
Activision's two Amazing Spider-Man games for the Wii U have been yanked from the Wii U eShop.
While neither title could be considered a solid-gold classic, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 presumably had an audience thanks to the licence alone - and it would seem that is also the reason for their removal. We can only assume that Activision's license to use the name has expired.
That means if for some unknown reason you feel the desire to get your hands on either game, you'll have to resort to tracking down a physical copy.
This is the perfect excuse to dig into the dusty Nintendo Life video archives and pull out our Let's Play video of the first title. It's painful viewing at times.
Will you lament the passing of this duo? Let us know by posting a comment.
[source gonintendo.com]
Comments 35
Heading towards the Switch, spiderman pack.
@A01 Not from systems, but from the "eshop", so the quip about digital games has no bearing.
And nobody cared...
Me too.
Not interested with Spiderman.
Lame...
the joycons would make great webshooter controls.
@A01 a few lawsuits could change that.
Weren't these games in a sale recently? I hate when digital games just disappear. They should notify all users at least a month before that titles are disappearing in the near future.
I really don't like this kind of digital future where stuff is just taken out without any explanation or notice beforehand.
Not that I care about these two particular games.
I'll just stick with Spider 2 on the GameCube.
Glad I got the physical editions.
This is one aspect of digital sales that I find really strange. I understand that developers make limited time license deals that prevent them from making new games when the license expires. But stopping sales of existing products is kind of troubling.
Physical products go out of print as well but you can at least find used copies if you want to play an older game. If we go digital only games could just disappear forever a few years after release.
What a shame. People always give film tie-in games a hard time for being a comparatively substandard experience... but this truly stood tall alongside its source material as a bland, forgettable cash-in whose existence is owed entirely to contract and licensing pragmatism.
Requiescat in pace, sweet Man of Spiders.
For all the people that say "I don't care, not interested, lame".
Well why would you, you just want a Nintendo games only console. Leave the third party games for the top selling consoles. Right.
@Kolzig Agree, but I've seen it done many times. When Ubisoft bought a few titles, the older companies Tetris, Monopoly and Hasbro games were taken away from all systems. I think Activision lost the rights to the Spiderman games and Universal Sony picked them up (hence, the Spiderman exclusive coming to PS4), but it doesn't mean that they're be gone forever, just no made and harder to find, but yeah, I'm glad I really only buy physical for the systems...don't like this digital era and also don't like the constant updates and loading...wish it could go back to the past of just put the game in, turn the system on and play the game without having to wait.
This is the troubling side of licensing deals. There are countless retro games that were fun that will never be seen again because of the tangled mess of licensing.
At the same time I can understand the limited terms because otherwise you would have stuff like Kemco's Superman and the bad X-Men games still out there being sold.
huh...that actually sucks. I was thinking about re-buying the first one. The second one had potential but it scaled the infamy system poorly. Ah well I'm sure there is one in the gamestop next door.
The only thing I really hated about the first one was the web swinging
That's the trouble with licensed ip's. It's grand at the time of the deal but causes major headaches further down the line. Just look at a no better example than Goldeneye.
@Nin10doh Well you can't redownload them either, of course another problem with the lack of a proper account system.
Not really surprised this happened. I remember an similar incident happening with Deadpool and a couple of other Marvel gamed Actvision published on PSN and Xbox Live, I think? If I remember correctly, those games came back on those services a little later afterwards. If that was the case, then I'm sure the games will come back on the Eshop in a similar fashion, eventually.
If not... well, there's always retail copies.
while it dose suck for the people who wanted it on Wii U(besides retail). imo nothing valuable was lost from me buying this and it's sequel.
can't wait for that new spiderman for PS4! (serious too!)
@Grumblevolcano not true.I just redownloaded teenage mutant ninja turtles from the Wii shop since i own it.and its been pulled from the Wii shop for years
I recently finished the 1st game which I downloaded when it was on sale. I thought it was quite a good game actually. Similar to thhe Batman games but not as good. I enjoyed it though. Not that I'm inclined to play it again anytime soon but if needed I should be able to re-download.
Yes, the first game is pretty decent.
Haven't tried the sequel but I heard it is not good.
I just picked up the first one while it was on sale. I did remember trying it at one point and thought it was a decent game (but not perfect by any means) but it's became difficult to find a physical copy locally.
Seeing as these games came out since 2013 & 2014 and both was on sale in the eshop for $20 (1) and $25 (2) recently, I had more than enough time and opportunity to get them before the unexpected happen.
Pretty much if you haven't got it then, you weren't really interested.
@Grumblevolcano Thanks for spreading dog poo again. Of course you can re-download all of your purchased games. No matter if they're currently on sale on the eShop or not. That was even the case on Wii.
@scamander Not quite, remember for example with DS Brain Training. EU got the game for free in a small time period of which Nintendo then removed it from the eshop. After it was removed you couldn't redownload it until it got reuploaded to the eshop a year later.
I like digital. It has its advantages as does physical. Digital is time limited, while physical is limited to amount produced. I do like the idea of digital distributors giving some notice about when deals expire.
Such a pity Activision didnt give us a heads up and reduced the price to like £3-5 for each game, they would have made a small killing out of that bloodless stone that's the Wii U.
Oh well, guess the physical copies will go up slight in price....
Whatever the situation with digital games, the fact is that if you're new to a console or don't decide you actually want a game until a year or 2 later and it's been pulled, then you're out of luck. And that sucks.
Not everybody buys games as soon as they launch. It doesn't make any sense that we should only have a limited amount of time to get something from a digital platform. Really annoyed me with Scott Pilgrim on PS3/Xbox 360 too...I do actually have that but now they've pulled it I can't get the last bit of DLC with the online mode or Wallace as a playable character.
@Grumblevolcano That's a different case, though, since
a) you didn't buy anything. It was a gift.
and b) they added features to the emulator.
As soon as the game was officially released, everyone who already 'owned' the test version, could re-download it for free.
@gizmoto Your avatar! LOL
I have both on-disc. The first was better than the second though.
The Amazing Spider-man was a great Wii U game! I can't say anything about the sequel, but it was much better than the Batman games
@A01 also zero space occupied in the house, no danger of disc damage from accidents or wear and - in some countries, you know - astronomically better choice of games than in local retail with the shelves full of Mortal Kombat and Fallout 4.
Disappearance is an unfortunate aspect, of course, but the size of the problem depends on how it's handled. Is there any practice of compensating customers for the games they paid for but will no longer access? I'm not talking demos like P.T. Silent Hills or IGC perks.
It was pulled on all digital platforms, for whatever reason.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...