Rare veteran Chris Sutherland recently reflected on the development of The Amazing Spider-Man for Game Boy. Released in 1990, the game was made by just three people, even though he had never seen or heard of the Game Boy before joining Rare.
The Amazing Spider-Man was also the only superhero game Rare ever developed. It was published by LJN in North America and by Nintendo in Europe. The three-person team consisted of Sutherland on programming, Trevor Hill on graphics and design contributions, and David Wise on audio.
Sutherland graduated from university in 1989 after studying computer science and playing games on the ZX Spectrum. He applied for a job at Acorn Computers and also wrote to Rare, a company he had followed for a long time. Although he had never developed a game before, he secured an interview and traveled from Scotland to Rare's headquarters in the Midlands of England.
During the interview, Sutherland spent a long time discussing the arcade game Golden Axe with Rare founders Tim Stamper and Chris Stamper, covering aspects like the feel of sword swings and the mechanic of pushing the joystick repeatedly to trigger a dash. Rare subsequently offered him the job, and despite Acorn offering a higher salary, he ultimately chose to enter the games industry.
On his first day at Rare, which was then housed in converted farm barns, Sutherland got his hands on Game Boy hardware and some documentation. On the second day, Carol Stamper handed him a folder, telling him this was the game he would be making. Sutherland speculates that the company assigned him the Spider-Man project because he mentioned his love for Marvel comics during the interview.
Fresh out of university and on his second day of his first full-time job, Sutherland began working on the game. Looking back years later, he admitted that such an arrangement sounded quite daunting, but at the time he felt no fear—just a determination to get on with making it since the task had been handed to him. In the end, The Amazing Spider-Man was completed by this three-person team.