Warning - This article contains minor spoilers for Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales enjoyed a very successful launch last week alongside with the release of the new PlayStation 5 console. The newest Spider-Man game has been very well received and is on track to be one of the best video games that 2020 has to offer.
Speaking of 2020, though, the year hasn't exactly been filled with all good things. One of the most devastating blows to Marvel fans during the turn of the decade was the loss of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman , who passed at the age of 43 after a private battle with colon cancer.
The impact of this loss was detrimental to the Marvel community, its effects reaching far beyond the MCU fandom alone. Sony and Insomniac Games recognized this and only thought it was appropriate to acknowledge Boseman and the strides he made in his career by including a tribute to him in the credits of the Miles Morales game.
As it turns out, though, the Miles Morales developers took things another step further to commemorate the late Black Panther star, honoring his work even outside of the Marvel universe.
NEWS
In a Reddit post by u/RollieDell , the user pointed out that they discovered another tribute to Chadwick Boseman in Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales . The Reddit user claims that on the streets of New York City, "42nd Street becomes Boseman Way between 1st and 3rd Street." The user then points out that "Mr. Boseman’s big breakout role was in the film 42 ," when Boseman played MLB legend Jackie Robinson.
The user also included a screenshot of their findings, presumably taken in the game's highly-praised Photo Mode, which shows Miles' Spider-Man taking a selfie in front of the Boseman Way street sign.
Via u/RollieDell on Reddit
If this doesn't tug at your heartstrings, then nothing will. The inclusion of "Boseman Way" in the new Spider-Man game is not at all relative to the actual streets of New York, so this addition was a decision made solely by the game's developers. Additionally, other than the fact that Boseman starred in several blockbuster Marvel films, the game's change in street name is not even directly related to any Marvel material at all.
Chadwick Boseman was a Hollywood titan for the African American community, and not just as the Black Panther. Appearing as some of the most influential men in recent history, Boseman also took on the roles of iconic baseball star Jackie Robinson, lawyer Thurgood Marshall, and musician James Brown.
With all of this in mind, changing the name of 42nd Street to "Boseman Way" means so much more to fans than some may realize. Sony taking this extra step to further acknowledge Chadwick Boseman's impact on the Marvel community, as well as on American culture as a whole, is commendable on their part, to say the least, and gives fans just one more way to remember the late, great Wakandan King for everything he did for the world.