Mm... Spectacular Spider-Man is by and far the better show.
But that's a personal bias - Ultimate Spider-Man is definitely made for a younger age group. Spectacular Spider-Man (despite the less mature art-style) had continuous plot-threads, often introducing villains far before they became... well, villains. It also had nice little nods (in one episode, Spidey saves a hot chick and a geek from danger by webbing them together - later, in the Valentine's Day episode, they became engaged). Furthermore, Spectacular had far better delivery of lines (there's a reason Keaton's voiced Spider-Man many times afterwards, including in MvC3, Shattered Dimensions and Edge of Time). The quips also just fit with Spidey's nature - Utimate overdoes it all the time - fourth-wall breaking is not a Spider-Man trait, for example.
And bonus - the symbiote didn't out and start controlling Spidey - slowly, the costume changed, took over him at night, his thoughts started changing from "we" to "I" (Ultimate Spidey's Venom says "I" - what's up with that), etc. The animation is also way more fluid, if you will (watch Lizard vs Spidey for an example of that).
Then is the fact that Ultimate focuses too hard on the team aspect, and not enough as Spider-Man as a solo character - but that's a lesser quibble. At any rate, Spectacular Spider-Man also had brilliant touches to it, from the tryouts for a Shakespearean play signposting the scenes to the brilliant fight between Spidey and Tombstone with opera music covering it. It also chose to trick us multiple times as to the true identity of the Green Goblin instead of making it obvious. It was some of the best parts of the Ultimate comic books, and 616 comic books, and part all its own. Furthermore, it actually had a more realistic description of high school than Ultimate does ("locker knocker time"? Really?) - Flash gets average grades (need them to be on a football team these days) and his bullying doesn't come from the 80s (I actually have no idea at what time period people were stuffed in lockers or given swirlies).
Finally, Spectacular makes you care about the supporting cast, and really care. I could honestly care less about the supporting cast in Ultimate - they never seem to mean anything special, and because of the overall silly nature of the show, you can't take any of the serious struggle parts... well, seriously. It was touching when Sandman "sacrificed" himself to save the cruise ship, it was nice to watch Peter and Gwen's relationship develop, to see Harry's more manipulative side develop (and it actually touched on drug abuse with that - something Ultimate is unlikely to do), to see Flash develop feelings for a girl, and how he grows with that (and bullies Peter less and less).
As an added bonus, we actually get adult jokes in Spectacular - particularly in Black Cat's first appearance "You'd better not get your goop in my hair!" and "Don't worry, I don't slip." I dunno. Spectacular was definitely the more mature show. Reading the plans for the future only make me sad for what we could have gotten, but now cannot. Ah, well.
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