Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man

Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man is a text-based quest with graphics about perhaps the most famous Marvel comic book superhero - Spider-Man, which first appeared in the 15th issue of Amazing Fantasy magazine in 1962. Once a modest physics student Peter Parker, who worked as a daily reporter in the Daily Bugle newspaper, was bitten by a radioactive spider, as a result of which he acquired a number of fantastic abilities: enormous strength, jumping ability, the ability to stick to walls, a “spider sense” warning of dangers, and knowledge of how to make a substance resembling a web (which later came in handy for him to accelerate his movements around the city). After killing his uncle Ben, which he could have prevented, but did not, Parker realized the responsibility for his abilities and decided to become a superhero. This information is given just in case: suddenly in the world there are still people who do not know the history of this character.

This game is the second in the Questprobe series, released the same year as the Hulk adventures translated into the form of an illustrated text quest, which largely copies the gameplay of the first part. Even the plot of the plot is similar - Spider-Man, as before the Hulk, was kidnapped by a certain Supreme Examiner, and our hero was imprisoned in a strange building, and also with an erased memory. It soon becomes clear that the ultimate goal has not changed: you need to find and collect as many bonuses in the form of precious stones in order to complete the game with the best score - and this will be implemented not in the form of an arcade, but in the form of IF by entering text commands from the keyboard.

What is good here is that the authors really knew comics and knew firsthand the abilities of the protagonist: in view of this, get ready for a very difficult game, with many puzzles and risks of death, in which almost all will have to be used for a successful passage Spider superpowers, which you must know about. As in The Hulk, the death here does not mean the end of the game, but the character’s getting into a certain Limb, from where he can leave and return to one of the screens until the fateful moment; the save option is also left, but the number of slots is reduced from four to one. The texts are still rather short and rather weak in terms of elaboration, the graph illustrating the locations, but at the same time disconnected, is CGA, non-interactive, of course, but atmospheric. Commands have become a little more complicated: now it’s not only a bunch of verbs and nouns or given parts of speech separately, but even some phrases with a couple of nouns and prepositions, for example. Bonuses are taken, as in the first game, by the "Get Gem" button, and viewing the points scored is "Score". It should be noted that there will be NPCs in the form of villains - you will meet, say, Sandman and Mysterio - but their role in the plot is small (but the role of Madame Web is much higher). But the general level of complexity has not changed at all since the first part and, as before, can sometimes create difficulties even for experienced players.

In general, this thing turned out almost no worse than The Hulk, but in some ways even more complex and diverse, since the number of special features of the Spider is greater. Another thing is that there are not so many real differences, but if this does not bother you and (or) you liked the first part, then you should definitely try this one.

P.S. The game as such was released in 1984, but was only ported to the PC two years later.