Highlights
- Spider-Man games often give players the opportunity to play as some of the iconic villains, such as Venom and Green Goblin.
- In Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 , players can unlock Venom and Green Goblin as playable characters during the story mode.
- The Ultimate Spider-Man game allows players to play as both Spider-Man and Venom, with Venom having a unique story arc and gameplay mechanics.
Spider-Man is possibly one of the most popular superheroes in modern media. In fact, he is arguably Marvel’s most recognizable character. The Web Head regularly appears in comics, TV shows, movies, and of course, video games. There have been plenty of games throughout the years that let players zip across skylines as Spider-Man. However, a good hero is only as good as those trying to foil them.
Marvel's Spider-Man: All Suits And Their Origin
There are several suit options in Marvel's Spider-Man, and each one is unique in their design and their origin story.
That is why many fans consider Spider-Man to have the best Rogues Gallery in all of comics. Everyone has heard of the likes of Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Venom, or The Rhino. Even Morbius the Living Vampire got his own big-budget movie release. That is why some game developers feel it necessary to give these iconic Marvel characters the spotlight by allowing gamers to play as some of these villains in certain Spider-Man games.
6 Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, Playable Venom & Green Goblin
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is heavily based on Marvel’s Civil War comic event from 2007. Such a huge conflict roped in as many characters as possible, and the video game tried to include as many playable options as the system would allow. Players could add the likes of Captain America, Iron Man, Wolverine The Thing, and Spider-Man to their teams whenever they wanted.
However, a key plot point in the story is that Iron Man’s pro-registration side deems it worthy of adding some villains to his side. As such, players can unlock both Venom and Green Goblin during the story mode of Ultimate Alliance 2. The former plays very similarly to Spidey but with a bit more strength, while Green Goblin can fly on his glider and throw pumpkin bombs at his enemies.
5 Spider-Man 3, The New Goblin
Spider-Man 3 may not be one of the fondly remembered Spider-Man movies and the game based on the film has largely become a forgotten relic of the early PS3/Wii/Xbox 360 era. However, this game does come with one unique surprise that players enjoy.
Marvel's Spider-Man: 9 Easter Eggs Only Die-Hard Comic Fans Noticed
Marvel's Spider-Man is full of easter eggs, although some of them can be a little obscure to the untrained eye.
The climax of the film sees Harry Osborn's New Goblin come to rescue Spidey from the clutches of Venom and Sandman after spending most of the film at odds with the titular hero. That is why Treyarch saw it necessary to include a level that lets players use this character in one level in the Xbox 360 and PS3 release. The hovering goblin is mainly controlled with quick time events in a race to save his friend, but it is still a nice inclusion.
4 Ultimate Spider-Man, Become Venom
The unique selling point of the Ultimate Spider-Man game, released for the PS2 was that it featured a split story that focused on Spider-Man and one of his most popular villains, Venom. That and it claimed to have a similar web-swinging mechanic as the Spider-Man 2 movie tie-in game released in the same year.
The story of Ultimate Spider-Man followed the comics that were released under Marvel’s new Ultimate umbrella in the early 2000s. As such, players took control of Spider-Man during his typical day-to-day activities but could also use Venom during his side of the same story. Venom’s story arc features the symbiote eating people to regain health in the open world of New York City, fighting the military, and an epic bar fight with Wolverine.
3 Spider-Man, Play As Green Goblin
One of the few ways to find out about hidden secrets in video games back in the day was to hear about them through other people. Many of these secrets turned out to be nothing but myths and rumors; however, imagine the shock on gamers’ faces when they learned that they could actually replay the entirety of the Spide-Man movie-tie-in-game as the Green Goblin once completing the game as Spidey on Hero mode.
This new character follows the same levels from a new point of view. Players take control of Harry Osborn as he takes his father's suit and glider to investigate his murder. There were new lines of dialogue recorded for this feature, although many of the original levels play out the same.
2 Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage
As the title of this arcade side-scrolling beat-em-up would suggest, players can take on this game as either Spider-Man or Venom. Both characters play the same, sticking to walls and web-swinging as each one can. However, this recreation of one of the '90s most popular Marvel Comics stories marked one of the first times that gamers could try playing as Venom.
Spider-Man: 11 Best Marvel Cameos In Spider-Man Games
Across the decades of Spider-Man games, the amazing wall-crawler has seen a few guest appearances from iconic Marvel characters.
This game was so popular among fans that it even got a sequel in the form of Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety. Once again, Venom is given another hefty spotlight in this title as a playable character.
1 Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, All The Foes!
Given the popularity of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man film trilogy, everyone wanted a slice of the pie. That is why Beenox developed and released Spider-Man Friend or Foe in 2007. This side-scrolling action game saw Spidey take on and team up with some of his most iconic foes in a bid to stop the evil Mysterio. As such, players could take control of some of the more popular villains from the Raimi films including Green Goblin, Venom, Doc Ock, Sandman, and New Goblin.
On top of this, players also had access to some of the lesser-known villains from the Spider-Man comic books, such as Black Cat, Electro, Kraven, Scorpion, and Prowler. Many of these characters were lazy reskins of each other; however, there is still yet to be a video game that allows players to take control of so many Spider-Man villains.