Spider-Man 2 (Windows, Mac OS X)

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Spider-Man 2 (Windows, Mac OS X).

Installer Screenshots#

The installers for both the demo and final version of the game use some early screenshots.

• The demo installer has a screenshot of Bronx demonstrating a completely different building. However, that same piece of city from that prerelease version is still used in the released version, but in Twisted City Part 2. You can see on the screenshots below it's the same exact place.

Prerelease	Final

Real Bronx	Twisted City 2 prerelease Bronx

• This discovery just proved, that Twisted City levels use prerelease version of the city. The devs made them before making those changes to the actual city and decided to leave them be as is. If you need more proof - look at the Oscorp building in Twisted City Part 1. It has some architecture that is also present on the Oscorp level if you go outside using the debug features, but this architecture is absent in the real city.

Twisted City 1	Oscorp level	Oscorp in the city

Also the prison in Twisted City 2 has a grey electric fence, that doesn't do damage. It was the same in the demo. They changed it in the last month of development, that's why it's still like that in TC2.

Demo Bronx	Final Twisted City 2

By the way, in the last demo cutscene you can still notice this building from the installer screenshot, though it was already changed in the demo map itself. Pay attention to the trees and a bench.

Demo	Final

• Full game installer has a screenshot of Rhino inside the blue force field from the Mysterio levels. The screenshot was most likely taken from the version after the demo, but before the final one. The Rhino battle in Bronx from the demo was completely different and there was no force field at all. It means they made it almost before the very release of the game and this screenshot just proves it - this force field is seemingly some temporary version so they could finish the battle before the red force field was finished.

Prerelease	Final

Other screenshots aren't that interesting, but you can see many differences as well! Also be sure to pay your attention to the traffic density on the prerelease screenshots. There could be a lot of cars!

• Spidey had a different idle pose - another leg was leading. Also some city details are different, but it's due to the drawing distance of the final game - it makes some tents and billboards to disappear. They are in the game.

Prerelease	Final

Prerelease	Final

• No flag, TKO-gym and hat billboards on the demo screenshots.

Prerelease	Final

Prerelease	Final

By the way, look at the white-blue Gupton & Co sign that's present on the installer screenshots, but not in the final game. You might still see it in the game, but on Twisted City Part 2 level. It's just another proof, that all differences of Twisted City levels weren't intentional - the devs just didn't want to update the city on these levels after they changed the normal one.

Twisted City 2 Park Ave	Real Park Ave

• This screenshot shows the same part of the city from another side. Again, many objects are missing because of the lower drawing distance, but some things were definitely changed. Also there's a red beacon and they were used only in the tutorial, while all the side quests in the city used blue beacons. Notably, final version doesn't have any beacon there at all, even though "showall" command enables targets for spider coins that weren't used in that place.

Demo	Final

• The doors of the grey vans here are opened, but closed in the final game. Most likely because every grey van has aunt May inside in the final game and the devs just didn't want to fix it... The postbox and some other things in the lower right corner were removed too.

Prerelease	Final

• Ock's sun is different:

Prerelease	Final

• Many billboards are either missing or different. There's no green sign leading to a different district. The building near Lite Fat billboard is textured differently. Again, the traffic is super dense, maybe they added the cars on the screenshots using some photo edit programms...

Prerelease	Final

• That drawing on the building behind Daily Bugle is different. The flag is in the final game, by the way, but you can't see it on the screenshot because of the drawing distance.

Prerelease	Final

• Here's more "This area is closed" signs in the final game:

Prerelease	Final

• The electronic panels of the bubble thingies are brighter on the installer screenshot:

Prerelease	Final

• No wooden walls between the iron beams to the right of the crane. There are some other differences in the beam placement overall.

Prerelease	Final

• Looks like lighting was a bit different, one side of the building is completely dark on the prerelease screenshot:

Prerelease	Final

Prerendered Game Cutscenes#

It's not an uncommon thing for games to use older versions of the game for the cutscenes if they are prerendered. This game has interesting differences in the cutscenes as well!

• The flooring is really unfinished, with less squares. Also the windows of the building in the middle are all the same, when in the final game they were changed.

Prerelease	Final

• No flags and that green thing in the cutscene:

Prerelease	Final

• The devs changed the layout of the final level map, it's really different in the cutscene.

Prerelease	Final

Notably enough, the building wasn't really changed, just some effects were added for the cutscene:

Prerelease	Final

• This area isn't present in the game:

Official Game Manual#

In the manual we can see, that there's "PTS" label instead of "Mission" and "Total". Looks like manual has some screenshots from prerelease version of the game as well, but there's really not much to see.

Also manual gives us some more info about the collectible exotic spiders. The game doesn't have any used mention of these spiders at all. However, officially they came from Oscorp.

But it's not the most interesting part here. It says that Hero Points were used to unlock new missions. And you might think it's unused, but you can actually really make the game think you don't have enough hero points to move to next mission. It's unclear why it happens sometimes, I got it only playing in debug mode. Also if you reload the save - the requirement for some reason fulfills.

However, the manual says that this thing was meant to be implemented normally.

So you wouldn't advance if you had not enough hero points. And it would make you to explore the city, play mini-games, find collectibles and etc. Maybe they decided to scrap this feature or simply broke it, because as I just mentioned it's not really scrapped, but works from time to time and it's unclear how and why so.

Also here the manual tells us that mission select was meant to be used by players! It's really mindblowing... Did they remove this feature at the very last moment, because couldn't really finish it and make it restart missions without issues? I mean, you can't replay Rhino, Bank or Puma with mission select - it simply loads the city in free play. It's really weird they wrote about it in the manual...

Official Strategy Guide#

In the manual you can see an ad for the Official Spider-Man 2 Strategy Guide. At first it looks like it's 100% about the main game for consoles. But surprisingly there's a mini-walkthrough of the PC version and it has MANY screenshots and information about the prerelease version of the game! It demonstrates a whole lot of differences and things that were added after the release of the demo, but maybe weeks before the final release.

Let's start off with this screenshot:

The sky looks like it's evening, for some reason. But some people get this sky even on the final version of the game, so it's all about compatibility and the sky was already fine in the demo. Also you can notice a flagpole in the up right corner from the demo. Looks like they removed these poles at the very last moment... Why? It made much more sense, that Spidey used them to swing.

But it's not only screenshots the reason this guide is interesting. Here you can notice, that the authors of this guide refer to spacebar action as dodge/block. They don't add anything else about "block" in this guide and the dodge is still called "block" in the files of the game, but it already was 100% dodge in the demo. Can it say us that "Block" danger sense action was still in use in this version?

This guide also mentioned the mechanics of jumping higher if you time your double jump very good. This mechanics is common for speedruns, because it was found, that if you set Jump action to mouse wheel - Spidey will jump as high as never seen before. Good to know that this thing is intended.

Another funny thing to notice:

Do you see anything weird? I do! If I can count correctly - there are 7 missions, not 6. The last two missions are combined into one in the guide. However, in the end of the guide there's a collectibles guide and it has all 7 mission and the titles are correct, unlike in the guide itself... Maybe they forgot to change the titles in the main part of the article and the collectibles guide was written after the devs really finished the game... However, no titles of those 6 missions are the same, so it looks like a vision of the guide authors, but still worths mentioning.

Now to another prerelease differences of the screenshots. The thugs and police officers on this screenshot are in the demo position:

Prerelease	Final

No FNB ads on the prerelease screenshot. Maybe the screenshot was taken with lowest world details, they disappear in this case even in the final version.

Prerelease	Final

Here you can see three chairs, but in the released version there's a table and only two chairs:

Prerelease	Final

A funny thing to notice - the door defending Ock is already closed before you got to the vault and you can see it, but in the cutscene he activates this door like it wasn't there already... But it's not the point! On these next screenshots you can see, that at first there was some indication that you can throw gold bricks at Ock. Even the guide says it. It's unclear why they decided to remove these indicators and why not every throwable gold brick has it...

The next one's might be nothing. Judging by the guide, it looks like in this prerelease version you really needed to aim at the tires of that van to make it stop... However, in the released version you can simply aim at the van itself and Spidey will target all 4 tires one by one with never seen before precision and ignorance of physic laws. Was it changed or the authors of this guide simply didn't want to say that devs didn't care about the game? I can believe it was hard for kids to aim at the wheels of a moving car... And it would explain why there's soooo much time to web the van, when it can actually be done in 10 seconds without even much effort. I guess the devs made the mission easier, but forgot about timer, but that's a sheer assumption.

This one is better. MJ's gremlin car is for some reason blue, when it was brown in the released version. Other than its color - the car is almost 100% the same.

Prerelease	Final

It's still blue on the next screenshot:

Another proof that it was blue at first is the texture of the car. You can notice some blue parts still left on the picture. If you look at other car textures from the game - they aren't like this.

This is a small thing to notice, but still worth mentioning. In the Puma's hideout you can see that it's not the map from the final version on a wall to the left:

Prerelease	Final

It looks like it used this picture in the prerelease version:

This picture was still used in the game on one of the billboards, so it wasn't really removed, just moved. And it's totally fine, makes much more sense this way. However, it looks like the prerelease version used that exact promo art without anything else added to it.

Anyway, a few more changes can be seen on the next screenshot. The door is different and Puma's exclamation mark was definitely unfinished. Also you can notice, that this version still has "PTS" instead of "Mission" and "Total" on your HUD, so that might be the same version they used for the manual screenshots.

Prerelease	Final

Another look at the red exclamation mark:

This roof has more elements in the final version, but once again, most likely the prerelease screenshot was taken with a lower world details, they disappear in this case in the final version as well.

Prerelease	Final

Also this glowing beam is 100% red here.

Prerelease	Final

Notably enough, it was already finished on this screenshot. Maybe they decided to make a super red one, because MJ was kidnapped and it's really important?

Not that big of a difference, but the shooting indicator is at some weird spot...

Prerelease	Final

This guy doesn't look like a scientist to me... I guess they decided it's weird that some random dude has an access to elevators here and replaced him with an actual scientist in a lab coat.

Prerelease	Final

Second Twisted City level generators used the same effect from the first TC level generators. It's unclear why it was needed here at all.

Prerelease	Final

And now almost the most interesting thing... When I noticed, that some things are different in the prerendered cutscenes, I guessed they might just show some prerelease differences. And it looks like I was right! In the guide there's a screenshot of Mysterio's turret and it has much smaller cannons - just like in the cutscene! Also the cannons shoot something weird, like these are fire throwers... And the dome is transparent and quite different overall.

Cutscene	Prerelease	Final

It's unclear why this strategy guide didn't have any screenshots from the first Mysterio's level, but it describes it in the walkthrough, so it's not right to assume it wasn't finished yet.

Also much more thugs here... Even if somehow two thugs got in the same place - there were only two gun thugs around here...

Prerelease	Final

Looks like initially there was no danger sense QTE on the train.

Prerelease	Final

No dirt on the wall to the right.

Prerelease	Final

There's also a collectible guide and MJ escape was mentioned here, even though the walkthrough in the guide mentioned the game ending just after the Doc is defeated.

GBA Version Cutscenes#

Watch on YouTube

The GBA Spider-Man 2 uses maps from a pre-final PC version. Some of them were edited to better fit the storyline of the GBA game, but others might be a previous versions of locations.

Misc.#

Some reflections in the files of the released version use screenshots of prerelease versions of the game. For example, this vault seems to be much bigger and more detailed in the released version:

Reflection	Game

There's also many reflections of the city, but the only difference is a lack of billboards and other details. The city itself is pretty much the same. However, there are some so called "cubes" and some never seen before parts of the city can be seen there. These cubes below seem to be used in Twisted City when you destroy generators, but this part of the city was either cut from the game or it just was some test map created for this purpose only and then removed. It might be the second option, because some files of the game reference non-existent folder "TestMaps" so there 100% were test maps and then they were cut.

And one of the Twisted City 3 cubes uses an old version of the Mysterio turret. The turret is obviously turned the wrong way, but gives a better look at the cannons:

Cube	Game