It's crazy how ahead of its time this game is.

Despite having no analogue stick, with the movement and the camera control being tied to the same buttons, the game controls perfectly. You never feel like Spidey is doing something you don't want him to do. And somehow the camera also manages to be very cinematic, panning, zooming in and out at crucial moments, and still staying focused on what's important.

The amount of freedom the game offers to each challenge is even greater than in some of the later entries in this franchise. There is always a lot of room for you to surround the enemies or stealth, or you can just face them head-on and fight. If you choose the latter, beyond regular attacks there are various special moves you can do with your webbing. You can also grab enemies from behind, climb on top of them and beat them, or you can pick up objects and throw at them. The possibilities are numerous.

Same goes for the movement. Beyond just basic jumping, climbing and web-swinging, you can zip or point at a specific spot and let the wall-crawler find his own way there, foreshadowing a system later used in 2012's Amazing Spider-Man.

The story is rather simple, but it's the perfectly recreated aesthetic, tone and level of detail that really carries it. This positively feels like the most "Spider-Man" Spider-Man game. Cameos from other Marvel characters are super welcome. It was especially nice in the pre-internet and pre-MCU era, when you didn't necessarily have direct access to other Marvel media. As a kid, I was geeking out at the appearances of Daredevil, Human Torch and The Punisher here. And then there's the enormous amount of Easter Eggs, which encourage exploration and repeated playthroughs. Again, in the pre-internet era just seeing covers of comic books you didn't have was amazing, and you would want to scour every corner of this game, often finding some really cool secrets.

Now, as a kid I played the PC version, whereas this time I was doing the PS1 version. The PC version had a few hilarious bugs, where Spidey would get stuck on a wall during a cutscene or forget to web-swing and fall to his death, forcing you to replay the level. To my surprise a couple of bugs still remain in the PS1 version, but nothing nearly as dramatic. Still, I kinda prefer the PC version for its better looks and performance. The PS1 version often has pretty brutal slowdowns. That being said, it might be possible to achieve the best of both worlds using Duckstation.

This game is really as perfect as you could get for its era and platform. If it wasn't for the later introduction of the dynamic open-world in Spider-Man 2 on PS2, I'd say this is the quintessential Spider-Man game. I think for its time it achieved what Batman: Arkham Asylum would later achieve for the Batman franchise, that is a complete translation of the spirit of the source material into the video game form.