JJ and his amazing friend Jason are back from what feels like a million billion years between episodes. The pair talk about usual podcasty catching up stuff for the first roughly an hour, then dive into the pool of joy that is Spider-Man Homecoming. (JJ may have spent a lot of time talking about the value of Flash Thompson, but it is the attention to details that make the movie the happy place that it is) There is plenty of spoiler notice, so feel free to listen up to that point if you don’t want anything spoiled.

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Hi guys, and welcome to Game Box; a new series where I look at some of the games I’ve been playing recently since I finally have a console again. First up, I’m coming to be talking about the recent Open Beta for Gazillion Entertainment’s Marvel Heroes Omega.

Marvel Heroes Omega assembles one of the largest gatherings of iconic Super Heroes, Super Villains, and locations from the Marvel Universe in gaming history for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Mac.

Set in the iconic Marvel Universe, Marvel Heroes Omega combines the core game-play style of Action RPGs and MMOs with the expansive library of heroes from the Marvel Universe. In the game, players can collect and play as their favorite Marvel Super Heroes (including Iron Man, Thor, Wolverine, Hulk, Spider-Man, Captain America and many others).

Team up with friends and try to stop Doctor Doom from devastating the world with the power of the Cosmic Cube in a story written by Marvel comic super-scribe Brian Michael Bendis.

From moment one, you’re given a gorgeous introduction sequence featuring some pretty good 3D models and 2D animated sections retelling the origins of the more famous Marvel Heroes. A fair few of the cut scenes in-game follow a more motion comic style and while the blend of styles is a little jarring at first, I give the creators credit for trying something different.

The tutorial drops you in the middle of a mission with Captain America and allows you the time to figure out your buttons before setting you against Ultron and his minions. Each of your attacks is assigned to one of the four face buttons and you can bring up a secondary menu by holding L2. It’s an intuitive system to help console players easily access their full range of abilities that’s a staple of MMOs on consoles.

Throughout the tutorial, you’re given the ability to play as Cap, Black Widow and Hulk before they allow you to access the launch roster of heroes. It’s a right Who’s Who of MCU characters alongside more established characters. You get all the ones you know and then you get the likes of Wiccan, Squirrel Girl and Angela, which is cool. Given this is a Free-To-Play game, you’re given the opportunity to try before you buy any of these characters before Level 10 when you have to pick your starter character.

I eventually chose She-Hulk and upon entering the game proper, I noticed a cute quirk this game has. Depending on the characters in the vicinity, there are unique snippets of dialogue from both your character and those of other players. This gives the world a little more connectivity and hearing Shulkie interact with Gambit in the moments in the mission worlds or at the HQ is pretty fun. The voice cast for this game is exhaustive too, bringing in all the voices you’d associate with these characters from various animated shows as well as bringing in actors such as Clark Gregg and Keith David, voicing Agent Coulson and Nick Fury, respectively.

Being a FTP game, more heroes are unlocked through Founder’s Packs of various price points, by using Eternity Splinters or by accumulating the specfic in-game currency to buy them or unlock additional costumes. You can get an additional hero for nothing though, by downloading Daredevil for free and the additional Man Without Fear costume for free if you are a PS Plus member.

You can customise your heroes with character-specific loot drops for defeating enemies and augment their abilities through levelling or attaching Medallions from defeated super villains.

Given the amount of FTP MMO games on consoles at the moment, you could be forgiven for thinking this is just another but the game plays like the X-Men Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games, taking an isometric view of the action but adds the MMO component and the whole package feels a little like that Avengers Alliance game for its breadth of characters and customisation potential.

If you’re looking for a quick and fun MMO to get into or are jonesing for a Marvel game that isn’t on mobile (that’s me) then I recommend giving this game a shot. Marvel Heroes Omega is currently available for Open Beta on Playstation 4 and will be officially released on June 4 2017. For more details and updates, head over to the official website and be sure to follow the game’s Twitter.

Marvel just released its second trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming. A title so wink-wink nudge-nudge that you would swear Deadpool was explaining the joke to you through the fourth wall.

I want this movie to be good. Logan was, after so many bad attempts, the movie Wolverine deserved. I want this movie to be that for Spidey. So know this before I crap all over the following trailer…

– Confusing Daddy Issues

I don’t understand this relationship at all. Tony Stark gave this kid a crazy special suit to go fight crime and then tells him not to fight crime with it. He takes the kid half-way around the world to beat up Captain America but tells him that stopping guys with guns or saving a ship is out of his league. WHAT?! That makes no god damn sense.

– Are You Trying To Seduce Him?

Why does it look like Aunt May is going to “Mrs Robinson” Peter? Maybe I’ve been watching too much Riverdale on Netflix but this looks sexual. And who decided Aunt May needed to be younger and hot? Like, what does that achieve apart from continuing Hollywood’s dismissal of older women in its movies?

– Who Are You? Who, Who? Who, Who?

What version of The Vulture is this? “I’ll do anything to protect my family”, what? Is this Hawkeye all over again, when a character is given a family just so that we can relate to him? The Jury is out on this villain.

– Not The Face!

Oh goody, looks like they found a way for Spider-Man not to have a mask on for the entirety of the final battle. Yay.

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OVERALL: I am so disappointed by this trailer. It gives away pretty much the whole plot of the movie and shows us that Marvel haven’t really learned from the mistakes of Sony in adapting Spider-Man to the big screen. Weird changes to the source-material and an over-reliance on “star” power means this is looking to be nothing but a standard Hollywood film. I hope I’m proven wrong but this trailer was trash.

We’re back for round two of this year’s LEGO Superheroes Mighty Micros and this time it’s Marvel that’s up to bat with a trio of terrific sets.

We get a nice mixture of franchises showcased this time with Spider-Man, The Avengers and X-Men all getting the spotlight! Let’s get started with Marvel’s golden boy himself…

Spider-Man! Scorpion! A match up that doesn’t happen nearly often enough in my eyes because Scorpion is a pretty cool villain, design-wise.

The Spider-Man minifigure is much like last year’s but with an all-new, all-different wince! Or a wink. I suppose it depends on your perspective. Scorpion, meanwhile, looks like an adorably cartoonish version of his minifigure in the LEGO Spider-Man: Web Warriors Ultimate Bridge Battle. Both minifigures also come with an animal accessory tied with their theme.

In terms of the karts in this set, I’d initially written the Spider-Man one as uninspired until I realised that it was a simplified version of the infamous Spider-Buggy and I kind of walked back that opinion. It’s cool but still not as cool as Scorpion’s brutish claw-tank-thing! This thing is essentially a box on wheels but between the claw-like appendages and integrating Scorpion’s own tail pieces for the vehicle’s stinger is pretty clever.

Over with the X-Men, we have the comically mismatched Wolverine and Magneto. We don’t see the X-Men often enough in these sets so it’s great to see them here (and I’m hoping next year will see Deadpool in a mini-chimichanga delivery truck).

The minifigures are just as adorable as ever but, in an ironic twist, even more-so because Wolverine is an immortal, ninja-slaying samurai Canadian and Magneto is a holocaust survivor who has a mad-on for a human genocide. These two characters, out of all of Marvel’s characters, should not be this cute.

Again, their associated karts are hilarious! Wolverine is flying around in a shrunken Blackbird jet and Magneto has a giant magnet on it! They’re both really fitting with the characters and exemplify the tongue-in-cheek humour that I really like about this line.

Finally, with The Avengers and in the spirit of the future movies, we have Iron Man vs. Thanos. Earth technology versus space magic. Tony shouldn’t be looking anywhere near as cocky as he is.

In terms of minifigures, Tony’s Iron Man design is so simplified that it looks like a Halloween costume and he’s not helping his credentials by bringing a spanner to an Infinity Gauntlet fight. It’s no wonder that Thanos has the kind of manic glee on his face that comes from a sadistic villain who knows he’s going not only murder the hero but wipe him from existence. Quip your way out of this one, Stark.

The karts are equally laughably one-sided as Iron Man’s is a variant on The Flash’s from last year but with a quartet of repulsor jets. On the other hand, figuratively and literally, Thanos has used the Reality Gem to conjure up a kart shaped like the Infinity Gauntlet! That’s decadent and arrogant on a truly cosmic level but if I had a complaint, it’s that the gold used for this kart isn’t uniform, with some blocks cast in a metallic gold while the rest are a dull, lighter gold. It’s kind of the same problem that Wonder Woman’s jet faced but still, it’s a brilliant show of Thanos’s silly side and that’s saying something from a cosmic villain who once pestered D-Tier hero Hellcat in a ‘Thanos-copter’.

Once again, the creativity of the LEGO Marvel Superheroes Mighty Micros line shines through again with a brilliantly clever and fun set of builds. You can purchase these online and in stores for £8.99 each and I highly recommend picking them up for yourself or the Marvel fan in your life!

The movie is directed by a relative newcomer, Jon Watts, who has mainly directed TheOnion.com videos. It’s co-written by John Francis Daley and if you’re wondering why that name is familiar, he was the main kid in Freaks & Geeks. But don’t worry, he’s one of 6 people who are credited as writing the screenplay. Have I made you nervous yet?

Ok, lets see our first trailer.

– The Ultimate Bait and Switch

If you believe everything you read on the internet, IMDB would have you know that popular young actress Zendaya is playing a character named Michelle. Sure. I personally think she bares a resemblance to a certain red-head from the Ultimate Spider-Man universe.

But hey, Aaron, that’s the Ultimate universe. What has that got to do with…

– C’mon guys

Well here is where I’m a little confused and very annoyed. This chubby best friend of Spider-Man, who loves Lego, is listed as… Ned Leeds?! Are you kidding me?

I’m supposed to think this guy is going to turn into the Hobgoblin at some point? No. He is CLEARLY Ganke Lee from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics (and now 616). Either Marvel is playing real hard to get with details or it doesn’t know what it is doing. I’m really hoping for the former based on track-record. But if this was Fox or Warner Bros I’d be spitting venom right now.

– Death From Above

Welcome to our big bad guy for the movie, The Vulture. It will be interesting if they play with any of the age stuff in The Vulture’s lore but either way he’s played by Michael Keaton so that’s pretty damn cool.

He has gone from playing Batman to Birdman and now a bird… man.

– Web Armpits!

It’s the first time we see them in live-action form and I, for one, am jazzed about it.

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OVERALL: Honestly, I have to admit I expected a trailer that would get me more excited. It revealed lots of character stuff, like how Peter is being treated like a child by Tony Stark and being mentored slightly, and who his friends are etc. But I’ve seen enough of RDJ at this stage and the characters aren’t who they say they are so… meh?
I still want to see the film, I’m excited for Tom Holland in the roll, but if I knew nothing before this trailer I don’t think I’d go to see Spider-Man: Homecoming based on this footage alone.

The tennis and ball gag headshots are the photos discussed in this episode.

Yes, dear readers, your eyes do not deceive you! I’m covering Marvel’s friendly neighbourhood web-slinger in my article series about the wacky programs from Japan but why would I do that?

Well, gather round tomodachi because Sharp-O-dono is about to school you on the Iron Cross killer; the man who sheds tears for children without homes! The destroyer of mushrooms; a man moved by the dog whistle! The emissary of hell, himself — Spider-Man!

Yeaaaaaaaaah, buddy! We’re balls-deep in the late 70’s! It’s the Japanese Spider-Man! While Nicholas Hammond was playing Parker States-side, the Toei Company were creating their own adaptation of the wall-crawler thanks to a three-year licensing agreement with Marvel that allowed both to use each other’s properties in any way they wanted. Sadly, this did not result in Kamen Rider V3 punching Doctor Doom but what a world that would be!

Naturally, being adapted for a Japanese audience, the Spider-Man of this series is Japanese but stays faithful to the origin. Tell me if this sounds familiar…

Takuya Yamashiro, youthful motorcycle rider, witnesses the crash of the extraterrestrial warship ‘The Marveller’ and follows his father to the crash-site. After his father is murdered, Takuya discovers Garia: the last son of Planet Spider. Granted the powers of a spider thanks to a blood transfusion from Garia and given control of the Marveller via use of the Spider Bracelet, Takuya now defends Earth from Professor Monster and the Iron Cross army as… Spider-Man!

See? It’s the same, tired, old origin stor—what? Alright so it has nothing to do with the source material barring the same costume and an assortment of powers but let’s face it; this origin would make Spider-Man: Homecoming even more distinct from the previous movies.

But yes, Toei’s Spider-Man ran for 41 episodes and involved such wacky plots as Amazons being resurrected to uncover Spider-Man’s identity, becoming an Interpol agent, and getting his own Batusi; the Spider-Man Boogie.

The show was praised by Marvel for it’s effects and stunt work, despite initial reservation with the liberties taken. One such liberty was Spider-Man swapping his web-swinging for a slick set of wheels in the form of the Spider Machine GP7 and The Marveller’s alternate form — Leopardon!

Oh yeah, Spidey had a giant mecha! And you know what the ironic thing is? Due to the popularity of the show, Toei decided to include giant robots in their revived Super Sentai series. That’s right, Spider-Man is actually responsible for the trend of superheroes having giant robots in Japan. Marvel, unknowingly, created Power Rangers. Mind. Blown.

So what is the legacy for our favourite emissary of hell? Well, aside from influencing Super Sentai and leading to the creation of Battle Fever J, Takuya Yamashiro would sadly languish in obscurity, only rearing his head for a parody dub on YouTube and for meme material until March 2015.

In the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, during the Spider-Verse event, Takuya and Leopardon arrived to assist their fellow Spiders in what is quite possibly my favourite moment in comics last year. It came out of nowhere and yet was the perfect stage for Takuya to get the recognition he deserves. So-much-so that Marvel streamed episodes of Toei’s Spider-Man for a short time on their website.

And that’s the secret origin of Supaidaman! An utterly bonkers take on Marvel’s web-head and, surprisingly, a trend-setting cult favourite in retrospect. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you all next Toku Tuesday when we dive into the West’s efforts in adapting tokusatsu as we get Lost in Adaptation.

– S’up?

It would be ridiculous of me not to address the spider in the room straight off the bat. Peter Parker’s inclusion in this movie caused a stir from the moment of it’s announcement and everyone has been wondering when we would get to see him. Well… here he is.

First of all, webbing Captain America’s hands together and stealing his shield is a hell of a way to make an entrance. Bravo. Secondly, his eyes narrow just like the comics! You can tell this is a suit that has been upgraded by Tony Stark, due to the shiny belt pieces and especially these eye adjustments. Pretty cool detail and hint to how he has been dragged into this mess.

– Man In Black

Black Panther’s role has been largely a mystery too but it seems that his appearance here hints at being on the receiving end (perhaps accidentally, perhaps purposefully) of a terrorist attack. Is this why he goes after The Winter Soldier?

– Jailhouse Rock

The Raft makes a welcome addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s existence now opens up the possibility of a Thunderbolts movie too, which is pretty ace.

– Small Package

Blink and you’ll miss it but one of my favourite Avengers comics moves is Ant-Man being launched at somebody on the tip of a Hawkeye arrow. Thank you CA:CW for making it a thing again.

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Overall: The Captain America trilogy looks to be one of the best superhero trilogies in movie history. So many fall down by the third instalment and I was worried for this one with all the character additions but so far, with two full trailers out, this looks like it could possibly be the best one. Kudos, Marvel.

In this episode, DJ attempts to play multiple games that we were assured he had played before but he still manages to be really bad at and all of our good ideas about entertaining game play go out of the window. We discuss the many, many superhero movies coming out in 2016, what we’re excited about and what we’re really worried about. Also covered are video games, Yasiin Bey, the Royal Rumble, and a lot of failed segues. 

 Hail to the King, Baby

A couple of years ago at Dragon Con, my good friend JJ Hawkins (of DOOM’s very own Mars Needs Podcasts) surprised me. I opened up my laptop and he saw my desktop at the time which was a rather eye pleasing rendition of our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. He uttered a sentence which shook me at the time “I didn’t know you liked Spider-Man”.

Really? Had I kept this such a secret from the internet world? I have spoken at length with him before about comics and comic book movies, but did I not convey my deepest love for Peter Parker himself? I knew I had to correct this and maybe today is my time to do so.

I fucking love Spider-Man. He was my gateway into super heroes. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love him. I still vividly remember being up at an ungodly hour of the morning watching Spider-man and Friends on TV. He is both at once a kid-friendly super hero and completely depressing tragic figure.

I could get into the life story of Peter Parker and discuss how the character is the Shakespearean tragedy that never was. How he is a role model for anyone who has suffered loss in their life. Or anyone, ever, for that matter. But these “They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To” posts are about theme tunes. And I’ll be damned if the Spider-man one isn’t worth talking about all by itself.

First of all, there are about 4 people shouting at you through the whole song. Sure, it’s probably only one man and one woman doubled up a couple of times but it’s like having a chorus of people ritually chanting at you as fast as they can.

The pace of the song is kind of hilarious too. I’ve often tuned out the lyrics as it’s just so hyperactive. But it’s worth listening intently because “listen bud, he’s got radioactive blood” and “to him life is a great big bang-up” are so truly dorky they’re amazing.

And just to show how great a theme tune this is, check out the video below where heartthrob and all round dream-boat Michael Bublé does a cover of it. A fantastically jazzy cover it is too. How many other kids TV show theme tunes have been re-done by big musicians? It just goes to show how much of a timeless classic it is.