Super FamiComplete #48: Joe & Mac (Redux)

 

Title: Joe & Mac (NA), Joe & Mac: Tatakae Genshijin  (trans. Caveman Fight) (JP)

Release Date: 12/06/91 (JP)

Developer/Publisher: Data East

Yay, another halcyon classic of my childhood. This game was another game that was gifted to me back when I was a wee babe. My Mom bought this after reading a review in a Shoppers Digest (how all responsible parents shopped for video games before the internet) and because she knew my brother and I enjoyed dinosaurs as a kid, this game was a natural fit. So, without much further ado, let's revisit this blast from the past.

Background

This game comes from one of the development companies that only seemed to exist through the 80's and 90's: Data East. Now Data East is probably most well known for the funny little recorded voice that reads the company name each time one of their games boots up, a voice so distorted by the sound chip on the SNES that it comes out all tinny. Plus you have that nice desert chrome logo. What fun!

Now Data East itself was a bread and butter video game company that I would argue is a relic of this time period. They were definitely a hard-working jack of all trades: they made arcade machines, pin ball machines, console games for most every handheld and console system, and both original and licensed titles. I would consider them a halfway decent version of the company iRem. Sadly Data East tanked as a company in the late 90s and early 2000s, filing for bankruptcy and selling off their library of games.

Now Joe & Mac is one of their original IP's, and would go on to spawn two more sequels (both are pretty good and will be covered soon). This game started as a arcade title, and the arcade title is a bit different from the SNES port (I actually played through the arcade game as a kid at a school dance). The arcade port is pretty fun, with a more linear design and a different final boss (some crazy caveman lizard-demon). The SNES port, though, boasts a few key differences that we will discuss below, and I think make for some good improvements.

Story

The story of Joe & Mac is rather short but sweet. Joe and Mac are two cavemen friends who also happen to be ninjas. Now they are friends with a local tribe, and this local tribe had all its beautiful young cave-women stolen by a rival tribe of bearded, more bestial cavemen. It is now up to the two cave-ninjas to pursue to rival tribe to their home-base in the dinosaur graveyard, and rescue the beautiful young women from the rival tribe's dinosaur minions. 

Gameplay

Joe & Mac is an action platformer. Joe and Mac must make it from the beginning of each level to the end while combating enemies and obstacles along the way. Their base attack is a club, which has no range whatsoever. To counter this, though, there are a variety of upgradable weapons that will help them by adding range to their attacks. You have boomerangs, bone clubs, torches, and wheels, all of which are much more effective than your base weapon, and pretty much all you will use. As well, each level ends with some large-scale boss battles against dinosaurs, mammoths, or other mega-fauna/flora from prehistoric times. Accurate to history? No. Charming and colorful? Yes.

 The sprite work and art direction is really top-notch. Every boss is quite visually striking, and every character has a really nice cartoonish charm. The game mirrors its arcade counterpart's style really quite well. Most of the bosses are quite unique except for two repeat fights, and even then they make the patterns different enough that they really are different encounters overall. Some standout bosses include the Woolly Mammoth...

The dinosaur skeleton...

The plant monster...

And the devil!?!

The game is challenging, but not overly so where it is frustrating and makes you want to put down the controller for good. The levels are quick and aren't overly long, so it encourages quick replays as you get used to the way the game is played. 

The game is a good 2-player experience! It is a really nice action platformer, and even more fun when you can experience it with a friend. The game drives a slight competition too, as the player who lands the killing blow on the boss gets to have a smooch from the captured young lady. 

There are definitely some technical hiccups in this game. The game has really bad input lag, and Joe and Mac seem to jump and attack very sluggishly. This happens especially if you spam the attack button; if you do this the game even seems to drop some inputs completely. If you put out too many projectiles and there are too many enemies on the screen (or just has a boss monster present), the frame-rate of the game drops to a crawl. 

The jumping of Joe and Mac is really floaty. Joe and Mac tend to just float through the air really slowly, yet the game detects with pinpoint precision if you switch the direction of their jump mid-air, which can cause you to miss platforms. The platforming sections, especially in the later levels, demand a good bit of precision, which is really tough sometimes with these mechanics. 

One final nit-pick is when you die, your avatar becomes a ghost which floats back onto the stage and looks for purchase before rematerializing. The problem is if you mess up where you rematerialize, you just die again instantly. It can really quickly end a run if you get screwed over. 

Music

The music is pretty decent. It has a nice "chant" aspect to it every so often. The boss music is pretty great too. 

Ads, Art, Commercials

Final Verdict

 This game still holds up as an action platformer! It certainly has its frustrations, but it is really quite good. Perhaps it is my nostalgia goggles talking, but it is certainly better than some of the other platformers we have encountered so far (and certainly better than a few others we will encounter coming up). It is not too expensive online (about $15-20 on amazon) so definitely an easy grab for collectors.