Beste Spider-Man-spill å spille før Spider-Man: Brand New Day

In just a few days, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the latest chapter in Peter Parker's (Tom Holland) story within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, premieres in theaters. The film promises to be perhaps the darkest Sony Pictures has made yet, with the hero forced to fight alone—without his former friends—against both familiar faces and entirely new threats.

Spider-Man also has a long history in video games, spanning adventures across various timelines and featuring some thrilling storylines. With Spider-Man: Brand New Day just around the corner, it's worth looking back at the best—and maybe most underrated—games featuring our friendly neighborhood hero, all well worth revisiting before you go to the cinema.

Ultimate Spider-Man

Perhaps the most nostalgic pick on this list is Ultimate Spider-Man, developed by Treyarch and released in 2005. Based on the same title comic book, the game's script was written by the comic's own author, Brian Michael Bendis. The story centers on the relationship between Peter Parker and Eddie Brock (Venom)—friends since childhood who later become bitter enemies. Ultimate Spider-Man lets you play as both characters, each with radically different gameplay styles, and features a unique comic-book-style visual aesthetic. The game also includes other familiar faces—Wolverine, the Human Torch (who you can race as Spider-Man), Rhino, Carnage, and even Bolivar Trask as one of the antagonists. Trask, incidentally, will also serve as the main villain in the upcoming Marvel's Wolverine from Insomniac Games. But back to Ultimate Spider-Man: it's one of the best games not just about the title character but about superheroes in general, and it stands as a genuinely faithful adaptation of the source material.

Spider-Man: Friend or Foe

Not the most well-known Spider-Man game out there, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, developed by Next Level Games, is a linear beat-'em-up built around co-op play. Spider-Man battles his way through familiar villains—Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Venom, and more—alongside other Marvel characters like Prowler, Blade, and Iron Fist, with all of them later joining him as teammates, controlled by either another player or the AI. The game got mixed reviews at the time, but it found its audience; anyway, the combat and level design still hold up reasonably well today.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows

One of the most underrated Spider-Man games is Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, released by Treyarch in 2008. At the time, it stood out as a genuinely compelling entry, memorable for its combat system alone. And while the story once again centers on the clash between Spider-Man and Venom, it also gives meaningful roles to characters like Wolverine, Luke Cage, Moon Knight, Black Widow, and Kingpin, with mentions of Tony Stark, Daredevil, Hank Pym, Beast, and others. On top of that, the game features four different endings, and given its scope and cast, Web of Shadows could easily pass for an MCU-style game—years before the MCU even existed in the form we know today.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

Spider-Man got a fresh wave of popularity thanks to the 2018 animated film Into the Spider-Verse, which is widely regarded as one of the best takes on the character. Unlike Peter Parker, the film centers on a different Spider-Man—Miles Morales—who welcomes visitors from other universes into his home city of New York. The multiverse concept got a deeper dive in the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, but one game actually explored that same idea years earlier.

That is Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, a 2010 title from Beenox. You play as four different versions of Spider-Man—Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Man 2099, and Ultimate Spider-Man—each with their own suit, setting, villains, and combat system features. The story does have Mysterio as the main villain, who is destabilizing the multiverse, and Madame Web, an iconic figure in Spider-Man lore, as she reaches out to the different versions of the hero in an attempt to set things right.

Spider-Man: Edge of Time

In 2011, Beenox went a step further with Spider-Man: Edge of Time, a game built not only around a multiverse but also around time-travel mechanics. It follows two versions of Spider-Man—Peter Parker in the present and Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man 2099) in the future—whose fates become entwined. In the story, a scientist travels back in time to rewrite history in his own favor, but O'Hara catches on—along with the fact that Peter Parker is about to be killed by Anti-Venom. The game’s events unfold inside the Alchemax corporation, and since time travel is core to the gameplay, it directly shapes how the game plays. It's a genuinely interesting concept with real potential, but it never found a large audience and ended up with mixed reviews from critics.

Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 is a direct adaptation of the same-titled film directed by Sam Raimi and released in 2007, with the game's launch timed to coincide with the movie's premiere. But it doesn't just retell the film's events—it significantly expands its lore. For instance, it confirms that villains like Lizard, Scorpion, Rhino, Kingpin, and even Morbius and Kraven the Hunter—none of whom appeared in Raimi's trilogy or ever crossed paths with Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man—are actually part of that same cinematic universe. Spider-Man 3 handled this aspect brilliantly, and it was well received by both fans and gaming media at the time.

Insomniac Games Marvel’s Spider-Man

And of course, no discussion of Spider-Man: Brand New Day would be complete without Insomniac Games, the studio behind three Spider-Man games so far: Marvel's Spider-Man, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which takes place between the first two installments. In terms of comparisons to the MCU, the Marvel's Spider-Man franchise is about as close as video games have come—in terms of characters, storylines, action, ties to a wider universe, and much more. The developers were clearly drawing inspiration from Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures, and in turn, Brand New Day director Destin Daniel Cretton has claimed he drew on Insomniac Games’ work while filming scenes for the movie, as he recently mentioned in an interview.

Insomniac Games is currently working on Marvel's Wolverine, the studio’s next project set in the same universe as the Spider-Man games, which is only confirming developers’ ambition to build something MCU-like. Reports also suggest they are working on at least two more Spider-Man projects —Marvel's Venom, a spin-off in the vein of the Miles Morales game, and a third mainline entry that would conclude Peter Parker's trilogy.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day premieres July 31. The cast includes Tom Holland (Peter Parker), Zendaya (MJ), Jacob Batalon (Ned), Jon Bernthal (Frank Castle/Punisher), Tramell Tillman (Bill Metzger), Michael Mando (Mac Gargan/Scorpion), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk), and Sadie Sink—whose role hasn't been revealed yet, but, according to rumors, she's playing Jean Grey, the iconic X-Men character.