Real Talk By: Ms. Throwback

Spiderman and Venom: Maximum Carnage, also known by its more popular title as simply Maximum Carnage, was released in 1994 as a side-scrolling fighting game for the Super NES and Sega Genesis. I personally played through the Super NES version although the two versions are extremely similar, varying only slightly in sound quality. It’s also noteworthy to point out that this game is an easy one to find in anyones collection as the cartridge itself was formed in a red plastic and sticks out from the rest of the grey (NES) or black (Genesis) cartridges of the time.

In this single-player side-scrolling beat-em-up, Spiderman and Venom destroy the lives of their enemies and create carnage through the streets of the city in an attempt to stop criminals from taking over the city. through your classic punch and kick controls and a fair amount of web slinging and wall crawling both characters make it through the minions that carnage has released. There is also a really cool move where your character can attack two enemies at once from either side. objects in the game can also be thrown to create damage.

Throughout the game are several cut scenes with a detailed storyline outlining that carnage was incarcerated and escapes only to create havoc on the city. The cut scenes are fully detailed drawings in comic book style. They truly involve the player in the story, and a lot of them are taken directly from the source of the comic book by the same name. The rest of the visuals of the gameplay portions of the game in my opinion could have been better, I prefer the darker look to a comic book game but they aren’t bad by any means either.

One of the really cool parts of this game is the hidden items. There are hidden items all over the place requiring Spiderman and Venom to go off course to collect them all, creating an even more interesting dynamic to the title. Other popular marvel characters can be summoned by collecting some of these items making it well worth your time to go off track looking for them. depending on whether you are playing Spiderman or Venom at the time each of the special characters come on-screen to help you in different ways. Cloak, Black Cat, Dagger, Firestar, Spider-Man/Venom (depending on the player character), Morbius, Deathlok, Iron Fist and Captain America are the helpful side characters that join us in the fight.

 

The music of the game is absolutely amazing stuff for its time. It doesn’t get much better in sound than this and each character that appears on-screen including special characters have their own set of music.

I think this game has an even amount of good and bad, I can appreciate this game only because I played it so much growing up but honestly it can become super repetitive considering you are fighting in the same people over and over and the same four bosses multiple times. on top of that health is extremely scarce in the game and it’s only one player which kind of sucks. Other than that though it’s extremely high quality and full of positives.

Maximum Carnage Gets

Out of five

What’s Legit?

+Music

+Visuals if you like the style

+Storyline

+Controls

What’s Perpetrating?

-Single player only

-Repetitive

-Health is very scarce.

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