Joe & Mac (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Data East's 1992 action game for the Super Nintendo, Joe & Mac.

Played through on the normal difficulty level.

Joe & Mac puts you, alone or with a friend in 2P simultaneous co-op play, in the non-existent shoes of the titular cave dudes on a quest to save the righteous babes that a band of gnarly Neanderthals has so rudely absconded with in the middle of the night. Most heinous.

Joe & Mac came out just a few months after the launch of the console, and of all the games that impressed me on the new 16-bit machine at the time, I thought it was one of the most "impressive." It doesn't feature Mode 7 effects out the wazoo, but this well put together cart has solid, fun gameplay with a reasonable level of challenge, and it looks and sounds phenomenal - especially for such an early release!

Joe & Mac is a loose, heavily expanded adaptation of Data East's popular 1991 arcade game Caveman Ninja. Many of the stage layouts have been changed, and there's an overworld map that gives you some choice in the route you want to take. The game also features new bonus games for extra health and lives, which you can unlock if you find a key in one of the in-stage secret areas. The way it has been fleshed out makes it feel more substantial than the (albeit great) Genesis version which is more-or-less a straight conversion.

The weapons are all unique with specific strengths and weaknesses, and you can swap between any you've collected with a quick tap of the select button, which is really nice in how it lets you experiment with strategy... especially in the bosses.

And those bosses! There are a ton of them, and most of them are badass. You'll fight T-Rexes, pterodactyls, wooly mammoths... the game goes all in wth the prehistoric theme, and the boss encounters are some of the most memorable from any game for me.

I also really appreciated the variety in the stage design. Some are standard left-to-right, others autoscroll, and there are even a couple vertically-oriented ones. They've all got their gimmicks to mix things up, my favorite being the area suspended over a river that had dino fish leaping out of the water at you.

What really makes the game is its presentation, though. The colors are vibrant, the animation is loaded with fun little touches that give the game its goofy personality, and the upgraded soundtrack is loaded with tunes that are almost too memorable. Thirty years later, I can still hum along easily with it all. It looks and sounds even better than the arcade version.

Joe & Mac is also one of those games that, thanks to its fairly low level of difficulty (relatively speaking) for an SNES game will allow you to have fun with it first time out. I remember clearing it the first time we rented it back when it was first released, but much like the Capcom Disney games, it's a game that's always fun to go back to no matter how good you get at it.

NES version:    • Joe & Mac (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComp...  

Arcade (Wii) version:    • Caveman Ninja (Wii) Playthrough - Nintendo...  
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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