Spider-Man 4 Game Footage Reveals The Canceled Sequel
Fans of everyone's favorite friendly neighborhood web-slinger have just received an unexpected gift: Footage of the canceled "Spider-Man 4" video game has emerged, giving gamers a look at both a game they'll never play and a direction that the Marvel franchise never pursued.
In-game footage of an Xbox 360 build of "Spider-Man 4" was recently posted to YouTube by Obscure Gamers, who also provided some context for the clip on their website. Obscure Gamers notes that the title began development as a tie-in for the canceled "Spider-Man 4" film, which would have continued the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man trilogy that starred Tobey Maguire. Both the film and the game were set for a 2011 release date, but Raimi's "Spider-Man 4" never hit the big screen amid story and release date concerns from the director. This naturally spelled the end for its tie-in video game.
The cancelation of "Spider-Man 4" opened the door to a series reboot with "The Amazing Spider-Man" in 2012, but it turns out that the canceled game had some interesting connections as well. Here is what recently discovered "Spider-Man 4" footage reveals about the canceled sequel.
Eary Spider-Man 4 footage shows a remarkably functional game
One striking thing about the game, which was apparently paused after roughly a year of development in early 2010 — assuming it was canceled when Deadline reported that "Spider-Man 4" was — is how finished the game world appears. In the YouTube clip, Spider-Man can be seen swinging freely through a relatively complete New York City, and while missing textures are a noticeable distraction, the game basically looks and feels like players might expect.
According to Obscure Gamers, this is because Radical Entertainment built the game on reused assets from its previous title, "Prototype," and progress made on "Spider-Man 4" was later incorporated into "Prototype 2." The expansive open world that Spider-Man explores in the clip is also interspersed with a few potential boss battles, one against a helicopter and another against an unspecified villain.
While the new footage is the first of its kind for a potential Xbox 360 build, which Obscure Gamers speculates could have been ported to the PlayStation 3 and PC, other versions of the canceled "Spider-Man 4" game have been documented. Supposedly, a mobile title was also in development by Vicarious Visions, while other footage has previously emerged of the Wii prototype for the game.
There is one other thing worth noting about this forgotten Spider-Man title. In 2010, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told Game Informer in no uncertain terms, "Our Spider-Man games have sucked for the last five years. They are bad games." "Spider-Man 4" would have landed right in the middle of that, which makes one wonder if the final version of the game would have been a disappointment.