Peter Parker was just a high-school geek until he got bitten by a radioactive spider and...

Okay, you probably know all that stuff already. The truth is that Spider-Man is one of the most beloved and well-known superheroes in the world. After a decade of legal struggles and pre-production problems, the live-action Spider-Man movie is finally ready to take the world by storm, and it looks to be one of 2002’s biggest movies. Not surprisingly, there’s a videogame in the works based on the film. Surprisingly, it may actually be good. Even great.

Developer Treyarch cut their teeth on Dreamcast ports and later on the Spider-Man sequel for PlayStation. This time they’ve been given all three console versions of Spider-Man: The Movie (actually, the official name is just “Spider-Man”, but we’ll keep using that subtitle just to avoid confusion with Neversoft’s game of a few years ago). The gist of the game is that you loosely follow the movie’s plot, with extra scenes and battles spliced in to make the game a little more robust. Treyarch is structuring practically every feature after what Neversoft did on the PSX, and then adding and enhancing everything.

As such, anyone familiar with Spider-Man on the last-generation’s systems should be able to jump into Spider-Man: The Movie very easily, but then they’ll find that there is now much more to do. The missions still have lots of variety, including exploration levels, escape levels, boss levels, and the newly added mid-air battles (more on that later). Getting to and from different areas via the city should be much more engaging now; New York has been recreated far more faithfully in this title. You and Spidey will have much more freedom to swing around in the enormous city, and this time you can drop down all the way to street level if you like. Skyscrapers abound, and the view from up high down onto the living city is just breathtaking, if screenshots are any indication.

Control is ALWAYS a huge aspect of Spider-Man games, because he’s just so agile and versatile. If it doesn’t feel like Spidey, you can’t get into the game. Treyarch has built their control scheme off the Neversoft’s layout for the PSX game, but there are several tweaks and additions. You can now shoot a zip-line in any direction (not just to the opposite wall), and instead of having several complicated button combos to use different web abilities, there is a single “web modifier” button. When you hold it down, pressing any other button will activate a different web ability, such as web shield, web gloves, web spray, impact web, etc. When swinging through the air, you can easily adjust the length of your web-line with up and down on the joystick...combined with several new aerial attacks, this addition allows Spidey to actually have full combat in mid-air, which will be exploited in both regular missions and boss battles. Finally, Ol’ Web Head’s hand-to-hand combat has been greatly expanded. At first his punches and kicks may feel very familiar, but throughout the game you can find golden spider tokens that will grant one new combo each. Reportedly, the final count is over twenty combos, many patterned after the moves Spidey loves to show off in the comics.

Let’s not forget that this game is based on a movie, and as such, there are lots of tie-ins. The main villain is the Green Goblin, with the Shocker, the Vulture, and others making appearances as well. No word on whether Venom will sneak into the game... Between levels we should be treated to short FMV clips from the film; in addition, Tobey Maguire is providing Spidey’s voice-overs. Spider-Man creator Stan (The Man) Lee will not be narrating this time around, but in an unexpected yet promising move, Activision has acquired Bruce Campbell to fill in that role. The choice probably comes from Campbell’s relationship with Spider-Man director Sam Raimi. Supposedly his lines are quite funny and just as irreverent as you could want from the King, baby.

It remains to be seen whether Treyarch can capture (and improve upon) Neversoft’s magic with the first 3D Spider-Man game, but we won’t have to wait long to find out. Spider-Man: The Movie for GameCube goes on sale simultaneously with the PS2 and Xbox versions on April 16, 2002.