The 1982 release of Parker Brothers‘ Atari 2600 game, Spider-Man, was the first ever video game featuring a character licensed from Marvel Comics. And, of course, by extension, it was also the first officially-licensed Spider-Man game. But is it any good?

Answer: it’s actually not too bad. I think the biggest downside to Spider-Man on the Atari 2600 is the fact that the web-slinging hero can so easily fall to the ground in a crumpled mess. But I guess without some serious jeopardy in the game, it would just be boring.

The aim of the game is to fire your web at parts of the building and to swing and catch people (with your body) at the windows for points. You must also climb up to the square hatch at the top of the building, to complete the level, without falling down.

If the very end of your web hits an open window, or misses part of the building itself, you’ll fall. If you’re swinging, and a person intersects your web, you’ll fall. So you have to be careful when moving. You can try to sling a web to save yourself while falling, but it doesn’t always work. You also have limited webbing (shown by the bar in the bottom right), with which to make it to the top.

When you reach the top of a building, you must then make it past The Green Goblin, who is moving from side to side, and will knock you down if you or your web touch him.

The graphics in Spider-Man are very basic, but the web-slinging gameplay works well enough. There’s a short jingle when you begin a game, but otherwise sound effects are limited to a whooshing sound when you shoot a web, or beeps and white noise when you catch a person at a window, or when a bomb explodes.

Spider-Man has six difficulty settings. On higher difficulties more people show in windows, and more fleetingly, and The Green Goblin also moves from side to side more quickly, and appears more frequently.

Spider-Man was also released for the Magnavox Odyssey 2, which was a rival console to the Atari 2600.

More: Spider-Man on Wikipedia