To celebrate the anniversary of such an iconic superhero game, Radio Times Gaming jumped on a call with its lead designer, Chad Findley.
You can see the full conversation in video form above, or on our YouTube channel, or keep on reading for some choice quotes from the interview.
Back in the year 2000, did Findley think that he’d still be talking about his Spider-Man game two and a half decades later?
“Not at all,” he tells us. “So back then, I was so early in my career, I was really happy just to be working on a game like this. I know I’ve been lucky with a lot of the games I got to work on over the years, but I knew at the time, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, you know?
“Bringing Spidey to 3D, like, who gets to do that? 3D games were, in general, kind of new. And, you know, even characters walking around was generally pretty janky. And I think Superman 64 was around the same time.
“So, you know, superhero games were getting started. So, I just wanted to make sure we did the source material justice and made a good game.
“And so, I was happy that we ended up serving both really well, I think, for the most part, and setting a good baseline for Spidey games and superhero games in general. But I was not expecting it still to be beloved. But I love that. It makes me really happy.”
There are so many iconic aspects to the game — from the ‘Kid Mode’ option on the start menu all the way through to the hybrid Doctor Octopus/Carnage that you face in the unforgettable final level.
We get into all of that and a whole lot more, including Findley’s work on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater around the same time, in the video version of this interview (which will also be available on our podcast feed next week).
So, how did that opening Stan Lee narration come about? “I was a huge Spidey nerd,” Findley recalls.
“So Stan used to write these yellow box intros to the issues he would do. And it would be, like, a little ‘wet the palette’, sneak peek into what’s about to happen in that issue, or what might have happened a little bit in the past.
Findley added: “But it was something to get the reader excited about the issue they’re about to read.
“And I wanted that for the game, because you know, I wanted the people to really get the feeling of it. And so Activision went after it, and said, ‘Hey, do you want to do this?’ He said yes.
“And man, that dude was fantastic. Like, he was a super fun guy. He knew what we were going for. He made fun of my writing because I stole from him so much in my style. But like, every part of working with that dude was awesome.”
It wasn’t a long collaboration. Findley recalls, “It was only a day or two, but it was cherished. Like, I remember those days super fondly. It’s one of my best development days.”
And what does it mean to the developers that people still look back on this game so fondly?
“It makes me happy that people loved what we took from the original books and put out there, and that we did a good enough job with the controls,” he told us.
“There’s definitely issues with it still. But like, that was step one going into a completely new area. We’re going blind into this.
“And so, I think we did a good job with getting that first step for superhero games, and Spidey in particular, to be accessible to people and enjoy it.
“And I just love that people reacted to it so well. And it makes me very happy.”
To hear more about the development of Spider-Man PS1, and Findley’s take on the more recent Spidey games out of Insomniac, check out the full interview over on our YouTube channel.
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