A playthrough of LJN's 1992 license-based platformer for the NES, Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six.

Of the few NES games based on Marvel Comics properties, Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six sits firmly in the middle in its quality. It dusts The Uncanny X-Men (as well any game should), but it's not nearly as good as Wolverine (which was quite a good game in it's own right). So, what does it mean to sit between two polar opposites? Well, as you probably can infer, it's a pretty middling effort.

For an NES game, it looks fairly good. The character sprites are all tiny, but everything is pretty clear and has some solid detail. The animations are fairly smooth, and some of the backgrounds look quite nice. The music isn't anything special, but it never gets annoying. It would've been nice to have unique songs play for each stage, but the ones that are included drone on pleasantly, never really drawing attention to themselves.

The controls are easily the weakest part of the game. The hit detection feels off when trying to hit an enemy, since unless you place Spidey a couple of pixels off to the side of the enemy, your attacks will generally go right through their intended target. Climbing things, especially while jumping, is a hit-or-miss affair - sometimes you'll grab onto a ladder or a pole, but more times than not you just end up plummeting to the ground (and generally into an enemy that you couldn't see until you land on them and take damage). It works well enough that you can get around these issues with some practice, but more than a few deaths will be lost due to the unresponsive controls until you get used to them.

The cinematic scenes look pretty nice, though, and I did like the overall look of the game. It also tries to change things up a bit from the standard platformer-style by occasionally placing item-based objectives around a couple of the levels, switching between left-to-right and multi-directional scrolling stages, and by giving each boss a unique "lair" that's been catered to their attacking style.

Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six is not a game without problems, but for the little bit of time that it lasts (it's both short and easy), it can be quite a bit of fun. It's not something you'll play constantly for weeks on end - if you're reasonably good at this style of game, it can be finished easily within a half-dozen plays or so - but it can be a lot of fun in short bursts.

I do seem to recall that it was one of the nominations for Nintendo Power's Game of the Year awards back in 1992, and I remember being really surprised to see it in the running back when that issue first arrived in the mail. Of course, thinking back on it now, NES releases were pretty slim from 1992 onward. I can't help but think it was only on there for lack of better options. It still really strikes me as strange that it was there at all, though.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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