Welcome to a new edition of Retro Corner and this time we take a look at the Genesis port of Spiderman/Venom: Maximum Carnage. I recall a time during the 90s when Marvel was that brand who raged against the machine aka DC Comics. They were that go to brand for us kids where superheroes came off more edgier compared to the boy scout DC guys. Now I know what some of you are presuming and yes, DC actually had darker content even back then. Marvel did it in a way where they were able to connect with 90s kids without looking childish. At the time, I based my thoughts on the 80s Super Friends Show where the Justice League acted like boy scouts. In comparison to the X-Men and the other 90s Marvel cartoons had a better shared universe. Unfortunately, due to Mouse Empire buying out Marvel has made them become the machine just like DC. The studio diffidently has stumble in terms of quality in the last couple of decades. In any MCU film, cartoons, and the latest comic line shows how bad their quality has become. It got so severe recently for the comics that they even had to develop their own version of DC Rebirth with Legacy. Gameplay Many brawlers back then used some of our favorite superheroes from DC to Marvel to sell the latest merchandise. The ones that stood out the most were Batman Returns for Super NES, X-Men arcade or the Spider-Man/Venom games. The gameplay takes the player across several levels of facing thugs and super villains who mostly come from Spider-Man's story. It plays like any brawler where the gamer faces a bunch of enemies and then at the end you face a boss or two. All the attacks you would expect from Spidy and Venom such as grabbing, punching and throwing to their patterned web slinging abilities are all here. That's another thing about the web slinging moves and it can also be used for tying down enemies or bringing them towards the player as a grab tactic. These abilities stun enemies for a moment as it helped me in many situations especially with low health. By using the webbing to grab an enemy can allow the player to execute a finisher blow. I also love the shield that they both can form from their webbing. The shield technique made the game less difficult when you factoring in the lack of a password system. There are a few differences between the two web slingers as Spidy is quicker and Venom is a heavy hitter but in turn is slower. As the player fights their way through a level, there are moments when you are giving one power strike. These power attacks only happens when you pick up an item to use in that instant. It can also be obtained by beating down several enemies one after another to access a power strike. Like I said, the game is rather difficult without a save function and it obviously helped me get through some of the boss battles. Despite how awesome it was to play as Venom for its time, the gameplay can get a little repetitive. The enemies do slightly change as the player progresses but the problem is they only get a different shade of color. It does indicate how strong an enemy is but regardless it's always a street thug, beggar, overweight men, a man with an umbrella (I'm not making that up) and a tomboyish woman. Acclaim also should've designed a strength verses weakness system further between both characters. A diverse set of attacks that's different from each other would've been ideal. I also found an issue with how the level design is often broken up as if some of these stages never got finished. These levels would start with a boss battle and end there or you had to get to a certain point while overcoming an obstacle. It even indicates the player to move back the area they came from to fight in the same spot and then forward. I can't understand what these developers were attempting to accomplish as it feels like they weren't sure what game to make. The biggest problem comes from no password system and not having the option of adding more lives and continues. In other words, if you get a Game Over then, the player starts at the beginning of a level. Its only gets worse because the game only gives two continues and once you run out the player must start all over again. If only Acclaim studied the Streets of Rage series on Genesis then, they probably would have made good gameplay. Rating: 7.5/10 Graphics/Presentation Most of the time, brawlers are never known for pushing the graphics of any console. Fortunately, Maximum Carnage manages to capture a comic book feeling in a exact manner not found in most superhero based games. The overall design has a similar concept to Comix Zone but it's in Marvel's art style instead. However, I noticed that on Genesis the environments don't have the same gritty dark colors as on Super NES. The Genesis as mentioned many times only supported 512 colors at once so there was little the studio could do for this version. It still looks solid for what they retained but not to the same scale as seen on Super NES. The port is nearly identical to what's offered with its graphics, but the lighter colors doesn't work the same way it did for Cap and Avengers. The Maximum Carnage arc used a gritty and darker theme as this was something Marvel moved to during the 90s. Nevertheless, the levels still incorporated the gritty theme in them and didn't scale it down to Cap and the Avengers style. The character design on the other hand is truly hilarious today as the cloths screams mid 90s. The street beggars have long withered stretch coats and the street thugs act like they are the next Fred Durst. Seriously, their shorts were often passed the knees, they wore short sleeves over long sleeve shirts and had on a backwards baseball cap. Better yet why do these thugs want to fight Spider-Man let alone a beast like Venom? You also got to love the women thugs with their tomboyish clothing appeal of tight shorts and men sneakers. The super villains in comparison were actually done some justice and this studio captures their sprite design with near perfection. Of course, they were using the old 90s design as seen from the characters like Iron Fist and Black Cat. I'll give the studio this, the designers used the concept from its time, unlike what Data East did with their Marvel arcade title. Probably my favorite part of the presentation is how they added the exact comic strips from the Carnage arc. They even went as far as to give some animation during these cutscenes from the strips. That blows anything Data East tried to do and using the exact comic images added a cinematic vibe to the theme. The animation is actually identical to the Super NES port and nothing got sacrificed to bring this over to Sega's console. The sprite animation had fluid motion for each character and matched the super villains' abilities as seen from the comics. I'll admit some of Spider-Man's enemies like Shriek, Doppelganger or Demogoblin I don't remember ever hearing about once. Even a couple of the heroes like Morbius and Firestar came off unrecognizable to me. I might need to brush up more on my Marvel history as it's been a while since I looked at Marvel's 90s shared universe. The music doesn't sound as broad as on Super NES since the Genesis supports a crappy sound chip. There's one advantage the Genesis had and that's the grinding tone for the music. It's a dignified way to compensate and go around the crappy sound chip. Acclaim manages to catch the essence of Marvel in many ways and actually paid attention to its universe. Rating: 7.5/10 Features/Content I can honestly tell that Acclaim (who's now defunct) tried selling this game as a marketing ploy to sell a comic game of a crazed super villain. It's absolutely lazy at this point to not have a two player co-op as that's the backbone of the brawler genre. Look what happened in the Double Dragon NES and Final Fight Super NES ports, the replay value suffered. The reason Comix Zone for the Genesis works is that it got built around a single player experience. Compared to Maximum Carnage, the game has a two player level design like it was meant for that. I mean it's evident they had this in mind when the sequel Separation Anxiety would use the same design. So why build a single player around a two-player level design if they had that in mind originally? I also love how there isn't even an option menu which is a standard in any game. The studio did design cheats but they got programmed in a half ass manner. I don't understand why these developers require a second controller just to input a code. Its the same crap with what they did in the arcade version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. So why do I need to perform the button pressing across two controller layouts? The cheats themselves are not even that great any way so it makes me question these developers' incompetence. Sadly, the red colored cartridge is the only redeeming feature about this game. At least Doom on Super NES had more content then a simple red color cartridge as its sole unique feature. Rating: 6.7/10 Final Rating The game was truly ambitious for the effort Acclaim tried to do and that was to create a decent Spider-Man title. The gameplay did use some of the standard features found in most brawlers. The graphics used a similar style found in Comix Zone that helped bring a comic appearance. The environments along the levels felt like it came straight out of a Marvel comic. The presentation really created that feeling as the cutscenes used the exact strips found in the Carnage arc. Unfortunately, just like the Super NES port, the Genesis version suffers the same problems as well. The gameplay had no two-player co-op and most of the time the levels get broken up like they were never finished. Of course, the enemies don't change much aside from the bosses and the player will always be facing the same types of baddies every level. By featuring Venom with Spider-Man would've been a great idea for a two player co-op but Acclaim thought a great concept like that wasn't needed. The character design could've been a lot better as the street thugs looking like Fred Durst was a bad idea. Acclaim gets props for trying to work around the Genesis' crappy sound chip and created good grinding music. The worst part of this game is the lack of quality features as they are nearly absent. It doesn't help that the cheat codes got programmed in an ass backwards way by having the player use a second controller to input them. However, for a Marvel fan, making a game around the Carnage arc from the comics brought the story to life. Gameplay: 7.5/10 Graphics/Presentation: 7.5/10 Features/Content: 6.7/10 Final Rating: 7.4/10 Solid
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Retro Gamer has over 25 years of gaming experience and played many classics since the Golden Age. She has been an avid fan since the day the NES graced her life and changed it forever.
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