The final boss was Venom as this freaky Lovecraftian hydra kaiju. Upon being defeated, it led to two possible dark fates for Eddie. Either he was going out a hero and sacrificing himself to save everyone, or Spider-Man was going to sacrifice Eddie against his will because the adventure turned Spider-Man into a dick. Got to love those video game morality systems.
A year later, we got Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions: the prototype for Spider-Verse. While Venom himself was absent, they did make sure to have Ultimate Spider-Man wear a version of the symbiote just to keep his gameplay unique compared to the regular Spider-Man.
The game’s 2011 follow-up, Spider-Man: Edge of Time was unique for making use of Anti-Venom, from a time when Eddie had become one with a disease-curing goo (which unfortunately would cause Spider-Man to lose his powers if they were near each other). Anti-Venom acted as an antagonist in this game, but mainly due to having a chip in his head and being forced to hunt Spider-Man down under the orders of Doc Ock and Alchemax scientist Walker Sloan. Anti-Venom did strike against his captors, but that ended up merging them together into a horrific creature called Atrocity.
Now, of course, Venom has appeared in many other games around this time, but they’re mostly just games based around nearly everyone from Marvel being playable. Stuff like the Lego Marvel series, Disney Infinity, Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth, etc. Even Venom’s DLC appearance in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is kind of ho-hum due to his few quotes and lack of any relation to the story. That game didn’t even have arcade endings. I’m going to ignore a lot of these because it’s not like there’s much to talk about with Marvel Snap, other than how satisfying it is to counter your opponent’s Venom with a lucky Gambit card.
During these years, Venom was literally all over the place and, in a way, it reflected how he was in the comics. Sure, we never got a proper take on Agent Venom outside of the aforementioned “Marvel Encyclopedia” games, but it just goes to show that at the time, nothing was really sticking with Venom as a concept. He was as fluid as his pants and nobody could really agree what he was and who he was under all the black ooze.
After years of experimental ideas like Venom as a ripoff of The Thing, Venom as the government’s official Spider-Man, and Venom as a Space Knight, it was finally time to go back to Eddie Brock as the host for some good old-fashioned vigilante justice. Mike Costa reunited the two parties in 2017, a year before the Tom Hardy Venom movie would arrive. The movie’s success, along with Donny Cates’ memorable comic run that dove deeper into how the symbiotes work as a species, solidified Venom’s role as a hero.
The evolution of Venom as a Spider-Man character is remarkably easy to track through his numerous video game appearances. Read More