Play Spider-Man (Acclaim) Online

Game Overview

Remember when Spider-Man games were just side-scrolling brawlers with chunky pixels and that unmistakable '90s vibe? This Sega Genesis version from Acclaim nails that feeling—you're swinging (awkwardly at times) between buildings, punching thugs in alleys, and taking on villains like Venom with moves that feel straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

The wall-crawling works better than you'd expect for a game this old, though the web-swinging takes some practice—half the time I ended up face-planting into a dumpster instead of gracefully arcing over it. And yeah, Doctor Doom’s boss fight is cheap as hell, but in that way retro games always were. The music slaps, though. That main theme still gets stuck in my head.

It’s definitely not the open-world Spidey dream we have now, but there’s something satisfying about its simplicity. You either love it for the nostalgia or bounce off hard because, let’s be real, games have come a long way since then. Still, for a blast of early superhero gaming, it’s hard to beat.