10 Spider-Man Games That Rewarded Curiosity With Amazing Hidden Discoveries

While not quite to the extent of some other prominent superheroes, Spider-Man has always had something of a knack for stealthy detective work. Hey, most people don’t bother to look up, so being able to stick to a wall or ceiling and crawl is great for sneaking around. Combine that with his naturally beefy intellect, and Spider-Man is generally pretty good at finding stuff, whether said stuff is actually relevant to whatever he’s currently working on or just something mildly interesting in its own right.

In this spirit, a large portion of Spider-Man games, both linear and open-world, tend to be littered with varying degrees of secrets and collectibles to find. Being able to freely swing about and stick to any surface means that there’s pretty much nowhere that Spider-Man (or those similar to him in some cases) can’t reach, which means his games have no excuse not to fill every single nook and cranny of the city with neat junk like comic books, concept art, bonus content, and more.

10 Spider-Man (2000)

Comics Galore

The 2000 Spider-Man game for PS1 was the Wall-Crawler’s first major 3D endeavor, and a pretty big boost in presentation overall compared to his relatively simpler previous games. Not only did this mean bigger, more bombastic levels and setpieces, it also meant more spots and opportunities to hide stuff. Despite being an ostensibly linear game, checking every seemingly abandoned rooftop or out-of-place air duct yielded more than a few secrets.

Scattered throughout the game are 32 secret comic book covers, all scans of actual real-life issues of Spider-Man’s various serializations, which you can view in a dedicated art gallery. Collecting these comics, as well as clearing objectives like beating certain levels or finishing the training levels also unlocks new Spidey suits and nifty character bios. There’s even an entire “What If” mode unlockable via a cheat code, which adds a bunch of silly easter eggs and sight gags throughout the levels.

9 Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro

Just a Few Comics More

Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro is a direct follow-up to the 2000 Spider-Man game, built from the same engine and reusing some of the same assets, though Vicarious Visions took over developmental work from Neversoft. Alongside all these other reused bits, the game also follows the same basic ethos toward secrets and collectibles, including hidden comic books, unlockable costumes and more.

Enter Electro comes with its own library of 32 secret comic book covers from Spider-Man serials, different ones from the first game, which provides a nifty addendum to the previous game’s comic book chronology. These are hidden throughout levels in out-of-the-way spots or revealed by performing certain feats like beating time trials. Once again, clearing certain levels on certain difficulties, as well as beating the challenges in the game’s challenge mode, unlock costumes you can freely swap between and use in the game’s custom Create-a-Spider mode. Of course, there’s also a “What If” mode in this one as well, if you haven’t gotten tired of sight gags.

8 Spider-Man (2002)

Do Well, Earn Stuff

Okay, genuine question: when was the last time you played a game with a scoring system? Like, outside of certain types of score-centric roguelikes like Balatro? I’d say it’s been a hot minute since gaming was about amassing points, but those kinds of games were still around in the early 2000s, including, of all things, the tie-in to the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie.

The 2002 Spider-Man movie game has a variety of secrets to uncover, a hearty chunk of which are tied to your level scores. Completing levels quickly and decisively earns you more points, and clearing the game with high scores unlocks unused CGs, minigame modes, and more. You can also unlock an extra boss fight against Bonesaw by beating up a bunch of dudes in the combat training mode, and if you beat the main game on Hard, you unlock an entire second campaign where you get to play as the Green Goblin. It’s an old-fashioned approach to unlockables, but certainly not a bad one.

7 Ultimate Spider-Man

Art Worth Appreciating

2005’s Ultimate Spider-Man could be considered something of a prototype for the open-world Spider-Man games we have today, combining the web-swinging mechanics pioneered in the Spider-Man 2 movie game with the more modern stylings of open-world collectibles. Basically, it’s a big ol’ city out there, and it’s jam-packed with stuff to do and find.

In a similar vein to the PS1 Spider-Man games, Ultimate Spider-Man has a library of comic book covers you can find, specifically in the form of cover tokens scattered around the city. The city’s also full of various events, including races and combat tours, and completing these events, alongside collecting tokens, also unlocks extra costumes for you to try on. Plus, while it’s not really a secret, progressing in the game unlocks concept art you can view in the gallery, which is fun considering how much different this game’s art direction is from most other Spider-Man games.

6 Spider-Man: Friend or Foe

Off the Beaten Path

Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is an oft-forgotten beat ‘em up game where Spidey travels around the world, battling alien robots and liberating mind-controlled villains, conscripting them to his cause in the process. It’s not a particularly in-depth game, but even a humble beat ‘em up can have its fair share of secrets and collectibles to find off the beaten path.

Aside from individual upgrades for Spider-Man and his various cooperators, which you can purchase using tokens amassed from defeated enemies, every level has at least one Keystone, which you can find hidden off to the side somewhere. These Keystones, in turn, can be used to unlock a corresponding Keystone Door, within which you’ll find some dedicated combat challenges that can net you large quantities of tokens. As a little side bonus, every unlocked character and visited location comes with some cute artwork you can view in your home base, including slightly chibi-fied versions of some Raimi-styled villains like Doc-Ock and Green Goblin. Don’t ask how they’re both in this game, it’s not important.

5 Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

Let’s Make Things Interesting

The entire premise of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is that a broken magic macguffin has been scattered across time and space, forcing multiple Spider-Men to team up and get it back from a handful of different villains. And also Deadpool. With reality itself collapsing around them, it’s a dire situation, so the least we could do is spice things up a bit with a few challenges and collectibles.

Shattered Dimensions tracks your progress through the “Web of Destiny,” within which is a laundry list of assorted challenges for every level, like beating enemies in a certain way or collecting a certain number of Spider Emblems. Clearing enough of these challenges, as well as amassing Spider Essence by defeating enemies and progressing, allows you to purchase new costumes for all four Spider-Men in the Web of Destiny. Additionally, playing through the game on Hard mode unlocks figurines in the bonus gallery, which gives you a closer look at the individual character models.

4 Spider-Man: Edge of Time

There’s Always Time for More Challenges

Spider-Man: Edge of Time is a direct follow-up to Shattered Dimensions; same devs, same engine, same basic idea, albeit with a narrowed focus on just regular Spidey and Spidey 2099. Since it’s another linear, level-based game, it uses the same challenge system as Shattered Dimensions, now aptly named the “Web of Challenges,” to track your progress through the game and entice you with rewards.

Completing challenges in the campaign, as well as standalone obstacle courses and combat challenges available in the Web of Challenges, will gradually unlock all kinds of neat stuff, including alternate suits, concept art, and lots of currency to upgrade Peter and O’Hara with. A subset of the Web of Challenges tracks Golden Spiders, a special collectible type you can find throughout the campaign by either exploring in obtuse nooks or defeating certain enemies in a particular location or fashion. There are anywhere from four to eight of these in every chapter, so you have to be vigilant for them.

3 Marvel’s Spider-Man

A Whole City to Comb

Marvel’s Spider-Man was a major overhaul of the wall-crawler’s branding in video games, an entirely new adventure built from the ground up in the most faithfully-simulated New York environment since the Raimi film games. Given that the order of the day in modern open-world design is to fill said world with as much collectible swag as possible, it goes without saying that this game had a lot of stuff to find.

Marvel’s Spider-Man has multiple categories of miscellany for you to hunt down across the city, including various audio recordings and collectible tokens used for upgrading your abilities and unlocking new costumes. My favorite of these collectibles, though, is the various backpacks that Peter webbed up around the city and, apparently, just forgot about. Besides awarding tokens when you find them, each of these backpacks has a little doodad in it connected to Peter’s history as Spider-Man, which makes all of them a fun trip down memory lane for longtime fans.

2 Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

The City Through Miles’s Eyes

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a spin-off of the first Insomniac Spider-Man game, focusing on New York’s newly-minted second Wall-Crawler. The game uses a lot of the same mechanics and assets as its predecessors, including its incorporation of collectibles into the open world. However, as Miles is a different guy from Peter, the miscellany that piques his interest is slightly different.

In addition to collecting tokens and tearing down underground baddie hideouts, Miles can uncover a few types of collectibles with personal value to him, including time capsules with memories of his youth with Phin, Sound Samples left behind by his Uncle Aaron (AKA the Prowler) with bits of his own history hidden within, and specialized Spider-Man training exercises left behind by Peter before he went off on his trip with MJ. The tokens once again help you upgrade Miles and unlock costumes, but the extra collectibles help give more insight into Miles as a character, whom you may not have pre-existing knowledge of like you would with Peter.

1 Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

Memories, Mysteriums, and More

By the time of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Insomniac had its open-world formula more or less down to a science, so it was a good opportunity to think up some new avenues of secrets and collectibles to hide all over the place. Some of the collectibles in this game are in plain sight, such as the Mysterium challenges or the sandy memory crystals left behind after Sandman’s rampage at the start of the game, but there are also a few subtler memories to track down.

The two most interesting things to discover in this version of New York are the Photo Ops and Spider-Bots. Peter and Miles can take pictures of interesting landmarks and events around the city and send them to Peter’s friend Robbie Robertson, who will extol the virtues of NYC and its resilient people, northeasterners represent. The Spider-Bots, meanwhile, are a gaggle of 42 arachnid robots scattered around the city, each one designed to resemble a suit Spider-Man has worn, one of his villains, or a well-known alternate universe Spider like Peni Parker or Miguel O’Hara.