


We also see Spider-Man fighting enemies on a New York rooftop while walking on mechanical spider legs. Early in the film, we actually see one of Miles’ friends playing what appears to be a stylized version of the game.

The film contains multiple teases of what’s to come in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which is set to launch on PlayStation 5 this fall. That isn’t the only video game reference featured in Across the Spider-Verse, though. I can’t say it’s a very good game (I could never figure out how to beat Green Goblin), but it deserves the 15 seconds of fame it gets here. To vanquish him, players simply need to diffuse a big bomb.Īs someone who grew up playing that game on my mother’s hand-me-down Atari 2600, it’s a delightful reference that honors the character’s long history of video game appearances. Green Goblin sits at the top of the tower, and is depicted as a loose collection of green and purple squares standing on a moving glider. It has players slinging their way up a building as Spider-Man, diffusing bombs and avoiding bad guys along the way. Published by Parker Brothers, the Atari 2600 adaptation is essentially a reskinned variant of Crazy Climber. It’s not just an abstract joke that’s Green Goblin as he appears in 1982’s Spider-Man game. That’s where we get the film’s most hilariously obscure references: One of the villains shown is simply a collection of green pixels floating in a tube. At one point, he’s even introduced to a few villains from video game realms. The long sequence is a gold mine of references, as Miles meets various Spider-Men and villains from different worlds. In Across the Spider-Verse‘s second act, Miles Morales is introduced to the Spider Society, an elite team of Spider-Man pulled in from around the multiverse.
