For nearly four years, Marvel’s Spider-Man remained exclusive to PlayStation. That’s no longer the case now that Spider-Man Remastered is available on PC, yet many still consider it synonymous with the PlayStation brand due to how successful it was as a Sony exclusive. It’s fitting then that one fan has kept the Spidey/PlayStation theme alive by modding the character model from the original PS1 Spider-Man into Marvel’s Spider-Man.
It’s now possible to kick it old-school in the wall-crawler’s most modern game courtesy of modder Crazy Potato, who created a mod for Marvel's Spider-Man that swaps out the Classic Suit in Insomniac’s open-world title with the Spidey from Neversoft’s 2000 game. The PS1-era character model is recreated perfectly here, complete with the dislocated limbs and the flat outfit texture placed over a rough polygonal body.
A clip of the Marvel's Spider-Man mod in action was also shared by Reddit user jjarack. The footage is short and fairly basic, showing the PS1 Spidey performing a few melee and web attacks on a rooftop before jumping off to web-sling past a few buildings and eventually landing atop one to take a selfie. Still, it’s a good showcase for the brief runtime, and it’s neat to see Neversoft’s version of Peter Parker performing tricks and moving with a fluidity that wasn’t really possible to achieve back at the turn of the century.
Crazy Potato’s mod is the realization of the dream of fans who have been wanting to see the PS1 Spider-Man added to Marvel’s Spider-Man, though it’s not without at least one issue. According to Crazy Potato, the suit can glitch out and turn blue on occasion, but while this can apparently be fixed simply by fast-traveling or loading the last save, they stated that they will work on a proper fix.
As for whether fans may someday be able to play as Neversoft’s Spidey officially, that’s hard to say. Although Marvel’s Spider-Man has plenty of alternate suits referencing previous iterations of Peter Parker, there’s a fair bit of red tape to consider in this case. Sony owns the rights to make Spider-Man games at the moment, but Neversoft’s game was published by Activision, which is soon to be owned by Microsoft. The amount of parties that would probably need to be involved would likely not make it worthwhile for Sony, and that’s also why a remaster of the original PS1 Spider-Man game might not be likely any time soon.
Despite the hurdles, odds are fans won’t stop hoping for it to happen one day. While it may be quite antiquated by today’s standards, especially given the bar set by Insomniac’s games, Neversoft’s Spider-Man remains a beloved entry in Spider-Man’s video game history for how well it nailed the feel of the comics. No wonder then that fans have been eager to see it represented in a modern Spidey game one way or another.
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is available for PC and PS5.
Source: Nexus Mods