Pop culture lost a towering figure when Stan Lee passed away this week, but the body of work he left behind speaks for itself. If it’s impossible to list everything he’s done, or even cobble together some kind of “best of” list, I can certainly show you one of his strangest cameo appearances.
It happened in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man.
Stan Lee is Spider-Man
The Amazing Spider-Man is no longer available on Steam due to the expiration of Activision’s Spider-Man licensing agreement, but you can see part of the game’s listing through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
For $3.99, you could purchase an additional mission that put you in direct control of Stan Lee himself as he zipped over and around New York City, collecting pages of a lost script.
“Completely voiced by the Spider-Man creator himself, you’ll play as Stan Lee and web-sling through NYC in an amazing race across the city,” the official description stated. “Take on Spidey’s powers as you wall crawl, web rush, and swing across Manhattan to collect the missing pages of Stan ‘The Man’s’ latest script. Collect all the pages and unlock a surprise reward!”
The surprise reward was a surreal dance party celebrating Spider-Man’s 50th anniversary, with all the game’s villains cutting a rug as Stan Lee wishes Spider-Man a happy birthday. Yes, it was very odd.
You can watch the challenge, along with the party, in the video above. You can also see what The Amazing Spider-Man looked like when you played with the Stan Lee skin, complete with his voice acting.
Watching Stan Lee swing across Manhattan while exclaiming, “I’m going to tweet about this!” is an experience that you shouldn’t deny yourself.
