Disney XD will premiere its new animated series Ultimate Spider-Man on Sunday, April 1 as part of its new Marvel Universe line. The show was developed by Marvel Head of Television Jeph Loeb, Marvel CCO Joe Quesada, Paul Dini (“Batman: The Animated Series”), Man of Action Studios, and long-time Ultimate Spider-man scribe Brian Michael Bendis.

Ultimate Spider-Man stars Drake Bell (“Drake and Josh”) as a teenage Peter Parker trying to fit in at high school while secretly working with other heroes at S.H.I.E.L.D. Fans of Marvel’s film canon will recognize the voices of JK Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson and Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson.

Enjoying success with Marvel Animation’s Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Disney XD is planning on launching an entire Marvel Universe programming block with Ultimate Spider-Man as its keystone.

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After the kid focused Spider-Man: Friend or Foe and the somewhat redundant nature of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Spidey fans have been clamoring for a change in the Spider-Man formula. Since Spider-Man 2, most titles have revolved around a sandbox view of Manhattan where everyone’s favorite webslinger traverses back and forth in the city, sometimes racing against time, to match up against his more fearsome foes and crossing paths with various small time criminals committing minor offenses along the way.

While it has proven a successful formula, it had started to grow stagnant. Influenced by that criticism, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions puts together four versions of the Marvel icon, including two who have never been seen in video game form, in a variety of diverse levels and constantly changing gameplay.

Gameplay:

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions plays differently than most previous Spider-Man titles, and not just because of the change away from open world environments. While button mashing combined with Spider-Sense dodging is the focus of combat, traversing through the levels seemed looser in terms of control.

Slinging through levels doesn’t feel as natural or fun as it did in Manhattan in days of Spider-Man’s past. Possibly because of the level design system, less emphasis was put on traversing areas at fast speeds.

Combat also doesn’t feel as diverse. Because each Spider-Man only has three individual levels, there is not a huge diversity in combat abilities. Previous titles, because of only having one or two versions of Spider-Man, had a larger number of different attacks to work with.

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With just under a week from the release of the most hyped Spider-Man video game release in years, Activision and Beenox have unveiled the final launch trailer for Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.  In it, a majority of the game’s villains are spotlighted as well as the voice actors of all four versions of everyone’s favorite web crawler after the jump.

As we are sure you have seen, we’ve kept a close watch on the upcoming title. We have brought you video of the alternate unlockcable attire, interviews with developers,  and even hands on feedback from our time with the game at San Diego Comic-Con.

But we’re not done yet. Be sure to check back for our review of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions following the game’s September 7th release date. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions will be coming out for PlayStation 3, XBox 360, PC and the Nintendo Wii.

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On Marvel.com, Activision has revealed all of the unlockable skins for Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. By playing through the game, players will have the opportunity to unlock new looks for their favorite wall crawler across the four dimensions of gameplay. Make sure to check out the gallery at the bottom of this post for screen shots of all the new costumes.

At Comic Con, we had the opportunity to sit down with Studio Head over at Beenox, the developers behind Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Dee Brown. In our short time with Dee, he discussed with us the choices behind dimensions of the game.

He also mentions creating new villains for the game as well as the hype that has been coming out leading to the game’s release.

The Flickcast: First question I have, what was the thought process behind the four dimensions Beenox picked?

Dee Brown: Well, what we do when we start a project, we did what we always do when we start a project, a deep dive into the brand and we dug up a lot of the comic stuff of Spider-Man, and we did this big presentation to the team and the entire company.

Everybody loves Spider-Man of course, but nobody knows all the different universes and everything, so we did this presentation and showed shots of 2099 and Noir and all the amazing universes. People, like me for example, I didn’t know about Noir and when I saw it I thought “That’s amazing, that’s so great.”

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As you have noticed, Activision’s new Spider-Man game has caught the attention of the Flickcast. Make sure to keep checking back over the coming week for our hands on impressions and a developer interview as well where we got the chance in San Diego to play both as the Noir and Ultimate (Black suit) Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.

Activision has just released a new trailer for the game featuring none other than the game’s narrator, Stan “The Man” Lee. The ever humble Stan talks about how it feels being a part of the creation of Spider-Man, the concept of playing four different versions of Spider-Man and even mentions one of his favorite super villains that Spider-Man has encountered. In addition to some great gameplay footage, Stan gives the reason he feels Spider-Man is one of the most enduring heroes.

Check out the full trailer after the jump and make sure to stick to the Flickcast for all things Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.

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The night before Comic Con, Activision made the announcement that all Spider-Man fans have been waiting for. Joining the Amazing, Noir and 2099 dimensions will be Ultimate Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.  Not only would the Ultimate Spider-Man world be represented by Ultimate Carnage and Ultimate Deadpool, but the young Peter Parker would once again be donning his tendril whipping black suit.

In the game, a mystical artifact known as the Tablet of Order and Chaos is shattered into four pieces with each piece landing in a different dimension. A mystic within the Amazing universe will let Spider-Man know that he can traverse through the other three dimensions to help set things right through the help of the universe’s own Spider-Man.

So far, the game has revealed eight villains with the above mentioned Carnage and Deadpool in the Ultimate universe, Juggernaut and Kraven the Hunter in the Amazing universe, the Hobgoblin and Scorpion of the 2099 universe and the Goblin and Hammerhead in the Noir world.

It looks like Spider-Man will be getting some veteran voice acting behind it. Josh Keaton who voiced the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series in 2008 will be lending his voice to the Ultimate Spider-Man. Dan Gilvenez from the 1980s Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends series will be taking on the role of Migeul O’Hara as Spider-Man 2099.

From the 1990’s Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Christopher Daniel will be Spider-Man Noir. Finally, the most impressive of the list comes from Neil Patrick Harris from the short-lived MTV CGI Spider-Man series who will take the helm of the Amazing version of Peter Parker.

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Its a new year so that means new comics and our friends at Marvel are already ready to unleash some brand new titles to keep you excited going into 2010. Some of the ones we’re most interested in this week include the latest issue of Cable, Punisher Max: Get Castle, Nation X: X-Factor and, of course, the debut of Marvel’s latest “event” Siege #1.

As always, we’ve got some cool previews of some of the covers for some of these books, so be sure to check them out after the jump.

Comics On-Sale:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN PRESENTS: JACKPOT #1
CABLE #22
DAFFODIL #1
DAFFODIL #1 VARIANT
DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #897
MARVEL BOY: THE URANIAN #1
MARVEL PREVIEWS #77
NATION X: X-FACTOR
NEW MUTANTS #9 (XN)
PUNISHER MAX: GET CASTLE
SIEGE #1

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