Released in 1996

Available in

Genre: Platforming

The last 32X game ever released, Web of Fire is a lousy platformer starring Marvel Comic's Spider-Man. The terrorist organization HYDRA have trapped New York City in a massive electrical grid, and are demanding a billion dollars in ransom. Spider-Man's goal is to seek and destroy the grid's generators, which are guarded by a super villain team known as the New Enforcers. After dealing with the grid, Spider-Man enters Hydra's airship fleet and must face the Super-Adaptoid.

Web of Fire had widely been criticized by players for just about everything. The graphics are dull and very unimpressive, and the game looks like it could have been released for the standard Genesis. Despite the poor graphics the game suffers from terrible slowdown in some places, which is ridiculous. The sound is bad, with the music for the first level being one of the worst pieces of video game music I've ever heard. Combat is also lackluster, with some enemies taking far too long to kill, and enemies can just break through your attacks even when they should be getting hit -the back of the box claims that enemies can adapt to your moves, but the reality is this is just poor programming.

The game feels rushed and unfinished, as in addition to all of the problems listed above, there aren't many levels, there aren't many enemies and there are other areas that lack polish, such as the cutscenes shown between each level -you just get shown the front page of the Daily Bugle, and that's it. The ending is also very short and lame. Platformer fans may want to check out Tempo instead.

Progress through each level and fight (or avoid) enemies as you go. Some levels are split into more than one part, but generally speaking you need to make your way from left to right to proceed. Spider-Man moves around fairly quickly, and can also jump. He can also climb walls and ceilings by simply touching them, and he can also use his web. The web has a limited supply, and can be used for swinging. Press the jump button twice to swing, and get use to using it as there are some places where you have to swing across large, bottomless pits.

The web can also be used to tie up enemies and restrain them. Some enemies can remove the web faster than others, and it barely works at all on the bosses, but on the basic enemies you'll have a few seconds to move in and defeat them. The web can also be used to destroy some enemies, such as the flying turrets. The B button is used for attacking, repeatedly press it to do a combo of punches. Hold down to crouch and press the attack button to make Spider-Man hit the ground, this is needed to open up certain paths.

To refill your web and life gauges you must find items which are scattered throughout each level. If the health gauge is reduced to nothing you will lose a life, running out of lives will send you to the continue screen, where you can choose whether or not you want to continue your game. Annoyingly there doesn't seem to be any checkpoints in Web of Fire, so if you die, you'll be sent back to the start of the level you were on.

As the game's opening cutscene reveals, Daredevil has been captured by Hydra. He can be found in the first level and if you free him, you can call him on to attack every enemy on the screen. To do this you have to pause the game, highlight "Daredevil" and then press start. You can only call on Daredevil a few times, but by collecting the "DD" icons in the levels you can have more chances to call him on.

Level select, debug co-ordinates and health, web, lives & Daredevil power-up refills
You need a six button controller to use this cheat code. When the SEGA logo appears, press up, right,left, A, Z, Y. A sound of a crash will confirm correct code entry. Start the game and when the level begins, press X to access a level and cutscene select, Y to display the current debug co-ordinates and Z to refill your health, web, lives and Daredevil attacks.

-None of Spider-Man's regular villains -such as Venom, Green Goblin or Doc Ock -appear in the game. This is presumably because of issues with the Marvel licence, and SEGA (or Blue Sky Software, who developed this game) didn't have the rights to use some characters.

-Despite the poor reception of Web of Fire, it's one of the pricier 32X titles -not in the same league as the likes of European T-Mek or Darxide, but expect to pay at least $1000 for a complete copy on eBay. The price is due to it being the last 32X game, and apparently not many copies were made. Not helping matters is the fact that this game was only released in America.