Ultimate Spider-Man is Treyarch’s 2005 open-world game based on Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man comic, with a story co-written by the comic’s writer, Brian Michael Bendis. Cel-shaded graphics and cutscenes laid out as comic panels make it look like the book come to life, and you play as two characters: Peter Parker’s Spider-Man and Eddie Brock’s Venom. If you own the GameCube version, Nagori lets you play it on iPhone and iPad.
What you need
- An iPhone 12 or newer, or an iPad with an A14 chip or newer, with iOS 17.6 or later.
- Nagori from the App Store. Your first game is free.
- A disc image of your copy of the GameCube version:
.iso,.gcm,.rvz,.cisoor.gcz, or a.zipor.rarcontaining it. The game fits on a single disc.
No BIOS file is needed.
How to play Ultimate Spider-Man on iPhone
- Install Nagori from the App Store.
- Copy your Ultimate Spider-Man disc image to the Files app, in iCloud Drive or On My iPhone.
- Open Nagori, tap + and select the file. Add GameCube games from inside Nagori: the Files app’s Open in menu doesn’t hand formats like
.rvzand.gcmto Nagori. - Find Ultimate Spider-Man on the GameCube shelf and press Play.
- Choose a layout with two sticks. The default Standard layout has no stick. Pause, open Settings → Touch Layout and pick Twin Sticks or DualShock for a right stick that works the camera. With a controller connected, you can skip this step.
Controls
Both characters move with the control stick, and the camera turns with the C-stick, which is the right stick in Nagori. Spider-Man swings while you hold a button and lets go when you release it, so your right thumb spends a lot of time on one button. Open Edit Layout in the pause menu, move that button under your right thumb, make it larger and keep the right stick close by.
Bluetooth controllers that iOS supports, including DualSense, DualShock 4 and Xbox controllers, work with Nagori and hide the touch controls once connected. A is the bottom face button, B the left one, X the right one and Y the top one; Z is the right shoulder button, and L and R are the triggers, which register as full presses. Press the left stick to open Nagori’s pause menu.
Spider-Man and Venom
The two halves of the game feel different. As Spider-Man you swing between buildings and fight with speed and webs. As Venom you get around with huge leaps instead of swinging, and you have to feed on people to keep your health up as it drains away.
Both characters face boss fights, with villains such as Rhino and Electro on Spider-Man’s side of the story. Save states help here:
- Pause and choose Save before a boss or a mission that keeps beating you, then Load to try again from that moment.
- As Venom, save while your health is still high, so a bad fight doesn’t leave you starting over on an empty bar.
Nagori keeps your last four saves per game. If you played Treyarch’s earlier film game, see how to play Spider-Man 2 as well.
Saves
The game records your progress on the memory card. That card works in Nagori as on the console, but stays inside the app: it isn’t in the Files app, isn’t part of Export Saves and doesn’t sync to iCloud. Leave Nagori at any point and Continue puts you back where you were. Keep the game’s own saves going: a save state may not load after some Nagori updates.
Best settings
Open Settings → Quality from the pause menu. Start on Medium, the default. Low keeps the device coolest, at a lower frame rate, and High is meant for the newest iPhones and iPads. Nagori shows GameCube games at their original resolution, which keeps the game’s thick comic-book outlines as they were. Full Screen stretches the picture to fill the display. The controller doesn’t rumble in GameCube games.
