14 Years Later, Spider-Man’s Best Scorpion Design Is Still Unbeatable

Published Aug 23, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT Jared is a writer, editor, and Communications Studies graduate who loves popular nerd culture (almost anything to do with Marvel, DC, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings) and the interactive storytelling medium. Jared's first console was the PS1, wherein he fell for Spider-Man, Spyro the Dragon, and Crash Bandicoot. The best part of having different universes and continuities in Marvel and DC stories is that you get brand-new and creative iterations of classic characters, such as Spider-Man. Even more exciting than a new interpretation of a superhero’s mythology and iconography, though, is that of supervillains, as there is usually a lot more leeway and open-endedness. For instance, if it wasn’t for Spider-Man: Edge of Time, we’d have never gotten to see Atrocity, an amalgamation of Eddie Brock/Anti-Venom, Doctor Octopus, and Walker Sloan. Some of the best Spider-Man games ever have indulged in their own authentic, original stories and canon, such as Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). The latter is a movie tie-in video game adaptation and epilogue to the events of the movie, and its strongest asset is how it takes beloved Spider-Man villains like Scorpion and gives them their most horrific designs yet. The Amazing Spider-Man’s Scorpion Had The Symbiote All Along While the Amazing Spider-Man movies don’t feature Scorpion, the games do, and Scorpion has arguably never looked more haunting and hideous than he does in the first Amazing Spider-Man game. This design undoubtedly eschews the cartoonish nature of Scorpion’s classic green costume and instead presents a disgusting mutation that was produced by none other than the Amazing Spider-Man universe’s Dr. Otto Octavius. It’s most comparable to that of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions’ Scorpion 2099 design, though far more vile and distinguishably brown. Per Scorpion’s in-game character biography, we learn that there is more than meets the eye to this design, adding a neat layer of lore to it: “Not satisfied with simply infusing human DNA into a highly venomous black fat-tailed scorpion, Octavius threw in a touch of a mysterious, organic ‘black goo’ of unknown origin, which Oscorp had recently retrieved from one of the company’s fallen satellites in secret.” This “black goo” is clearly a reference to the alien symbiote in The Amazing Spider-Man’s canon. The movies never got to feature the symbiote as a suit Peter would wear or bonded to somebody as Venom, though we did get to see it as a swirling mass in one of the indiscreet chambers that teased a Sinister Six for a future movie. Therefore, the game’s Scorpion is technically the first tease of the symbiote this universe had. It’s fun to learn that the symbiote was used in the horrendous scientific process of spawning such a monstrosity, even if that lore would only end up existing within the specific canon of the games, which diverged from the lore of the movies as soon as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 retconned it. TASM Is Delightfully Grotesque The greatest gift the Amazing Spider-Man movie gave the game was the premise of cross-species genetics and how Oscorp could become a hotbed for revolting monsters based on Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery of villains. Indeed, The Amazing Spider-Man’s introductory scene, told via Peter Parker’s first-person POV, is a guided tour of Oscorp, where players witness the cross-species horrors that are being concocted. It’s neat to see how these characters look through the niche lens of this franchise, specifically the first movie. Meanwhile, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 chose to feature a comparably mundane Electro who gets his powers from genetically engineered electric eels, and a Green Goblin whose affliction is a cocktail composed of a degenerative, hereditary disease—retroviral hyperplasia, the “Osborn curse”—with a splash of genetically engineered spider blood. Basically, the sequel abandons every narrative concept that made The Amazing Spider-Man interesting. And, sadly, the atrocious Amazing Spider-Man 2 game reveals that Kraven the Hunter killed and taxidermied Scorpion, Iguana, Nattie/Piranha, and Vermin, foolishly wiping its own hands of that same wonderful Spider-Man premise. Systems Released June 26, 2012 ESRB T // Mild Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence Developer(s) Beenox Publisher(s) Activision Engine Insomniac Engine v.4.0 Franchise Spider-Man Platform(s) PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo Wii U, PC, Vita, Nintendo DS, 3DS, Mobile Genre(s) Action, Adventure, Fighting Metascore 71