At GR we think pretty highly of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. We love the amazing one so much, let us count the ways. Oh, wait, we already did. With his 50th anniversary and brand new film/game tie-in happening right now, we thought this was the perfect time to rank the ten best Spider-Man games ever made. After more than 30 years of releases, it wasn't easy, but we narrowed it down to these select titles. Starting with...

In the early 1990s comic readers were enamored with Spidey's newest villain, Venom. He became popular enough to begin starring in his own series as well as becoming a hero of sorts, co-starring with Spider-Man to battle Venom's progeny, the murderous Carnage. The massive crossover where it all happened was called Maximum Carnage, the same title as the Genesis/SNES game it was based on.

These days the game doesn't hold up all that well, but it's still worth remembering based on its devotion to the source material. Stages and enemies were ripped straight from the comic page, all set to a soundtrack by alternative band Green Jellÿ. It may be a frustrating Final Fight clone, but at least it respected the continuity.

Another arcade beat 'em up, this Sega creation is a colorful classic. Made during Sega's arcade heyday, if you were a kid at the time it came out, the bright colors, fluid animation and spoken dialogue seemed like the fanciest thing you've ever experienced. Sure, it followed the same formula as other brawlers, but it shook things up by every once in awhile pulling back the camera to the point that the game became a platformer.

Sega's Spider-Man featured many of his greatest enemies, including the relatively new Venom, as well as Fantastic Four nemesis Doctor Doom. Unlike similar games from the time, like X-Men, TMNT and Simpsons, Spider-Man has yet to see a downloadable rerelease, but we can always hold out hope.

After dozens of lackluster platformers and brawlers starring the webbed wonder, many fans were beginning to think he'd never star in a good game, let alone one fans would approve of. Then came the game that proved them wrong, and it came from the most unlikely of sources. With Spider-Man on the PSOne (and virtually every other console of the time), Neversoft proved they were more than just skateboarding experts.

Made mostly obsolete by the later open world adventures, Spider-Man embraced something that couldn't be expressed in Spidey console games before: Peter Parker's voice. Thanks to the extra space on CDs, Spidey talked constantly, cracking wise with his greatest enemies and superhero friends. It added a much needed personality to the character. It also was the first Spider-Man game that felt made by fans for fans, with dozens of cameos and jokes meant for comic readers. This was the beginning of modern Spider-Man games.

Spider-Man starred in multiple 2D adventures in the 8/16-bit days of gaming, but few made a real mark. Peter Parker starred in console games developed Rare, Acclaim and Capcom, but at the time it was Sega that understood the Web Slinger best. After some fun adventures on Genesis, Game Gear and Master System, Sega saved its best for the little played Sega CD.

Released in 1993, Spider-Man vs The Kingpin is basically a remake of 1991's Spider-Man for Genesis. This gave Sega a chance to revisit and improve a good game and really make it shine. Plus it had an open level structure that was very ahead of its time. It's true that it has laughable voice acting and a cheesy guitar-fueled theme song by Mr Big that look bad now, but underneath it all is the best 2D Spidey game ever made.

Spidey doesn't need to be the star of every game he appears in. Sometimes it's fun for Spider-Man to be part of an ensemble, just one of the unforgettable characters in the Marvel Universe. He's been a supporting character in many marvelous adventures, but if we had to pick one, it would be Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 as his best Marvel Team-Up.

A retelling of the highly publicized storyline Civil War, the plot is ripped from the headlines, as the hero community reacts in different ways to a horrifying terror attack. Spider-Man - along with heroes as varied as Iron Man, She-Hulk and Wolverine - have to choose their side on the issue. Even without that plot hook, the simple fun of teaming Spidey up with multiple heroes (we preferred the classic duo of him with the Human Torch) was enough of draw for the MUA2. But when will there be a MUA3?

We'll be the first to say that as a game, Shattered Dimensions was more than a little disjointed. How could it not be with a concept that brought together Spider-Men from different universes? You basically ended up with four different, smaller Spider games in one and some aren't as good as others. However, even if it fails at times to be a great video game, as a celebration of Spider-Man's history and mythos, few games are as good.

Shattered Dimensions brought together the regular Marvel Universe Spidey with Ultimate Spider-Man, 2099's Spider-Man, and the Noir Spidey of an alternate 1920s. The dialogue, settings, rich rogues' gallery and the casting of the voice talent, everything was some form of tribute to Spidey's decades of history. Even when the gameplay falls down, any Spider-fan will find something to love about the game.

As this list proves, Spider-Man is most at home in third person adventures of the platforming or open world variety. Still, when he branches off sometimes you get great results, the best example being his appearances in fighting games. And no, we aren't talking about Marvel: Nemesis, but all the fun times he's had in Capcom fighters.

We had great times for more than a decade busting out Maximum Spider in a half-dozen games, but if we had to pick a favorite of all the Vs games, the choice is obvious for Spider-Man fans. Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 featured way more fan service than any before, with so many alternate costumes and whole stages made in tribute to Peter Parker. Let the fighting game fanatics argue over the gameplay, for Spidey fans the choice is easy.

Unlike DC's made up cities of Mettropolis and Gotham, Marvel heroes has always been very directly tied to New York City. Almost every Spider-Man game had been set in NYC, but you never got a real feel for the Big Apple. After Grand Theft Auto III proved the power of sandbox gaming set in a persistent city, Spider-Man and developer Treyarch came to the obvious conclusion: put Spidey in a living, breathing Manhattan.

By today's standards the city seems a little empty and the missions, particularly the balloon-catching ones, are regrettably boring more often than not. But the impact of finally swinging through a full recreation of NYC as Spidey can't be understated. Until Batman came around, games like Spider-Man 2 and its sequels were seen as the absolute best in comic book games.

The direct sequel to the genre-defining Spider-Man 2 game, developer Treyarch improved everything for their second open world adventure. New York City was expanded, given more character and the mission variety grew bigger than ever. NYC looked better than ever too, as Ultimate embraced the cel-shaded look that was all the rage back then, meaning the game's graphics have aged well.

Set in the comic book world of Ultimate Spider-Man starring a younger version of Peter Parker, you spend the game trading off between Pete and his nemesis Venom. The story was written by Ultimate Spider-Man scribe Brian Michael Bendis and the visuals were based on Ult Spidey artist Mark Bagley, making the game appear ripped from the comics page. No Spider-game since has so embraced its comic roots, but we wish someone would try.

With SO many classic Spider-Man adventures to choose from, it was tough to pick the best. Ultimately we had to ask ourselves, "If we could suggest only one Spider-Man game to someone that never played one, what would it be?" The answer was clear. Unappreciated in its time, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows pulled together almost everything we love about the franchise into one beautiful package.

Let's run down the list: The best defined Manhattan that's continually shifting, combat perfectly expresses Spider-Man's proportionate spider powers, cameos from Marvel heroes Luke Cage and Wolverine, and bringing back the fan-favorite black symbiote suit as a core feature. We're not sure why it never had a sequel, but if you can still find the game out there it's at least worth a couple of weekends.

Did we ignore your fave Spider-adventure? Was our order not to your liking? Or are we geniuses? Let us know in the comments!

If you want to learn more about Spider-Man fun, read our top 7 reasons Spider-Man games are amazing and our Amazing Spider-Man review.