Editorials
[Editorial] The Video Game Return of Two Undead Classics, Done in Different Ways
In January, the zombie returned.
For the third year in a row, Capcom ruled the first month of the calendar year, this time with a remake (reenvisioning? Remix? REmake?) of their seminal 1998 horror hit, Resident Evil 2.
But, the mummy returned, too.
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, a 2003 3D puzzle-platformer, published originally by THQ and revived by THQ Nordic, made its Switch debut on January 29.
Both of these games are excellent. Resident Evil 2 is genuinely frightening; a survival horror game that, true to the genre’s and the original game’s roots, derives tension as much from inventory management and ammo scarcity as from jerkily shuffling zombies and eerily fast lickers.
The chaos of this no good, very bad night in Raccoon City is amplified by how clean and clear the world otherwise is. The police station looks like it was designed with a protractor, a ruler and graph paper as symmetrical and right-angled as anything in gaming. The graphics are impeccably crisp. The map is impressively communicative, effortlessly expressing just how much of a room’s resources you’ve managed to exploit.
Whereas the original Resident Evil 2 milked scares from the challenge of controlling its unwieldy, tank-like characters, this new Resident Evil 2 is always perfectly readable; perfectly clear. You will never die because the controls got in your way. It looks, plays perfectly.
So then, this Resident Evil 2, like the zombies that haunt its halls, has been resurrected but isn’t quite the same. It’s still RE2, to be sure, but, also, it isn’t.
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, on the other hand, is basically identical to the game it was in 2003. The textures are smoother, the colors are brighter, the frame rate is faster. But, if you, like me, need to watch a YouTube walkthrough on occasion to bypass some of Sphinx’s more esoteric puzzles, you will see the same game represented in 10-year-old gameplay videos. The animations are the same, the movement is the same, the character models are the same. It’s functionally identical; the original just looks like you’re watching the remaster on an old VHS tape. (Also, the Papyrus font that developer Eurocom used for the UI in the original has been mercifully excised in favor of something less clip art-y).
Basically, THQ Nordic changed almost nothing and released a PS2 game on Switch. And, surprisingly, it 100 percent works.
If you never played Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, let me explain the basics. Gameplay is split pretty evenly between sections starting each of the two title characters: Sphinx, a young catman with a lion’s mane and tail; and the Cursed Mummy who, underneath the bandages, is Tutankhamun, the real-life Egyptian prince mummified as a teenager. In the game, Tut has been betrayed by the dark god, Set, masquerading as his jealous older brother. Sphinx and the Mummy work together, though in separate locations, to collect the scattered pieces of Tut’s soul and take down Set.
And, boy oh boy is it excellent. I went into Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy with fondness, having played and enjoyed the GameCube version with a little help from a Nintendo Power walkthrough a decade-and-a-half ago. But, I also went in with trepidation, aware of how some of my PS2-era faves, like Sonic Adventure 2, have aged into near unplayability.
This is not a problem here. Despite somewhat stiff camera controls and a complete lack of autosaves, Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy holds up (and better than many of its contemporaries that are heralded as classics). The Mummy sections are especially good, thrusting our TP-covered hero into Zelda-like puzzle boxes and then reframing his deadness as an asset. Tut can’t feel anything, so most puzzles involve burning him, electrocuting him, flattening him or slicing him into thirds. Eurocom got an incredible amount of mileage out of causing the Cursed Mummy creative bodily harm.
The Mummy—the monster at the core of this game—then is an excellent illustration for the way this reissue fits in in its new home on Switch. Like a mummification, this remaster hasn’t fundamentally altered what was there. Instead, THQ Nordic set out to preserve Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. And while many of its contemporaries have suffered the effects of decomposition—politely, some of them are beginning to stink—this Mummy is, for all intents and purposes, alive and kicking. Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy didn’t need major updates; it’s still a good-ass video game.
Just like the horror canon, video games need both: zombies and mummies. The industry is better for it when publishers like Capcom invest the resources to make their old games palatable for a new audience with new tastes. And, in the case of RE2, they’ve been richly rewarded for their efforts, with the remake quickly outselling Resident Evil 7 on Steam. But, the industry also needs to get better at making mummies. Many classic games are unplayable, not because their gameplay ideas have aged poorly, but because their rights holders have failed to put in the effort to preserve their slice of history and, in some cases, actively prevented fans from preserving them on their behalf. We don’t have libraries for games. We can’t just play Tennis for Two. The industry is at best forgetful of its own history and at worst actively seeks to destroy it.
We need more Mummies; presented flaws and all to the game playing public. Some stink; but others, underneath the bandages, are somehow still fresh.
Comics
‘Spider-Noir’ Comic Changes Explained: How the TV Series Reinvents Marvel’s Darkest Spider-Man
A little while back, I wrote an article chronicling the Hellraiser franchise’s affinity for Film Noir and touched on how that genre has, historically, always been connected to horror.
This connection can be observed in everything from the cannibalistic serial killers of Frank Miller’s Sin City to the disturbing criminal plots fueling neo-noir thrillers like Stuart Gordon’s underrated King of the Ants. That’s why it came as no surprise when I finally sat down to watch all eight episodes of Prime Video’s recently released Spider-Noir series and was confronted with plenty of classic horror tropes.
What did come as a surprise, however, was how showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot approached these horror elements when compared to the 2009 comic book that the show is based on. From the heavily altered rogue’s gallery to an equally terrifying yet completely different origin story for Nicolas Cage’s take on the webslinger, there are plenty of changes here that I feel might be of interest to genre fans.
With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to take a closer look at all the adjustments that Spider-Noir made to the story in order to bring this incarnation of Spider-Man to life in all of its monochromatic glory (unless you watched the True-Hue color version of the show, in which case you’ll be treated to a surprisingly comic-booky palette that you don’t usually see on television).
The Dark Origins of Marvel’s Spider-Man Noir
Our first order of business should be to examine the origins of the Noir comics themselves. Originally published as part of the Marvel Noir alternate universe that reimagined several characters as hard-boiled crime-fighters, Spider-Man Noir became the most successful book in the entire run. This highly politicized story about Peter Parker coming to terms with the capitalist evils of the Great Depression seemed to have struck a nerve with audiences looking for a darker take on the wall-crawler, which is likely why we’d soon see several sequel stories as well as a video game adaptation of the character in 2010’s underrated Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
Of course, it wasn’t just Spider-Man’s darker disposition that made this version of the character a hit, as 1930s New York City was depicted as being much more hostile than what we generally see in the standard Marvel Universe. From Peter’s powers coming from an Eldritch Spider God that spawns man-eating arachnids to Vulture being an ex-Freak-Show Gimp with a taste for human flesh, you can definitely understand why this Web-Head isn’t pulling his punches.
Unfortunately, this alternate universe was a little too popular for its own good, with each subsequent sequel/adaptation further diluting the political anger and classic horror influences that fueled the original comic-book run in order to appeal to a wider audience. Spider-Man Noir was nearly unrecognizable once we got to the Spider-Verse crossover that turned the character into a household name, though this would at least lead to an interesting adaptation in 2018.
The Classic Horror Influences Hidden Throughout Spider-Noir
Jack Huston as Sandman in ‘Spider-Noir’
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller finally translated Spider-Man Noir to the big screen, with Nicolas Cage bringing the character to life in an unexpected case of pitch-perfect casting, he was still mostly relegated to comic relief as his nazi-punching antics and over-the-top edginess were played for laughs. However, while this version of the character had little to do with the comics that spawned him, Spider-Noir’s newfound popularity eventually resulted in the announcement of a darker live-action spin-off – a spin-off that I was cautiously optimistic about.
While the showrunners ultimately decided to go in a completely different direction than the 2009 comic, the new team of writers appeared to understand Noir as a genre in ways that even the folks at Marvel Noir couldn’t quite grasp. That’s likely why 2026’s Spider-Noir boasts plenty of horror elements, just not in ways we’ve seen them before.
The series is obviously borrowing tropes and aesthetics from period-accurate monster movies, with Universal’s 1930s output being a particularly big influence. From the re-imagining of Sandman and Tombstone as tragic figures to The Spider even being operated on by a mad scientist with hilariously antiquated techniques, this bizarre collection of super-powered freaks could have easily shown up in a classic creature feature.
The scares aren’t all retro, however, as the showrunners also injected plenty of body-horror into the mix during their attempt at unifying the origin stories for all these larger-than-life characters. Hell, the Spider himself is now revealed to have gained his powers after being bitten by a half-mutated Man-Spider during World War I, and the aforementioned mad scientist keeps a disturbing collection of failed experiments in her basement, proving that not all of her patients were lucky enough to simply gain superpowers after being experimented on.
Nicolas Cage Reinvents Spider-Man Noir for Television
Ben Reilly/Spiderman (Nicolas Cage) in SPIDER-NOIR
Photo: Aaron Epstein/Prime
© Amazon Content Services LLC
I also really appreciate how Cage insists on depicting Ben Reilly as an arachnid trapped inside of a human body, with his uncanny physical performance and classic Hollywood impressions keeping your eyes glued to the screen while also providing some of the show’s funniest moments.
I still think it’s a shame that the character is no longer politically motivated, and I miss the detail about Uncle Ben having been cannibalized by Vulture after his social activism ruffled too many feathers, but at least this time our protagonist actually feels like someone who could have been written by Raymond Chandler if he were a fan of Superheroes.
In fact, the writers nailed the snappy back-and-forth that Noir authors like Dashiel Hammett used to refer to as the “riposte”, and it’s fun to see supervillains being depicted as horrific movie monsters instead of specialized henchmen – with The Spider feeling like just as much of a Freak Show attraction as the rest of them. Purists might be put off by the lack of reverence for the source material, but I think that’s a small price to pay when even the show’s most clichéd moments intentionally harken back to the golden age of Hollywood.
That’s why I’d argue that Amazon’s Spider-Noir isn’t really an adaptation, but rather an equally valid take on the same premise that inspired Marvel back in 2009. And in a world filled with recycled storylines that only serve to advertise future releases, I’d rather have two completely different visions of the same character than a straight-up retelling of the same handful of ideas.
At the end of the day, there’s enough space inside this comic fan’s heart for both man-eating Vultures and a Cronenberg-inspired Man-Spider. And if you’re also a fan of nostalgic creature features with comic book flair, I’d highly recommend this street-level superhero story with a spooky twist.
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