Questprobe featuring Spider-Man is one of three games in the Questprobe trilogy, each of which features a different Marvel comic book character. Questprobe featuring Spider-Man was the second game in the series. The first game focused on the Incredible Hulk, and the final game was about the Thing and the Human Torch, two of the more famous members of the Fantastic Four. The games were created by Adventure International and were market mostly in Great Britain in the middle eighties.
The lead formats for this series of games were actually the Atari 800, Commodore 64, and Apple II, but it did make its way to the personal computer running the MS-DOS operating system eventually. The original design for this franchise featured a total of twelve games, but the makers decided to cap it with these three.
In Questprobe featuring Spider-Man, the user will play the part of the masked web slinger. Initially, the game came with a comic book style manual that offered the user a very interesting, full-length comic adventure, and also provided some instruction for the game at hand. The gaming manual is found within the comic book, which was a very cool and fun way to include
these instructions. There are many parallels between the included comic strip and the play of the game, and users are encouraged to download it and read it prior to play.
In both the comic book and the actual video game, the main enemy is Mysterio. Mysterio was once known as Quentin Beck, and he worked as a special effects designer in Hollywood. But, like so many of Spider-Man’s rivals, life was just too much for him, and he turns to a life of evil. He uses illusion and hypnosis as part of his arsenal, and also carries about canisters of a vile gas he has brewed himself. Susceptible to his own concoction, he wears a fish globe over his face to protect him from the gas. This also serves to make him look creepy and a little goofy.
The game begins with Spider-Man having been captured by the evil Mysterio. Mysterio has caused amnesia in the great web slinger by using his mental powers on him. Spidey has no idea what his real identity is or even that he has any type of super powers….at first. To further embarrass Spider-Man, Mysterio turns him into his personal gopher, and Spidey will find himself running errands constantly for Mysterio in many fetch quests. He will have to solve a variety of puzzles to acquire the inventory the Mysterio requires, and along the way, he will begin to sort out who he really is.
