---------------------------------[80 char width]-------------------------------- Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace (GameBoy Advance) =============================================== FAQ Release 3. Written by Ian C. Smith 1 - Introduction 1.1 - Author 1.2 - Copyright 2 - Revision History 3 - Controls 3.1 - Combat 4 - Powerups 4.1 - Powerups without playing for them 4.2 - How to get each powerup 4.3 - The effects of each powerup 4.4 - Suggested pathway 5 - Other stuff 6 - Credits and End 1 - Introduction ---------------- This FAQ was originally written as a guide to the upgrades in the game, where they were located, etc. Before releasing it, however, I added more for a more general guide to the game. This document was written using the US version of the game, but it uses 'proper' English spelling where there are any linguistic differences. I've added every detail I can think of, where possible. However, if you have problems, please feel free to send me an e-mail. 1.1 - Author ------------ A teenage fan of the Spider-Man mythos, sagas, stories and general overall scheme, I'm not your comic-book obsessed fan, nor a GameBoy fanatic. However, seeing this really caught my eye, and I'm glad it did. It's one of the best games for the GameBoy Advance, and a handful of years ago could have easily stood up to the latest PC platformer. I've spent a fair amount of time writing, detailing and checking the walkthrough, but nothing is ever perfect. If you wish to contact me at all, please send e-mail to neuronic55@hotmail.com I won't take kindly to spam, junk mail, requests for insane detail, crudely crafted e-mails, etc. 1.2 - Copyright --------------- This document is copyright 2002, Ian C. Smith. This may be copied for private use, unaltered, unedited and unmodified. It may *not* be posted, in any form, to any website except those which have been authorised and received their copies direct from myself. This release (R2), is different from the original Release 1. Please take note of the secondary distribution site. GameFAQs.com - Search "spiderman mysterio's menace", or look under GameBoy Advance -> S. Neoseeker.com - Search "spiderman mysterio's menace". http://www.gbacheats.fsnet.co.uk/ http://www.cheatcc.com/ GameFAQs.com is the primary distribution point, and will be updated first. Secondary distribution will follow shortly. 2 - Revision History -------------------- [DD/MM/YY] Release 1, 30/12/01: > Everything I wanted covered, covered. Release 2, 07/01/02: > Added link to a video on how to get the Symbiote costume. > Edited some of the text, and fixed a few layout problems. > Altered the release/distribution information. Release 3, 13/01/02: > Changed distribution information. > Added e-mail from Jesse Booth. 3 - Controls ------------ Left Button - Impact Webbing Right Button - Trap Webbing Left Button + Right Button - Web Shield A Button (Standing) - Jump A Button (Mid-Air) - Websling B Button (Standing) - Attack B Button (Mid-Air) - Flying Kick Left (Standing) - Walk/Run Left Right (Standing) - Walk/Run Right Down (Standing) - Crouch Down + B (Crouched Upside-Down) - Smash Drop Up + B (Standing) - Upper-Cut Up + B (Mid-Air) - Spin-Kick 3.1 - Combat ------------ (I've placed this section here, as it's quite tied in with the above 'Controls' information...) For such a limited number of controls, combat in S-M:MM, is surprisingly complex and variable. You won't get hurt just by touching the enemies, unrealistically portrayed in a number of games. Rather, you have to be punched, kicked, clubbed, shot, fire-bombed, zapped, burnt, etc to take damage. Your effectiveness at handing out damage to your opponents is noted by the little damage bar which will appear at the bottom of the screen when you score a damaging hit. Realistically, not all enemies have the same damage capability. The best technique is to vary your techniques, and be wary of the attacks each enemy has. Use your webbing to maximum advantage, jump, crouch on walls, hang from the ceiling. Standard attacks, when standing, executed one after the other (as in, B,B,B,B), will follow one of two sets. They consist of about 4 standard punches, finishing with either a knock-down punch or a knock-down kick. Knock-down moves will smack your opponent to the floor, as well as do a bit more damage than normal moves. However, they take more time and can leave you open for a counter-attack. All moves which have a white 'action-trail', like the Upper-Cut, Spin-Kick and the finish moves in the standard attack sets, will deliver knock-down, as will impact webbing enhanced by the Heavy Impact Web powerup. For thugs, gun-men and some of the bosses, a very easy and fairly effective technique is to leave a small distance between you and your target. Then move towards them, hopefully having left enough distance to hit Spider-Man's run stride. Then when you get within striking distance, hit B, and you'll launch into a flying side-kick. While you're still in the air, execute a spin-kick. Green and Blue Armour will grant you some extra protection before your health actually starts to go down, Green giving you around 1/3 partial armour, and Blue giving you all. Invincibility, picked up at various places, will make you unbeatable for about 20 seconds. Not only will you not take damage for virtually everything, but they won't be able to hit you either. An added plus is that every single attack you launch will be a knock-down. 4 - Powerups ------------ Powerups are a great part of the game. Finding them, and collecting them, is something of a challenge, as their hiding places can be quite tricky. 4.1 - Powerups without playing for them --------------------------------------- Q. Is there any other way of getting the powerups, *without* actually picking them all up? A. Sure is... the game revolves around a password system, rather than a save system, with all the information about your upgrades and the levels you've completed encrypted into the password. If you really, really have to, enter one of the following into the Password select. They *really* detract from the whole experience, and the value of the game if you do, however. TB31T - All upgrades become available, but all levels and all Bosses have been defeated. And you'll be playing under the Super-Hero difficulty. 7V84Z - The Armour Suit, Fluid Upgrade Left and Right Cartridges will be added to your arsenal. In addition, Downtown, Pier 54, Empire Metals, Museum and the Nightclub levels will be completed. RV8WJ - The Armour Suit, Fluid Upgrade, Left and Right Cartridges are added, and you are sent forward to The Amusement Park, the final level. SP1DY - The Symbiote Costume, Thermal Costume and the Armour Suit are gained, plus you'll be playing under the Super-Hero setting. SM11W - The Symbiote Costume, Thermal Costume, Fluid Upgrade and Compressor are given to you, under the Super-Hero setting. SMXXW - The Symbiote Costume, Thermal Costume, Electric Costume and Fluid Upgrade are given to you, under the Super-Hero setting. JV37T - All Levels, All Upgrades except for one, and All Bosses defeated. 4.2 - How to get each powerup ----------------------------- Q. How do I get the Armour Suit? A. In the Nightclub level, you must find the door which is on a ledge above the disco glitter ball (a big glittery purple thing). Go in the door, and head towards the left. It's the blue tile hanging in mid-air. Q. How do I get the Thermal Suit? A. In the Musuem, there is a raised section of floor, surrounded by fire, and with a flimsy-looking wooden panel covering the start of a shaft that is lined with spikes. Make sure you're on the flooring, get into crawling position and hit jump. Q. How do I get the Electric Suit? A. At ChemCorp, you'll find a set of intersecting pipes, forming a "+" in the middle of the screen. After finding your way through the path, snaking left from the top of the north-pointing pipe, you'll come to an area that begins with three 'zappers'. Continue through here, climb the walls, etc until you reach the area *on top* of the pipe you'll find here. At the bend, you should jump off at the right most point, and web-sling your way to the right. Your goal is just above the big set of electric wiring that'll give you a good zap if you stuff up. It isn't impossible, although it even took me a few attempts. Now, just crawl up the wall, then across the ceiling, and you'll be able to pickup the Electric Suit. Q. How do I get the Spider Belt? A. After getting the Electric Suit, you'll be able to climb up the walls of the first main building of the level (above the Pier 54 sign above where you start). Continue along there until you reach a red girder section. Halfway along the girder bridge you'll find the Spider Belt. Q. How do I get the Left Wrist Container? A. At Empire Metals, a fair way along the first section of the level, you'll find a large chute going upwards, with yellow gears (painful) spaced along the walls at intervals just large enough for you to traverse. Climb up there and you'll find the Left Compartment on the left near the big pipes. Q. How do I get the Right Wrist Container? A. In the Museum, at the start, take the far right door (it should be designated with a small downward arrow next to the big 'enter' arrow), fight your way through and climb up the long vertical shaft. The power-up is easily gained here if you have the Thermal Suit. Q. How do I get the Fluid Upgrade? A. In Downtown, when you see a roof-top with a machine-gunner (complete with '40s hat and cheap suit), climb up onto the left-most point. Then web-sling to the left, continually. Even if you don't get it, you should see the Fluid Upgrade, and get it on the next pass. Q. How do I get the Heavy Impact Web? A. At Pier 54, after the mini-level *inside* the houseboat, you'll come out at the other side of the houseboat. After slugging your way through the various obstacles, you'll reach a green building. Go to the very upper-left edge of this building's roof, and web-sling *hard* over to the left. Keep going... and going... and going... until you reach the roof of the houseboat. There you'll find the Heavy Impact Web. Q. How do I get the Compressor? A. At Empire Metals, in the stage of the level, after the small, short stage, you should find a combination of gears and saws preventing you from entering a small passage, with no other exit. Around there you should find an invincibility. However, there are two, so if you find one which is *really* far away, skip it and try to find the other. Once you have the invincibility, don't waste any time running past the obstacles, and grabbing your prize of the compressor. Q. How do I get the Symbiote Suit? A. This is a very, very nasty sucker to get. It is also incredibly hard to describe. In the third sub-section of the Amusement Park, shortly after the beginning, you'll come upon a really large chamber with spikes covering the walls and floor. From the left, you must websling into the air, around two and a half swings, then drop down. If you're at the right place, you should see an opening in the floor. You *must* drop down the very centre of this, because the spikes will smack you something shocking if you don't, and most importantly, you'll lose control. Just as the spikes on the right wall of this chute change direction (to become the ceiling of a horizontal passage), you must websling to the right. If you don't time it perfectly you'll drop onto the insta-death spikes on the floor of this passage. If you make it past the insta-death spikes, you immediately have to change direction as you drop and stick to the itsy-bitsy piece of unspiked wall. Around now, you'll be wishing that there was a really, really good save feature. Once you've gone potty and gotten rid of the sweat-stained shirt, drop from the small hang-point, and websling into the left-leading passage. Once you're down on solid ground, go west until you see the blades. Websling over it (after everything you've done, it should be a piece of cake), and climb up onto the new ledge a little way to the left. Continue until you see blades. The way I got past the layered blades was to go to the left edge of the upper ledge, and then drop to the left (actually press Left, don't just drop straight down). Just before you hit the second blade, websling left, and you should drop painlessly to the ground past those nasty blades. I won't bother walking you through the rest, it's so easy after everything you've just been through. Just don't die. Pick up the Symbiote and go through the door, which puts you at the start of your current sub-level (not at the very start of the overall level, though). Thanks to Tyler Maciolek, here is a video that apparently shows how to get at the symbiote suit... http://www.nintendopower.com/images/v149/spiderman.mov 4.3 - The effects of each powerup --------------------------------- Q. What does the Armour Suit do? A. The Armour suit reduces the amount of damage you take from virtually everything. Guns, kicks, fire, electricity. Q. What does the Thermal Suit do? A. Removes the annoying 'Pyro-Spidey' effect, meaning you can do your stuff where flames are concerned. However, you'll still take damage, but from what I can tell, not so much. Just don't stand on heaps of fire for too long though, you'll end up stuck, in agony, and quite soon, dead. Fire-bomb ninjas, fire-bomb gun-men, flame-thrower chem-suit dudes and the zappers will also have a reduced effect on your health, and will no longer be able to make you perform the acrobatic-burning-spidey-jump. Q. What does the Electric Suit do? A. Pretty much the same thing as the Thermal Suit, except this time for those pesky open electric boards and electro-pulse chem-suit dudes. Electro and Big-Dude Mysterio (when he uses the electric attack) won't phase you... much. Q. What does the Spider Belt, Left and Right Wrist Containers do? A. In short, give you extra web-cartridge slots. Q. What does the Fluid Upgrade do? A. It'll enhance your Trap Webbing so that it approximately doubles the 'trap' time. Q. What does the Heavy Impact Web do? A. It'll enhance the power of your impact web (duh...) and make every shot that connects a knock-down. Q. What does the Compressor do? A. Gives you more web for your cartridge. Packs more fluid into the available space, really. Q. What does the Symbiote Suit do? A. This one is a bit puzzling... for a quick review, the Symbiote Suit was originally obtained by Spider-Man while fighting in the Secret Wars. Believing it was simply an advanced combat outfit (as he was fighting in space... w00!), he didn't realise that normal costumes didn't produce their own web, enhance even his superhuman strength, speed and agility, react to his own thoughts, and drive him mad. Nice going, Parker. Anyway, he got it off, Symbiote bonded with Eddie Brock, produced Venom. Let's hope we see some of Venom in later games from Vicarious... And back to the actual game. For sure, the Symbiote Suit regenerates web, and not at a very slow rate either. Coupled with the Compressor and the container upgrades, you'll need to shoot off a hell of a lot of web to run you down. In addition, it seems to make you tougher, in terms of the amount of damage you dish out, but that may just be my wishful thinking... Too bad it doesn't react to your thoughts... 4.4 - Suggested pathway ----------------------- When I first played through the game, I only picked up about two upgrades. The primary reason being, I didn't know how to get them, and I didn't go back to check. I took a route which was probably the worst one in terms of actually obtaining all the upgrades. You shouldn't have that problem, however... Begin Downtown, collecting the Fluid Upgrade and then the Armour Suit from the Nightclub. Next, at Empire Metals, collect the Left Wrist Container and then the Compressor. Following on to ChemCorp, grab the Electric Suit. Pier 54 is next, where you put the Electric Suit to good use when collecting the Spider Belt, and the Heavy Impact Web. At the Museum, the Right Wrist Container and the Thermal Suit are the upgrades to be had. The final upgrade is, of course, to be gained at Mysterio's haunted house. 5 - Other stuff --------------- As mentioned before, there is a video (which I haven't really checked out myself), which shows you how to get the Symbiote costume. I didn't use it, but received this nice tip from Tyler Maciolek. The link is... http://www.nintendopower.com/images/v149/spiderman.mov... but I don't guarantee that it will work, or the video will be available. For those with a GameShark (or who dump their games onto their computer and play with an emulator), here is a rather pointless set of GS codes. The only reason I could think of using this might be in the Boss sequences, or when getting some of the trickier power-ups. Enter these 2 on a seperate line each. Apparently GS requires these to activate the codes which do something... B2EDD770A9321FCE 19B8441D3A3453BD Enter this code, and press the GameShark button for slow... 7896079427667199 If you play your games with the Visual Boy Advance emulator (or an emulator which uses a similar code interface...) you might want to try these. Please note, they are not GameShark, Xploder or Action Replay (etc.) codes. And they may not work if the dump you made is different from the dump used to research these cheats. I don't guarantee these will work, and I don't guarantee that they won't destroy your game. In fact, I don't recommend using them at all. Infinite web-fluid: 0200015c:64 0200018c:64 02003184:64 Infinite health: 02000154:96 02000184:96 02003158:96 A little something I found in my mailbox... [begin] subj:nice spidey faq BTW- Thought you could use another password, CRDT5 takes you to the credits. And, believe it or not, the SP1DY password was not intentional. :) // Jesse Booth // Project Manager, Team Baisoku // Vicarious Visions, www.vvisions.com [end] 6 - Credits and End ------------------- Nearly everything in this FAQ/guide was written by me, however additional credits include... Stan Lee: if you don't know who this is, you shouldn't call yourself a Spider-Man fan... Vicarious Visions: who did very nice work on the game... Marvel: obvious... Tyler Maciolek: for the tip on the net-video available, showing you how to get to the Symbiote suit... As far as I can tell, the only thing I'd want to add to this FAQ would be a large scale, high-detail walkthrough. However, I feel that it would take far too long and be of little benefit to players of the game. The path through each level is fairly linear and easy to follow mentally, if not play-wise. If someone out there writes one, I'd be more than happy to edit it and combine it with the information I already have here. Ian C. Smith neuronic55@hotmail.com 13/01/02