Uhh I keep telling myself I’ll play some classics on Nintendo Switch, instead I end up playing through straight forward and basic side scrollers with a podcast blasting in the background.

Yeah it’s a decent looking game, of course the Japanese name of Cavemen Ninja is hilarious. But yeah it’s just repetitive gameplay, I just blasted through on Easy, the high point is a final boss that has a cutesy and fun design.

Hit boxes can be off and jumps can be super odd. I can’t really recommend this much.

This was something my mom got out of a bargain bin for me as a kid, and it was always a favorite of mine despite not really being any good at it. I used Game Genie cheats to beat it back then, but I'd been feeling like giving it a replay for quite a while, although I was disappointed to learn that the arcade version on the Switch eShop was different enough from the SNES version I knew that I know I would've not liked that version very much. I was so stoked when Joe & Mac was announced as a game coming to Switch Online's SNES service, and I was so excited that I played all the way through it that very day. I didn't use any save states and managed to beat it fair and square on normal mode this time ^w^. It took me about 50 minutes to beat the Japanese version of the game on my Switch.

Joe & Mac is a port of an early 90's arcade game by Data East, and it has a fittingly "doing exactly what it needs to" level of plot to match. Joe & Mac live in a caveman tribe, but the evil cavemen from another tribe have come and stolen all of their Cave Babes! (as the US localization so hilariously calls them XD). They set off to save them and teach those nasty big-nosed cavemen a lesson.

Joe & Mac is a pretty short game, with only a dozen or so stages that can often be completed pretty darn quick, but this is a game where the boss fights are by far the headliner and main event. Joe & Mac have a special high jump and their clubs to whack things with, but everyone knows that firing from a distance has always been the thinking warrior's tactic of choice. Joe & Mac follow this methodology and have a series of ancient tools to throw at enemies if they find one of the powerups in a stage, although they can only hold one at a time. You have bones (rapid fire but low damage), boomerangs (slower than bones but more powerful), fire (only one thrown at a time, but VERY powerful), and wheels (two thrown at a time but pretty tough and can climb up walls) to use against your foes, and different weapons are more useful at different times. The game is definitely still an arcade game with its difficulty, but the stages and especially the bosses are really tightly designed and great fun to fight. Sure, there are a couple of bosses who are a little too awkward or arbitrary in their patterns for my tastes, but by and large they succeed in being worth the price of entry.

The presentation is pretty darn good too~. Joe & Mac have big expressive faces for reacting to things as do their caveman enemies (who are working with the dinosaurs for some reason, but just try not to think about it :b), but again the real stars here are the bosses. The music and especially sound design compliment the bosses great too, with the bosses having big, expressive "I'M HIT!" animations every time they lose a tick of life, and a big "GEH!" sound effect as well that has stuck with me as a kid. It's a big, silly arcadey experience and the graphics and sound do a great job of carrying that forward too.


Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a game I hadn't played in a long time, but it's one that's held up really damn well over the years. It very much scratches the itch in the part of my brain that always yearns for more Mega Man, and while it's not exactly that same style of gameplay, it's close enough that I love it. If you're a fan of 2D action games and don't mind a bit of a challenge, this is definitely one not to pass up on, especially if you already have Switch Online so you can play it for free via the SNES service~.