Screenshots from VG Museum (Genesis version)

Year released: 1994 (Genesis, SNES)

Number of Players: 1

Graphics: Mostly cityscape graphics that look somewhat (not too much, but somewhat) more cartoonish than comic book standards. Animation is pretty fluid for Spiderman, but the same can't be said for Venom. The sprite size isn't anything special; not large, not small.

Play control: For the Genesis buttons, Use the control pad to move around (any direction, including diagonal), use the A button to punch, B button to jump, C to employ webbing in battle orientations, and Y to employ webbing to get around. That is, pressing C will allow you to grab someone if you hold the control pad forward, trap someone in webbing if you tap C, or hold up a webbing shield if you hold C. However, when you press Y, your character will shoot web upward, jump, and swing from it. Or, if you don't have a six-button Genesis controller, you can press up and C at the same time for the same function. Buttons are... different in the SNES version. You figure it out. :b It won't be too hard. Rest assured, the shoulder buttons are never called upon, nor is Select.
Tap the control pad left or right and then hold that direction down to run. Press the punch button while doing this to slide while shoving your body forward as an attack. If you're close to someone, you'll grab them. Press up to hoist them above you, and from there you can press the punch button to throw them. Also, you can jump onto walls in the background and climb. Finally, (on solid ground) jump while stationary and then, an instant later, shove backward on the control pad to do a backwards flip. Any foes that were in front of your character will get kicked.

Sound: The music is kinda dark and kinda techno. Sound effects are... dull, standard, and as realistic as the hardware can get (at least as far as my experience can judge).

Challenge: Make it through the stages filled with angry people ready to beat you up and then go toe to toe with Doppleganger, a six-armed Spiderman. It's hard to beat the first stage once you pick the game up for the first time, but after that, the steps up in difficulty come pretty smoothly.

Gameplay: As you can see above, the game is a beat-em-up engine with a few new tricks. Beat-em-ups are shallow as is, so those new tricks double the gameplay variety as much as adding 1 can double 1. I dunno, the analogy sounded better in my head. Not to say that beat-em-ups--and this game included--aren't fun.
Managing your character as you try to beat up multiple enemies littering the screen and figuring out how to hone in on the weaknesses of the bosses works as well as ever in this game. Enemies don't have too much health, so the game doesn't slow you down too much. The bosses have strengths and weaknesses so far as combat goes, making you adjust your repertoire of moves to fit your needs.

Bottom line: As it stands, the game has a satisfactory beat-em-up engine with some web-slinging thrown in, and the game comes out a semi-unique experience. Almost as good as Streets of Rage. However, among many differences, Maximum Carnage is missing the all-1337 two player cooperative play mode. Being able to do team moves with Spiderman and Venom definetely would have been cool.

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