. Now, I know that’s not strictly true, but you can play as the Batmobiles from the sixties TV series and Batman: The Animated Series and frankly why would you want to drive any other Batmobiles? So, I’ll let them off.

Justice League Heroes United, Global VR, 2009

Now this one just feels like a cruel practical joke. An arcade beat-em-up starring the likes of Batman, Wonder Woman and the Joker with cel-shaded graphics, supposedly co-developed by Konami? In another universe this is my favourite videogame ever, but from what I’ve seen of the version we received on this Earth Justice League Heroes United is an incredibly simplistic and remarkably ugly brawler with poor hit detection and combat that’s got as much depth as two junior school kids having a thumb war. Just looking at this flyer is disappointing me and, in the case of the Joker’s face, kinda creeping me out. I know the Joker is supposed to be creepy, but in a “sinister and unhinged” way rather than a Tippexed corpse. Throw in Wonder Woman staring at her own hands with an expression of utter bemusement, and I think we can all be glad that this one never got a home release.

Captain America and The Avengers, Data East, 1991

Ah, that’s better, back to some artwork you might actually want to look at. Well, as long as you ignore Vision’s massive hand / tiny head combo. Other than that, it’s pretty good. Captain America takes centre stage, as well he might, with all the most famous features of his design on display: his mighty shield, his red-white-and-blue suit, the two small tufts of grey hair at his temples that remind you hey, Cap fought in World War Two, he’s an old man now.
These days, it’s kinda weird to see Iron Man shuffled into the background of a superhero team-up, huh? Just bide your time, Tony. One day you’ll be Robert Downey Junior and you’ll never have to lurk behind Hawkeye again. And hey, I could have sworn the Red Skull doesn’t usually have ears. Skulls don’t have ears. Then again, skulls don’t have eyes, either, so I suppose it’s down to artistic interpretation. At least if you draw him with ears you know his Nazi hat won’t keep slipping off his head.

The American flyer for Captain America and The Avengers is… less compelling. Ha ha, “super hero foursome.” Where was I? Oh yeah, you might think Cap’s climbing out of that arcade cabinet, but take a look at the way the monitor glass is broken around his leg. There’s no way his bulging, justice-packed torso would fit through that gap, so clearly he’s just kicked a hole in the cabinet’s screen to get your attention. Now that he has your attention, he can tell you some marvel-ous facts. Go on, read that speech bubble and then admit it, the voice inside your head sounded like a kid giving a class presentation on the exports of Slovakia or something. At least those facts are believable – over on the left there’s the claim that in some arcades, Avengers is out-earning Street Fighter II at a rate of two-to-one. I must conclude those arcades did not contain a Street Fighter II cabinet.

Avengers in Galactic Storm, Data East, 1995

Captain America once more takes the starring role in Avengers in Galactic Storm, and he’s really carrying the whole thing because the other playable characters are… well, they’re down the Marvel Comics pecking order, let’s put it that way. Apart from Cap we’ve got the medieval-themed Black Knight, the element-manipulating Crystal and kinda-Thor-but-not-really Thunderstrike. Crystal has already appeared in the Inhumans TV show, and I’m sure that by 2025 Black Knight and Thunderstrike will have their own movies, movies beamed directly into the population’s brains by the now-sentient Disney-Marvel-Fox Mandatory Entertainment Droids.
Until then, we’ll have to settle for looking at these CG graphics which have not aged well at all. Early low-poly PS1-type stuff can have a lot of charm, but this is a shiny, plasticky nightmare, action figures come to life in a horror-movie version of Toy Story. Cap’s bulbous, over-inflated pectorals are dominating my focus. I can’t look away from them, and I can’t stop imagining the sounds of a clown making a balloon animal when Cap throws his shield.

The US flyer looks a little better. Not good, but better. The nineties really were the heyday of the brown leather jacket, huh? He doesn’t have one in this image but even Thunderstrike wears a brown leather jacket in the comics. I just feel sorry for the baseball pitcher that’s just out of view in the image above, because Thunderstrike has clearly smashed a home run outta the park.

Spawn: In The Demon’s Hand, Capcom, 1999

Oh hey, it’s Spawn! I’d kinda forgotten Spawn was a thing, but here he is in all his gothic, flappy-capes, not-nearly-as-cool-as-Link-Soul-Calibur-guest-character glory. The flyer is a big ol’ picture of Spawn himself, and there’s not much you can say about that. However, the tagline “access the cool and dark mysterious world of SPAWN” is rather glorious, don’t you think? You can access this world, but you are a mere visitor, child: you can never be as cool and dark mysterious as Spawn, emissary of hell and compulsive spike polisher.”

Also, Spawn will strike here. Apparently. Not a believer in the element of surprise, that Spawn.

X-Men: Children of the Atom, Capcom, 1994

To finish, let’s have some palette cleansers with the flyers for Capcom’s Marvel fighting games. I’m not going to cover the “versus Capcom” crossovers in an effort to keep this article comic-book centric, but Children of the Atom is X-Men all the way down and so here it is. Wolverine’s grimacing harder than any Canadian has ever grimaced before, and as someone who was recently told that they grind their teeth in their sleep it’s making me uncomfortable thinking about what this is doing to his teeth. I know Wolverine’s healing factor means he can grow them back, but still, tooth trauma isn’t fun to think about. Luckily Storm’s nearby, and she can calm Wolverine down by electrocuting his hand.
Relatedly, I’m sure I had a Marvel trading card of some sort with this very artwork on it. In this case, I would be happy for the comments to tell me if that was a real thing or something my brain has made up to distract me from the mental image of Wolverine’s teeth shattering under the pressure of his relentless fury.

The Japanese flyer is cool. I have nothing much to add, it just looks really good. Classic X-Men artwork, a strong design, Magneto looking much more menacing than he did on Konami’s X-Men flyer. Good work all around.

Marvel Super Heroes, Capcom, 1995

Finally for today, it’s Marvel Super Heroes and in what has been a running theme, the American flyer is kinda okay but not nearly as interesting as its Japanese counterpart. You’ve got some famous heroes, the game’s title, what more do you really need? Sure, the lighting on Psylocke makes her look very yellow and thus easily mistaken for some kind of wasp monster, especially with her leg(?) looking like a stinger, but aside from that? Perfectly acceptable.

This flyer, though? Get it printed out and hang it on your wall. That way you can live your life under the baleful gaze of Shuma-Gorath, and who wouldn’t want that?

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SPIDER-MAN & VENOM: MAXIMUM CARNAGE (SNES)

Greetings, True Believers, and welcome to another article all about the fine art of punching crowds of interchangeable, palette-swapped goons! Yes, it’s time for another side-scrolling beat-em-up here at VGJunk, but this time the heroes aren’t ex-wrestlers turned politicians or ex-cops turned vigilantes, they’re household names in the field of comic book entertainment. Well, one of them is, anyway. I don’t think Venom’s that popular. Anyway, here is it: the SNES version of Software Creation’s 1994 action-is-his-reward-em-up Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage!

Logos present: Logos and Logos. Logos are a registered trademark of LogoCorp.

Carnage gets to surf in on his logo, because he’s just the kind of fresh, edgy character the nineties were crying out for. It’s The Sensational Spider-Man Symbiote Super Show! I’m sure you all know who Spider-Man is, but plenty of people wouldn’t recognise the other two. Well, Venom’s the large blue-black chap on the right. He’s bonded with an alien parasite that gives him very Spider-Man-like abilities. He’s also (mostly) evil, and spends a lot of time fighting Spider-Man. The red fellow at the top is Carnage. He’s also bonded with an alien parasite that gives him abilities, although his are less Spider-Man-like and more things like morphing his arms into giant axes. Carnage is very evil. They all fight each other a lot, which is sad because they have so much in common. Comics!

Specifically, Maximum Carnage is based on the 1993 Marvel Comics story arc of the same name. It tells the tale of Carnage’s human host, the wonderfully named Cletus Kasady, breaking out of prison and regaining his Carnage powers. He recruits some other villains into a bizarre “family” of sorts, and Spider-Man and Venom reluctantly team up to take Carnage down. The game’s story follows the comics pretty closely with some minor changes, to the extent that the cutscenes are digitised version of the comic’s panels. It’s an effect that works really well, actually. Putting comic panels in a comic book game seems like a no-brainer, and they’re very well rendered in extremely colourful pixel form.
Here, Carnage offers some sound advice about trust as he breaks out of prison, as well as stealing Arnie’s “you know when I said I’d kill you last?” bit from Commando.  He also declares himself to be “the ultimate insanity,” which is a bit rich when the Marvel universe also includes a villain called Stilt-Man whose power is stilts.

On his way out of prison, Carnage meets the villainess Shriek and a bestial, multi-armed clone of Spider-Man called Doppleganger. Doppelganger is not to be confused with Man-Spider, a bestial, multi-armed mutation of the original Spider-Man. Again, comics! They’re pretty great.

As Spidey swings across the New York skyline, he comes close to having a realisation about his status as an eternal cash-cow for Marvel and now Disney. Spider-Man will never be allowed to rest. He’ll have his powers shuffled around, he’ll join different superhero teams and participate in various universe-altering mega-events, but Spider-Man will almost certainly still be appearing in comics and cartoons and movies long after you and I are dead. You know what? I’m happy with that. I like Spider-Man, and I’m looking forward to playing Maximum Carnage.

As I say, Maximum Carnage is a side-scrolling beat-em-up, and not the first one to star Spider-Man. There’s also his eponymous arcade game by Sega, which is worth checking out. But this is Maximum Carnage, and as he takes on the goons that litter the streets of New York, Spidey’s basic attacks conform to the usual template of the genre. Tapping attack produces a multi-hit combo that knocks down your opponent at the end. You can do a jumping kick, and pressing attack and jump produces a spinning desperation move that costs Spidey a bit of health. You know, the usual. If you’ve played any side-scrolling beat-em-up, you’ll be able to pick up Maximum Carnage’s gameplay immediately.
There’s even an explanation as to why all these people are trying to kill our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man: in the comic, at least, Shriek uses her powers to turn ordinary people into bloodthirsty killers. Maybe that’s why the developers chose to adapt Maximum Carnage rather than another part of the comics, because it gives Spider-Man a large number of generic, unimportant peons to beat up in between fighting super-villains.

Extra, extra! Read all about it! Spider-Man smashes teen’s skull with bundle of newspapers!
There are no weapons, as such – Spidey’s not one for clobbering people with a steel pipe – and you recover lost health via generic heart icons rather than turkeys hidden under bins, but there are some objects you can pick up and throw littering the stages.

After pummelling a few blokes in trenchcoats and kids in unflattering shorts, Spider-Man faces off with the game’s first boss: a pair of agile fitness fanatics called Lizzie and Dana. When I played Maximum Carnage as a kid (and I did, although I never got very far) for some reason I always saw this pair as wearing rollerblades and safety helmets. I don’t know why I saw it that way when it’s clearly not the case. Maybe I just wanted to see Spider-Man fighting enemies with some gimmick to them. There’s nothing heroic about beating up two joggers, even if they are wearing berets and could therefore be mistaken for a dangerous paramilitary exercise group. Oh, and they can attack Spidey by whipping him with their hair. So much for having the proportional strength of a spider. Actually, yeah, what’s going on there? I should be knocking these random citizens out with a single punch. Where are all my spider-powers?!

Oh, there they are. That’s right, you didn’t think this Spider-Man game would be lacking in web-slinging, did you? There are quite a lot of moves to chose from, too. The X button handles web-swinging, which is useful for avoiding enemy attacks and re-positioning Spidey -  a vital skill, because even by the standards of the genre the enemies in Maximum Carnage like to surround you on all sides. The A button is where the more combat-focussed abilities lie. Holding A produces a web shield that can block most attacks, which would be much more useful if it didn’t take a few seconds to appear, seconds in which you’ve almost certainly been whacked by whatever you were trying to avoid. You can also tap the button to fire a web pellet that momentarily traps any enemy it hits, or hold left or right and press A to fire a strand, grab a bad guy and drag them towards you so they can feel the bright red fists of justice. The grab is very handy, and if there’s an enemy on either side out you you’ll even fire two strands and pull your opponents head-first into each other like a spandex-wearing Three Stooges bit.
The web is integrated rather well, all told, and it serves two important functions. One is that it makes you feel like you’re playing as Spider-Man himself and not just some dork in a cheap Halloween costume, and the other is that it adds some variety to the combat. As much as I love beat-em-ups, the usual punch-grab-jumping-kick system can get a little stale, and it’s not surprising that my favourites in the genre, like Night Slashers and Alien vs. Predator, are the ones that add moves to expand on this basic formula. I’m not saying Maximum Carnage is going to be as good as those games, but it’s moving in the right direction.

Once you’ve cleared the first area, the gameplay takes a turn for the insipid as you make Spidey crawl his way up the side of a building while someone pours wet noodles on him from above. It’s not awful, I guess. You have to swing from building to building, and the pleasure of swinging from a thread you find in almost every Spider-Man game is still intact… but the crawling is slow and the projectiles have the annoying habit of knocking you back down a level. I know you have to have some degree of wall-crawling in a Spider-Man game, but this is definitely less interesting and less fun than the fighting.

Once you reach the rooftop, you’re thrown into a fight with Shriek and Doppelganger. I hope you enjoy this fight, because you’re going to be doing it a lot over the course of Maximum Carnage.
They key to victory, appropriately enough for a Spider-Man game, is agility. Shriek can fire large energy projectiles and Doppelganger tends to go for the combat hug if you get too close, so staying on the move and trying to get behind them is the best way to go.

Where was Carnage while all this was happening? Why, he was trying to get J. Jonah Jameson into a romantic mood by posing seductively on his desk. Sorry, did I say “seductively”? I meant “uncomfortably.” It’s a good job the symbiote gives Carnage super-strength, because otherwise it’d be impossible to maintain that “resting on your tiptoes and elbows with your knees behind your ears” pose for more than a few seconds and who knows how long Carnage has been waiting there for Jameson to show up? JJJ’s a busy man, Carnage could have been there for hours.

After that erotically-charged interlude, it’s back to the streets and back to the fighting. "Spider-Man wades through a legion of identikit goons" unsurprisingly makes up the bulk of the gameplay, so it’s a good job that’s it’s definitely an above-average brawler experience. As mentioned, Spidey’s superpowers help him to stand out from the crowd, the controls mostly work well and the emphasis on moving around fits the character. My biggest problem with the gameplay is that the goons take too long to defeat, with health bars that feel like they’re been chipped away at rather than being smashed with Spidey’s super-strength. I know they’re set up this way to provide more challenge and  (presumably) to limit the number of sprites on-screen at any given time, but it has the effect of making Spider-Man feel like a weakling, which is not what you want in your superhero game. He should be able to take out these rank-and-file timewasters with a couple of punches, and the action (and the feeling of being Spider-Man) would be greatly enhanced if there were more enemies with smaller health bars and a wider diversity of attack patterns.

I did figure out Spider-Man’s best move at this point, however. If you pick an enemy up, you can tap A and B to spin them around on your finger like a basketball before chucking them onto the concrete. Is it practical? No, it absolutely is not. It adds little extra damage and gives other enemies a free shot while Spidey’s auditioning for the Harlem Globetrotters. Did I use it a lot? Yes. Well, at the start of the game I did. By the end I was too tired of being bogged down by goons that I stopped using it.

After being rescued from what felt like very mild peril by the superhero duo Cloak and Dagger, Spider-Man finds himself once more doing battle with Shriek and Doppelganger. Most beat-em-ups save this kind of lazy recycling until the latter half of the game, when the palette-swaps and boss rushes come out to play, but Maximum Carnage gets straight to it. I’d understand if this was supposed to be building rivalry, locking you in battle with an inescapable foe who becomes your nemesis, but for that to be the case the fights should change, the stakes raising, instead of being the exact same fight every bloody time.

Venom finds out that Carnage is back, and he’s not pleased about it. Then again, Venom is rarely pleased about anything, unless he’s beating up Spider-Man. It’s a strange dynamic, because from what I remember Carnage is sort of Venom’s son, in that he was formed from an offshoot of Venom’s symbiote. That means it’s time for some parental discipline, and from this point on Maximum Carnage lets you choose between playing as Spider-Man or Venom at certain points. Not only do you get two characters to pick from, but each character has some unique stages.

For instance, if you select Spider-Man you’re placed in a web-swinging chase against the villainous Demogoblin, he of the flapping cape and the fiery hoverboard that is way cooler than Green Goblin’s hoverboard. What is it about Spider-Man and goblins, anyway? He fights the Green Goblin, he fights the Grey Goblin, he fights the Hobgoblin, he fights Demogoblin. Are goblins the natural predators of spiders in the wild or something? Did whatever costumier that supplies all the supervillain in New York accidentally add a digit when ordering goblin costumes? Is it because “goblin” is such a damn fun word to say out loud?

Picking Venom, on the other hand, sees you fighting your way through the streets of San Francisco. As all the action is happening on New York and San Francisco is on the west coast, one must assume that Venom is walking across the entire North American continent, beating up anyone who crosses his path.

In terms of his moveset, Venom is almost identical to Spider-Man. He can web-swing and web-grab and all that, although he uses the symbiote rather than firing webbing. His regular moves look different, but it’s purely a cosmetic change. He’s a little slower and a touch more powerful than Spider-Man, but that’s not why you should play as Venom. No, you should play as Venom because his life-sapping special move is a spinning clothesline, and what could be a more appropriate move for a side-scrolling beat-em-up than that? No word on whether Venom is an ex-pro wrestler, but now that he’s a character in an arcade-style brawler there about a fifty percent chance that yes, he used to be a pro wrestler.

At the end of this stage, Venom was accosted by two balding middle-aged men who tried to kill him by using their umbrellas like fencing swords. I sincerely hope this pair appeared in the original comic, having fallen under Shriek's evil influence. Otherwise, it means that the developers needed a boss for this stage but rather than using one of Spider-Man’s hundreds of foes they went with a deranged bank manager and his almost-identical bank manager friend.

More fighting ensues in a place called The Deep. This threw me off a little, because the only place called The Deep that I’m familiar with is the large aquarium in Hull. It’s not an aquarium, though. I think it’s supposed to be a nightclub. Yes, I wanted to see Venom fight a manta ray too, but we don’t always get what we want.

Now that’s a well-staged screenshot, although it would be better if Doppelganger wasn’t lurking around in the background. It does show that when all the pieces fall into place, Maximum Carnage does a really good job of capturing the look of a comic book. Like, that could be a panel in an issue of Spider-Man, if Doppelganger wasn’t there staring intently at Venom’s leg.
So yeah, I’m fighting Doppelganger again, only this time he’s been joined by Demogoblin. That’s how most of the boss fights in Maximum Carnage work: you’re fighting the same bosses over and over again, with the occasional new villain being added to the mix as you encounter them until you’re punching Doppelganger’s lights in for the umpteenth time only for Demogoblin to jump in as soon as you finish him off, again. It is not a particularly enjoyable set-up. The villains don’t learn new moves or try new techniques as the game progresses, so it’s just boring and repetitive. One proper, more fleshed out fight against each villain would have gone a long way towards making Maximum Carnage a better game.

Having remembered that Carnage’s symbiote is vulnerable to sonic attacks, Spider-Man and Venom realise that getting hold of a sonic gun would probably be a good idea. Their back-up plan is to house Carnage in my back bedroom, because the next-door neighbours have got the builders in and the constant, excruciating squealing of power drills could bring the most powerful villain to their knees, aural weakness or not. Hopefully it won’t come to that, because they know where a sonic gun can be found: in the Baxter Building, home of the Fantastic Four. Sadly the Fantastic Four aren’t home right now, so Spidey and Venom break in.

This activates the Baxter Building’s security system, which is mostly composed of deadly flying Christmas baubles. It’s like a festive version of Phantasm in here! This course of action raises some questions, most pertinently “why didn’t Spider-Man get in touch with the Fantastic Four?” They’re buddies, are you telling me Reed Richards hasn’t invented some kind of communication device that we could have called before resorting to burglary? The other question is “where are the Fantastic Four?” My guess would be that they’re in Hollywood, begging Fox Studios to stop making movies about them.

Venom seems remarkably calm about his mortal nemesis Spider-Man pointing a sonic gun at him, both of them knowing that Venom is just as vulnerable to sonic attack as Carnage is. Maybe they’ve finally managed to establish a little trust. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Another boss fight and another villain enters the fray. This time it’s Carrion, who isn’t a goblin despite looking more like a goblin than all the other Goblin characters. His power is that he can decay organic matter with his touch, which manifests in the game as Carrion flying around, trying to grab your hero’s head like a new-age type who’s just learned about Indian head massage. Carrion can be a real pain in the arse to deal with – not only is he flying, meaning you can’t get him with a proper combo and have to rely on jumping kicks, but he can also teleport out of the way of your attacks.  It’s a combination of abilities that lead to me shouting a hearty “oh good, it’s this prick again,” every time he showed up. The only consistent way I found to damage Carrion is to jump straight up and kick. He’ll teleport away from it, but if you jump straight up and kick immediately afterwards his vanishing act hasn’t had time to recharge or what-have-you and you can land a single blow, scraping a sliver from his health bar. It’s about as exciting as it sounds.

I could stand here ineffectually jump-kicking at Carrion like a chump, but I’ve got a better idea: I’ll call for some help. Most stages have tokens tucked away that you can collect, and when you use a token the superhero they depict appears on screen to help you out. In this case I’ve summoned Firestar, a mutant with the power to control microwave energy but not the power to operate a comb. She torches everything in her path, which is very useful, and most of your other super-friends do a similar thing. There are plenty of them, too, from Black Cat to Morbius the Living Vampire to Captain America himself. They even perform a different attack depending on whether it was Spider-Man or Venom that summoned them, and I appreciate the amount of effort that went into adding them all in. I think my favourite is Iron Fist, because when Spider-Man calls him in he gives you all your health back. Maximum Carnage gets pretty darned tough towards the end, so having what’s essentially a kung-fu medikit on hand is extremely useful.

Speaking of Captain America, he briefly pops into the story in order to save Spider-Man. Okay, not “save.” He pops in to pick Spider-Man out of the dirt after Venom’s given him a kicking, that’s a more accurate description for what’s happening here.

Close inspection of Captain America’s face reveals that he’s one hundred percent done with this symbiote bullshit and he’d rather be absolutely anywhere else.

Where to next? Oh right, Spider-Man goes to a police station and beats up a load of policemen for no real reason that I could see. I’m sure the comics explain why Spidey’s decided to recreate the police station scene from Terminator, but for now I’ll assume that these cops are all under Shriek’s evil influence. Either way, if I was Spider-Man I’d do my best to make sure this little escapade doesn’t become public. He doesn’t want to be giving J. Jonah Jameson any more ammunition, that’s for sure.

After a few more scenes of regulation goon-punching, enlivened only by some of said goons now having access to easily-avoidable firearms, it’s back to the grind of Maximum Carnage’s one never-ending boss fight. The gang's all here now, so you have to fight Shriek and Doppelganger, then Carrion and Demogoblin. Hey, Captain America, get in here and help me!

That’s the combat stance you’re going with, is it, Steve? The Michael Jackson crotch-grab? Well, a hearty chamone to you, my star-spangled friend. You’ve beaten Demogoblin into a coma, and that’s the greatest gift I could ask for. Apart from liberty and freedom, obviously.

Then Carnage shows up to throw his metaphorical oar in. The Ultimate Insanity himself fights like a combination of Dhalsim from Street Fighter and an explosion in a cutlery factory: all extending limbs and fleshy bits that become pointy bits. The best tactic seems to be to stay behind Carnage wherever possible and only attack him when he’s recovering from turning his appendages into fishslices or whatever. In this way, you can gradually chip away at Carnage until he’s defeated and Maximum Carnage is over.

Except it clearly isn’t over. Sure, Spider-Man and Venom stand around having a tête-à-tête about who should have had the honour of sending Carnage to the big insane asylum in the sky, but the ending text read “The End...” and that ellipsis means there’s definitely more to come. I don’t care that the credits have started rolling – and they genuinely do, over this shot of our heroes arguing in a park – that last fight was way too easy.

There we go. Nice attempt at a fake-out – the credits were a good touch – but I saw this one coming. I didn’t predict that Carnage would slowly rise out of the lake in the background, mind you. That was definitely unexpected, and only slightly ridiculous to look at.

At first, the prospect of fighting Carnage again wasn’t a particularly worrying one. I’d already clobbered he a few times by now, so why should this be any different? I’ll simply slap him around a little, drain his health bar and be back to wisecracking and selling pictures of myself to the newspaper in no time. Sadly, this was not to be. Carnage, having realised that he’s now the Final Boss, has considerably stepped up his game and has consequently become a right pain in the ballbag to fight against. For starters, he’s got about five times as much health. That wouldn’t make the fight harder, though, just longer and more tedious. No, the real problem is his new moveset. He attacks faster and harder, and he spends roughly eighty percent of his time doing the move where he turns his arms into giant axes and runs forward windmilling them around. As you can see above, he occupies two-thirds of the goddamn screen when he does this. You’ll take loads of damage if you go near him while he’s spinning his arms, and it seems to last for ages, hitting you even when his animation implies he’s stopped doing it. Patience and well-timed jumping kicks saw me through in the end, though, so now I really have finished Maximum Carnage.

Oh, wait, never mind. We’re still doing this. Are we? Really? All right, fine, we’ve got to be near the end now. The location has changed and Carnage has all his health back, but apart from that it’s the exact same fight, and it’s not any more entertaining on a second playthrough.
The interesting thing about these last two fights is that you can switch between Spider-Man and Venom whenever you want, and they’ve each got their own health bars and supply of lives. They also get a brief moment of invincibility when they’re tagged in, and abusing this invincibility is the only way I managed to beat Carnage for a second time. It was slow, it was boring and it was very much not in the spirit of the superhero comics that spawned it, but it was definitely preferable to being killed over and over again.

As Spider-Man mixes up his famous comic-book villains, yes: Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage really is over, for realsies. It got to be a bit of a slog towards the end, but overall it’s actually rather enjoyable. In patches, anyway. It’s one of those games that’s a bit like looking at any given website’s “Top 100 X Ever” list, where some parts makes sense and others leave you baffled by their inclusion. The core combat is fine. Better than fine, even, with Spider-Man having an expansive array of moves and an appropriately nimble fighting style. It’d be better if it was easier to block, maybe by moving the button to scroll through your superhero helpers from L to Select and thus freeing up L to be a dedicated block button, but apart from that it’s fast-paced and mostly satisfying… but then the boss battles drag everything down by either being the same villains over and over (just as Spider-Man was bemoaning in the intro), or being small groups of uninspiring minions.

Aesthetically it’s a mixed bag, too. The cutscenes’ reworked comic art looks great a lot of the time, and the animations and particularly the playable characters’ sprites are really nice, but then they’re let down by some extremely dull designs on the generic enemies and the odd wonky-looking super-friend, like Captain America adjusting the lil’ Captain while he throws his shield.  The same is true of the audio: most sound effects are fine but a couple seem out-of-place, and the music (composed by self-proclaimed “Worst Band Ever” Green Jelly) is technically not bad, but for some reason I never really took to it. An issue of personal taste, no doubt, and I’m sure there are people out there who really like Maximum Carnage’s soundtrack. It’s a good showcase of the kind of electric guitar sounds the SNES could replicate, that’s for sure. It’s also interesting to see that some famous names from the home computer scene were involved, notably the Pickford brothers and Alien Breed composer Allister Brimble.
Overall, I’m coming down in favour of Maximum Carnage. It’s not perfect, but the good bits are good enough that they outweigh the bad. Am I biased because I like Spider-Man so much? Possibly, but we can all appreciate the pleasure of punching a villain and seeing cartoon onomatopoeia pop out.

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