after an epic battle, retreating into the sewers. Spider-Man thanks Venom, saying he hopes he will work with him in the future, but Venom retreats before replying. Meanwhile, the Carnage symbiote escapes the scene. Gameplay In this single-player side-scrolling beat 'em up (with a format similar to Double Dragon and Final Fight), the player controls Spider-Man and Venom through various levels to stop the supervillain Carnage and his team, as well as hundreds of criminals they inspire in their wake, from taking over the city. The two 16-bit versions are virtually identical. Other Marvel heroes can be summoned by collecting appropriate items hidden within certain levels. The locations of the power-ups necessary to summon aid are set. Depending on which character summoned them, the summoned heroes may help out in different ways, usually being more effective for whichever character (Spider-Man or Venom) they favor. Development Maximum Carnage is one of the first video games to be directly based on a comic book story, rather than simply using comics characters in a standard video game "action/adventure" plot. Many of the game's cutscenes feature semi-animated versions of art taken directly from the comics. It was also the first Spider-Man video game to receive a teen rating (while the SNES re-release version had a rating of K-A, the Genesis version was rated MA-13). The game's soundtrack was written and produced by American rock group Green Jellÿ. The title screen theme song appears as the first track on the band's 1994 album 333 as "Carnage Rules". Due to the limited storage capacity of SNES and Genesis cartridges, the soundtrack was not recorded music, but a computerized rendition of the songs. Additionally, an uncredited version of Black Sabbath's "The Mob Rules" appears in the soundtrack, during the boss battles against the super villains. Reception The game received "mixed or average" and "generally favorable" reviews. The reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly scored the SNES version a unanimous 5 out of 10, commenting that the appearances by other superheroes are "cool", but outweighed by the "sloppy" graphics and mediocre control. The SNES version was also given a 3.45/5 from Nintendo Power. Reviewing the Genesis port, GamePro commented that "all the graphics, features, and fighting action are identical on the Genesis version—unfortunately, so are the drawbacks that made this only an average SNES game". They elaborated that the game controls well but is overly long and repetitive due