I beat the preset high score of 54321, attaining a high score of 58900, which ended up being my goal due to how difficult I found the game, and I only played on the default Medium difficulty.
While you play as a black widow spider on its web, rather than trying to trap prey on the web, which is what I would have expected, you shoot down about a half-dozen different type of insects.
This is the 2nd twin-stick shooter I've ever played, with Robotron: 2084 being the other. I think the keyboard controls were a big reason I didn't really like this (although I really liked playing Robotron: 2084 back in the late '80s on my Tandy 1000EX using keyboard controls, but that was 35-ish years ago), as it becomes very fast-paced very quickly. While you can map the joystick directions however you like, not having the diagonals (you have to simultaneously press both left and up to get that diagonal, for example) is a definite negative. I found having some of the insects drop "grubsteaks" that the hornets can lay eggs on to create more insects and being able to push those eggs off the edge, or into the center, of the web before they hatch to be a neat aspect. However, it seems a bit lazy to me to use the dollar sign ($) to designate the grubsteaks. The one aspect that I really disliked is that after a few levels, parts of the web become barriers to movement. I also found it rather off-putting to be able to die to the wave of thunderbugs, which is akin to the bonus stages on shooters like Galaga, rather than simply failing to get the bonus points for killing all of them.
While I really like Robotron: 2084, Black Widow just didn't do it for me. I also have this on DS via Atari Greatest Hits Vol. 2, so maybe after however long it takes to get around to that release, I'll like it better on a 2nd attempt.
I think some Windows 10 update from 2022 or so caused this anthology to stop playing sound during the games (DirectX possibly becoming incompatible), so I had to play it on an old Windows XP system to have it play as it should.
