All The Spider-Men

If you weren't alive in the early 80s, you don't know how ubiquitous the Atari 2600 was. The little system that could was in just about every rec room in America, and unsurprisingly the web-slinger scored his own game - his first video game appearance - in 1982. The Green Goblin has planted a bomb at the top of a skyscraper, and Spidey must use his weblines to climb the face of the building and defuse it before it blows. On the way, he needs to contend with henchmen and additional bombs, and once at the top he needs to dodge the Goblin as well. Of course, since these are blocky old-school graphics, you can't really tell what anything is supposed to be, but at the time it was cool.

Now here's where things start to get confusing - 1981 saw two different animated Spidey series. The first was the syndicated cartoon simply titled Spider-Man, which was produced by Marvel Productions - the independent animation company that also did the Fantastic Four and Spider-Woman series. Working closely from the original comics, the series boasted some of Spidey's worst villains, including the Lizard, the Black Cat and the Green Goblin. One of the weirdest things about the show was the violence restrictions - neither Spider-Man or his enemies were allowed to punch people with a closed fist, making fights seem a lot like pro wrestling. But what really worked against this show is the next item on our list...

So the reason the 1981 Spider-Man cartoon isn't as well-remembered is this: at the exact same day and time that it premiered - September 12, 1981. The last one was syndicated, while Amazing Friends aired on CBS. Why exactly Marvel was cool with launching two competing products into the marketplace at the same time is a question for the ages, but it happened, and the victor was Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends. Pairing the hero with former X-Man Bobby Drake, aka Iceman, as well as new heroine Firestar (replacing the Human Torch for legal reasons), the show lasted for three seasons and an eternity of re-runs.

One of the more perplexing spider-spinoffs came in the pages of Marvel Tails, a one-shot humor magazine published by the House of Ideas in 1983 that cast the Marvel heroes as... animals. His origin was even more convoluted - in this universe, Peter was born a spider who was bitten by a radioactive pig and received all the powers of - well, nobody's actually sure. The character proved so popular that Marvel gave him his own series soon afterwards, throwing in animal parodies of just about everybody in the Marvel Universe such as Frank Carple, the Punfisher. The character's scheduled to appear in the upcoming Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon series as well.

The mid-80s were a dead time for video games, as the time after the Atari crash laid waste to the industry. Things started to pick back up by the end of the decade, and Spidey returned in a game with the cumbersome title of Spider-Man And Captain America Dr. Doom's Revenge for DOS machines. This side-scrolling beat-em-up put the webslinger and the American symbol of liberty up against the evil ruler of Latveria and his private army of supervillains that included the Grey Gargoyle, Batroc the Leaper, Boomerang and the Hobgoblin. As in most games of the era, the controls were clunky and the whole thing moved as slow as molasses, but things were about to get better.

In the same year, we also got Spider-Man in action in Sega's The Revenge Of Shinobi - but in a very unexpected way. The Japanese programmers of the game put the titular ninja up against the web-swinging hero as a boss, not an ally. They didn't stop there, though - the game also features unauthorized appearances from Batman, the Terminator and Godzilla. When they brought the game to America, lawyers rightfully made a fuss, and most of the bootleg enemies were changed into less infringing forms. The one exceptions was Spidey - for some unknown reason, Marvel said it was fine for Sega to use him as a bad guy as long as they got a copyright credit on the title screen.

Spider-Man started really making an impact in the video game world in the 1990s, as Nintendo's massive success paved the way for a new game boom. While it's not within our scope to write about every single Spidey game ever made here, we are going to spotlight the most important - or most badass - ones. Even though the original Game Boy had a horrible monochrome display, it still boasted some seriously awesome games. The first Spider-Man game on the system was created by legendary British software house Rare, and featured wall-climbing, web-slinging and thug-punching. Two sequels followed.

Can you remember when superhero movies weren't big business? Marvel especially had insanely bad luck in the 80s and 90s with their big-screen projects - both Roger Corman's Fantastic Four and the Captain America movies were super-flops, and while DC was kicking ass with Superman and Batman, the House of Ideas was lagging behind. Stuntman Dan Poole saw this and despaired, and decided to show them how it was done. The Green Goblin's Last Stand, which he released in 1992, is based on the classic death of Gwen Stacy storyline in the comics, and features some awesome stuntwork by the director, who couldn't afford safety equipment and risked his life swinging from rooftops.

In 1992, the Marvel team decided to launch an ambitious new venture to re-cast their iconic characters into the distant future. The 2099 universe featured updated versions of many fan favorites, including Spider-Man. The webslinger of the future was Miguel O'Hara, a geneticist that is inspired by the heroic acts of the original Peter Parker to try and replicate his powers. After trying to purge a dangerous drug from his system, O'Hara rewrites his DNA with a spider's, giving him strength, speed, agility and talons that project from his hands and feet. He can also secrete venom from his mouth that can temporarily paralyze his enemies. Sadly, the 2099 line collapsed with the firing of editor Joey Cavalieri, but the character is still bopping around.