Tag Archives: spider-man

Bootleg Superheroes: Spider-Man

If you have taken a look around the site, you might have noticed a couple of entries dedicated to bootleg superhero toys (here and here). I have been getting a few more … As it turns out that there’s a lot of bootlegs out there, you just need to know where to find them, so in the coming days I will be posting about some of the ones I was lucky enough to get.

Starting with The Amazing Spider-Man, aptly subtitled “All the vogue all new edition the best gift for you!”, because in a lot of ways, this is the perfect Spider-Man package, as it contains:

– Two spiders in a respectful wink to the origin of Spider-Man

– Spider-Man almost in the original suit, but because the people who made this are not limited by IP they went and put two spiders on the chest, because this guy was probably bitten by the two spiders above

– What would Spider-Man be without his nemesis, Gold Venom?

– Remember that Spider-Man story when he traveled to ancient Egypt and 17th century France and built his own skateboard? If you don’t, you clearly haven’t been following Spider-Verse, I am sure it was there somewhere.

– Clearly, the previous one might have been an artistic license, but I am 100% sure I have seen something similar to this in Spider-Verse:

– And, of course, the world famous Spider-Gun:

What kid wouldn’t want all of this, I ask you?

In an effort for other people to be able to identify other items from this collection in their possession (and would you please let me know), here are some pictures from the back of the package:

– They thought the skate and the gun were such good ideas they made two of them, for what seems like 2 different sizes of Spider-Man. The smaller one has only the one spider on his chest, while my mega-alpha Spider-Man has two because he’s bigger:

– Yes, they all have light coming out of their chest (a common thread on most Chinese superhero toys post-RDJ’s Iron Man). I REALLY dig that black Spider-Man with silver shoulderpads, gloves and boots, though:

And remember:

Comic-based games: The Super Nintendo Years

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As mentioned in the previous post, the SNES games are mostly the same as the ones for Genesis/Megadrive (except the X-Men games, which are different, the additional Japanese Spider-Man game (extra tip: the passwords for the different levels are the family names of Spider-Man’s foes)) and MOST IMPORTANTLY my favourite super-hero game for a while: WAR OF THE GEMS, if only for Thanos’s appearance.

Some of the covers are the same, so I didn’t go crazy looking for all the covers and just included whatever I came across:

Spider-Man & Venom - Separation Anxiety.zip

More Glenn Fabry drawing super-heroes, which I dig and check the differences between the covers for Captain America in GEN/MD and SNES … Crazy, right?

Favourite SNES game, you ask? Strangely enough, this one:

Not sure if I am going to be doing more consoles, the covers for Playstation games start OK, then turn horribly wrong with computer generated art I don’t even feel like looking at. I might do Gameboy/Color/Advance, but there are so many that it might take a while … We’ll see!

Comic-based games: The Genesis/Megadrive Years

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With the 16-bit consoles, we were able to finally recognize the characters on the screen and, even though most of them are mildly entertaining side-scrolling beat-em-alls, actually enjoy playing these games. As you can see on the box designs displayed below, comic artists started being used: that’s Glenn Fabry on Separation Anxiety, possibly Butch Guice on Captain America and that looks like Mike DeCarlo inking the Batman and Superman covers, over Jim Aparo? On the other hand, that led to abortions like that Punisher cover, but to be honest that’s what Punisher specials’ covers looked like.

Not only the product looked more attractive, games themselves were a quantum leap beyond what came before, and, again, the games are not even that good, but the possibility of manipulating these characters at home (there had been some good arcade games already, Captain America and Punisher being actually ports of arcade machines) instantly renewed our faith in humanity … There were good things coming, that much was undeniable!!!

genesis_spidermanandvenomseperationaxiety

I would normally include here the cover of my favourite Megadrive game, but they’re right above. The 2 games I played the most were the first X-Men (that music, playing as Wolverine) and Captain America and the Avengers (the list of enemies alone: Klaw, the Living Laser, Whirlwind, The Sentinels, Wizard, the Grim Reaper, the Mandarin, The Juggernaut, Ultron, and Crossbones), and even if I understand that they are not even close the best Megadrive games, they still bring good memories.

Next: the far superior SNES (even though they never had the awesomeness that’s X-Men, the SNES is the first system that featured Thanos in a game and superior versions of half of the games on this list)

Comic-based games: The 8-bit Years

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So, yes, let’s forget about MSX and jump straight to 8-bit consoles (with a little detour through early PC games this afternoon, probably).

Getting closer to the 16-bit explosion of actually good games, we still had to go through the 8-bit period of “let’s assume that block is really who they say it is”, starting with the NES:

Trying to not forget the Sega Master System (though who could blame us?):

And, as last time, my favourite 8-bit game, Castlefuckinvania (though, strangely enough, I prefer the MSX version, or not so strange considering it was the first one I played):

Comic-based games: The ZX Spectrum years

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Growing up at the dawn of the computer age allowed me to experience the evolution of computers firsthand and, like most people around me, went through my fair share of ridiculous computers. It all begun with the ZX Spectrum 48K, and as Martin reminded me about the Ocean Batman game (and as it’s been a while since I don’t play any of those games in emulators, even though I was obsessed with them for a couple of years), I decided to compile the covers of the games based on super-hero comics: