Highlights
- Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is highly anticipated and follows the events of the previous games, with the fan favorite foe Venom finally set to make his debut.
- Venom's design in Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 closely resembles the comic book version, with a huge white spider spanning across his body.
- Previous video game iterations of Venom have had different designs, including varying colors, eye shapes, and the presence of a spider symbol on the front and back of the character.
In a month full of exciting releases, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 might just be October 2023's most anticipated game. Following on directly from the events of Insomniac's last two Spidey games, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 sees Peter Parker and Miles Morales suit up to take on Kraven the Hunter, who has decided to take his hunt to New York City. But Kraven isn't the only villain the Spider-Men have to defeat, as Venom looms in the shadows, getting ready to pounce on the unsuspecting heroes.
First debuting in 1988's The Amazing Spider-Man #300, Venom quickly became one of the Wall-Crawler's most iconic adversaries, cropping up in countless comic books, animated TV shows, movies, and of course, video games. With a moveset similar to Spidey himself, albeit much more aggressive and intimidating, Venom always puts up a challenging fight, and that's made him the perfect final boss of a slew of Spider-Man video games. And while Venom looks to reprise his villainous role in Insomniac's own Marvel's Spider-Man 2, his design stands out quite a bit from those that came before it.
How Insomniac's Venom Compares to Past Spider-Man Games
Despite releasing a total of three trailers now, and the game only being two months from launch, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has kept its own version of Venom largely under wraps. Fans first got a glimpse of Insomniac's Venom during Marvel's Spider-Man 2's announcement trailer, where his menacing face can be seen for a split-second before he rushes toward the camera. From just this one shot alone, it was clear that Insomniac's version of Venom would be sticking with the same general design that's been used for the character for decades now, though that doesn't mean this design isn't without its unique flairs.
In the most recent Marvel's Spider-Man 2 story trailer, fans got their first proper look at Insomniac's full character model for Venom. Much like the rest of Insomniac's Spider-Man cast, Venom's design follows the comics that came before it very closely, but does have some unique embellishments. Insomniac's Venom is suitably huge, with hulking shoulders, arms, and legs.
Venom's head and face are also in keeping with the usual comic design, giving the villain a ridiculously long tongue, a ton of sharp teeth, and his iconic glistening white eyes. But the most unique aspect of Insomniac's Venom design is a huge white spider that stretches across Venom's front, and joins with the design on the back. While most iterations of Venom have this white spider, it's not often carried over to the back of the character, and it's not usually as big or as jagged as Insomniac's version.
Venom's very first appearance in the video game landscape was in the Sega CD game Amazing Spider-Man Vs. The Kingpin. This initial video game Venom design is pretty low-res, but it does capture the essence of the comic version of Venom very well, giving him his dark blue/black coloring, large white spider, and large white eyes, all ripped straight from the original comic book design. While Venom would appear pretty consistently across various Spider-Man games in the 1990s, one of his most interesting designs was in 2000's Spider-Man for the PS1, where the villain is given an oddly bright blue color scheme.
2005's Ultimate Spider-Man has a Venom design most similar to Marvel's Spider-Man 2's. Though Venom starts off with no spider symbol at all on his chest or back, he grows one by the end of the game, and in his final design this white spider stretches across his entire body, connecting the chest and the back logo just like Marvel's Spider-Man 2's version of Venom. Though, Ultimate Spider-Man's Venom features very different eyes from Insomniac's, with them appearing quite jagged in the 2005 game. Of course, the 2007 version of Venom in the Spider-Man 3 tie-in game looks completely different from Insomniac's version of the villain, with the movie's slimmer design carrying over to the game, along with the webbed costume and the triangular mouth.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches on October 20, exclusively for PlayStation 5.
