I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Congo's Caper. If you subscribe to numbers, it's like the most 6/10 or 7/10 game that ever was, but I like the cut of its jib. It's competent and fun, but to most people, there's really nothing exceptional about it. It's a quick playthrough, mostly reasonable aside from a couple of bosses and weird tricks thrown in, the music doesn't particularly stand out, it has some hit detection that's so out of wack that it feels like it was left in there as a prank, and a lot of its ideas and themes are relatively tame or taken straight out of its precedessor, Joe & Mac. The cavemen brothers and their adventures, while not memed upon relentlessly the way Bubsy is nowadays, don't have a ton of people really going to bat for them. I think they're considered good enough games (right?) and the first one even got a remake last year, but you aren't exactly getting YouTube videos about how they're "the best 2D platformers you haven't played" recommended in your feed or whatever either, you know? I've always had a pretty big soft spot for the Joe & Mac series as a whole, having played through them multiple times growing up even when Mario and Sonic were at my disposal, but I never did manage to finish Congo's Caper until now.
I think I might know why that is now. Congo's Caper has a more bizarre difficulty curve than I realized and one heck of an early game filter! Everything's pretty tame at first; you move, you smack guys with your club, hitting them into blocks can break them, and you can jump normally or extra high if you want. There's also a run button that's surprisingly not required during any of the game's chase sequences, but is required during its incredibly cruel Mega Man-esque "blocks that vanish and reappear" sequence. For the first few levels, the game provides a pretty gentle introduction that works well as a way to get used to all the basics. The way health works is probably the most interesting mechanic of the game and is something you'll probably rub up against a short way into the game. You lose a life after two hits, but getting hit once changes you from a blue-haired caveboy to a monkey, which in turn restricts the range of your attacks because of your tiny baby monkey arms. The smaller size should be something you can leverage to your advantage, but the game's, let's say, iffy hitboxes prevent that from working as you'd expect. It's interesting to have a mechanical punishment here and not just a cosmetic one like being reduced to your boxers in Ghosts 'n Goblins, so it's an idea I certainly respect. If you start losing in Congo's Caper, you can lose hard, but if you start winning, the game suddenly becomes very generous.
Shortly after the first few stages, you encounter a T-Rex boss just like Joe & Mac. It's no big deal and before long you end up inside of it, clubbing your way through its body. At the end of the road, though, is one seriously nasty boss: the devil-looking guy that kidnaps Congo's girlfriend and kicks off the events of the game. It's cool that they pull a fake climax so soon and the imminent difficulty fits the storytelling, but man is this guy just too much for such an early appearance! His attacks are super quick, the narrow arena makes it nearly impossible to avoid any of his attacks, and his health bar is absolutely gigantic, taking way too many hits to defeat (a problem all the bosses have, unfortunately). Only being able to take two hits makes this hard enough, but fighting this guy safely in your monkey form feels practically impossible. So what's a gamer looking to game to do about all this?
If you search around each level, you can find red orbs that'll bring you back to your human form. That's great, but if you can collect three of them as a human, you get rewarded with a "super" form that serves as a tremendous buff. Not only does it allow you to take three hits before going back to normal (making it an impressive five hits before you die!), you also get expanded attack range and an incredibly high jump that's so high it can actually be detrimental in certain environments. If you can keep this form going, something that's not too hard to do as long as you're thorough and careful, the game becomes significantly easier. Any orbs you collect at full health in this form give you extra lives, so you can stockpile a huge amount really easily! This mechanic serves as the part that gives Congo's Caper a proper skill ceiling to hit and reasons to master its gameplay. The game loves to surprise you with sudden peaks like this one boss, so you're meant to use the easier levels to stockpile as much as you can to prepare for these moments. Get to the boss as your super form and while it's still not easy, you at least have the tools to immediately meet him in the air and interrupt his attacks while also tanking some hits as needed.
I'm pretty sure younger me never made it past this guy (it took several tries even now!), which is a shame because this is where Congo's Caper gets more interesting with its level designs. For the next four areas, which are ruled over by a pirate, a tech guy, a sorcerer, and a ninja, you get to choose which order you tackle them in. The order doesn't matter at all, but you at least get to have some control over the rest of the difficulty curve. The ninja's levels feature tight spaces and platforming challenges. The pirate levels focus on water navigation, including an interesting endurance challenge where you have to avoid lightning strikes in a rising and sinking body of water by watching for the signs of where the strikes will hit next, kinda similar to what Donkey Kong Country 3 would do later. The tech guy's levels revolve around avoiding lava and choosing from multiple tiered paths to decide what the best course of action is like some kinda wise guy. The sorcerer's levels are perhaps the most interesting of all, featuring a gimmick where killed enemies come back as ghosts that harass you, encouraging you to avoid violence wherever possible. While it's never groundbreaking stuff, Congo's Caper comes alive once you get past that needlessly painful introduction. This is a solid set of ideas that keeps the level varied while also playing into the identities of the characters involved with them. Granted, the game does have a very frustrating final boss that basically requires you to harness the game's bad hitboxes as an advantage to use against it, but until then, it's smooth sailing!
I think I like Congo's Caper precisely because of how transparent it is. You know right away what you're getting and even if what you're getting is rocky at times, it's still exactly what you're looking for if you're interested in a platform that's a step or two removed from the obvious mainstream stuff. Platformers of this vintage go down real easy as something to do in between all these huge modern games and I found it really refreshing to finally see everything it had to offer and learn how to play it effectively. I dunno what it is about "B/C-tier" 2D platformers of the 90s, but I can always count on them to be a good time even if they're not the absolute peak of the craft. It's all too common that you see games like this dismissed as "not as good as Mario" or "just another Mario clone", but I think that's a disservice to other 2D platformers. Even if you don't think they're as good as Mario, they're doing something different and that's very important for the growth and expansion of any genre!
I don't think Congo's Caper is gonna overtake most Mario games (I do like it better than the first New Super Mario Bros., though...), but I really enjoy its take on the genre and with the prehistoric kings of the genre, Bonk and Adventure Island, being entirely absent from Nintendo Switch Online, Congo's Caper is doing us all a solid by filling in for them in the meantime. Cavemen were a real thing in video games at one point, I'll have you know! "Charm" is a nebulous thing to define and can often feel like an easy way to lavish praise on something, but we're only human and sometimes something just works for you. There's no shame in admitting that even if you don't have the words to elegantly express why. I'm trying my best here, but I dunno if "elegant" is the word I'd use to describe my little ramble here! I really like the way this game looks, I like how it's almost perfectly paced, I appreciate how it puts a spin on the usual power-up system, and I enjoy its cast of goofy little characters. Congo's Caper just works for me, you dig?
I think I might know why that is now. Congo's Caper has a more bizarre difficulty curve than I realized and one heck of an early game filter! Everything's pretty tame at first; you move, you smack guys with your club, hitting them into blocks can break them, and you can jump normally or extra high if you want. There's also a run button that's surprisingly not required during any of the game's chase sequences, but is required during its incredibly cruel Mega Man-esque "blocks that vanish and reappear" sequence. For the first few levels, the game provides a pretty gentle introduction that works well as a way to get used to all the basics. The way health works is probably the most interesting mechanic of the game and is something you'll probably rub up against a short way into the game. You lose a life after two hits, but getting hit once changes you from a blue-haired caveboy to a monkey, which in turn restricts the range of your attacks because of your tiny baby monkey arms. The smaller size should be something you can leverage to your advantage, but the game's, let's say, iffy hitboxes prevent that from working as you'd expect. It's interesting to have a mechanical punishment here and not just a cosmetic one like being reduced to your boxers in Ghosts 'n Goblins, so it's an idea I certainly respect. If you start losing in Congo's Caper, you can lose hard, but if you start winning, the game suddenly becomes very generous.
Shortly after the first few stages, you encounter a T-Rex boss just like Joe & Mac. It's no big deal and before long you end up inside of it, clubbing your way through its body. At the end of the road, though, is one seriously nasty boss: the devil-looking guy that kidnaps Congo's girlfriend and kicks off the events of the game. It's cool that they pull a fake climax so soon and the imminent difficulty fits the storytelling, but man is this guy just too much for such an early appearance! His attacks are super quick, the narrow arena makes it nearly impossible to avoid any of his attacks, and his health bar is absolutely gigantic, taking way too many hits to defeat (a problem all the bosses have, unfortunately). Only being able to take two hits makes this hard enough, but fighting this guy safely in your monkey form feels practically impossible. So what's a gamer looking to game to do about all this?
If you search around each level, you can find red orbs that'll bring you back to your human form. That's great, but if you can collect three of them as a human, you get rewarded with a "super" form that serves as a tremendous buff. Not only does it allow you to take three hits before going back to normal (making it an impressive five hits before you die!), you also get expanded attack range and an incredibly high jump that's so high it can actually be detrimental in certain environments. If you can keep this form going, something that's not too hard to do as long as you're thorough and careful, the game becomes significantly easier. Any orbs you collect at full health in this form give you extra lives, so you can stockpile a huge amount really easily! This mechanic serves as the part that gives Congo's Caper a proper skill ceiling to hit and reasons to master its gameplay. The game loves to surprise you with sudden peaks like this one boss, so you're meant to use the easier levels to stockpile as much as you can to prepare for these moments. Get to the boss as your super form and while it's still not easy, you at least have the tools to immediately meet him in the air and interrupt his attacks while also tanking some hits as needed.
I'm pretty sure younger me never made it past this guy (it took several tries even now!), which is a shame because this is where Congo's Caper gets more interesting with its level designs. For the next four areas, which are ruled over by a pirate, a tech guy, a sorcerer, and a ninja, you get to choose which order you tackle them in. The order doesn't matter at all, but you at least get to have some control over the rest of the difficulty curve. The ninja's levels feature tight spaces and platforming challenges. The pirate levels focus on water navigation, including an interesting endurance challenge where you have to avoid lightning strikes in a rising and sinking body of water by watching for the signs of where the strikes will hit next, kinda similar to what Donkey Kong Country 3 would do later. The tech guy's levels revolve around avoiding lava and choosing from multiple tiered paths to decide what the best course of action is like some kinda wise guy. The sorcerer's levels are perhaps the most interesting of all, featuring a gimmick where killed enemies come back as ghosts that harass you, encouraging you to avoid violence wherever possible. While it's never groundbreaking stuff, Congo's Caper comes alive once you get past that needlessly painful introduction. This is a solid set of ideas that keeps the level varied while also playing into the identities of the characters involved with them. Granted, the game does have a very frustrating final boss that basically requires you to harness the game's bad hitboxes as an advantage to use against it, but until then, it's smooth sailing!
I think I like Congo's Caper precisely because of how transparent it is. You know right away what you're getting and even if what you're getting is rocky at times, it's still exactly what you're looking for if you're interested in a platform that's a step or two removed from the obvious mainstream stuff. Platformers of this vintage go down real easy as something to do in between all these huge modern games and I found it really refreshing to finally see everything it had to offer and learn how to play it effectively. I dunno what it is about "B/C-tier" 2D platformers of the 90s, but I can always count on them to be a good time even if they're not the absolute peak of the craft. It's all too common that you see games like this dismissed as "not as good as Mario" or "just another Mario clone", but I think that's a disservice to other 2D platformers. Even if you don't think they're as good as Mario, they're doing something different and that's very important for the growth and expansion of any genre!
I don't think Congo's Caper is gonna overtake most Mario games (I do like it better than the first New Super Mario Bros., though...), but I really enjoy its take on the genre and with the prehistoric kings of the genre, Bonk and Adventure Island, being entirely absent from Nintendo Switch Online, Congo's Caper is doing us all a solid by filling in for them in the meantime. Cavemen were a real thing in video games at one point, I'll have you know! "Charm" is a nebulous thing to define and can often feel like an easy way to lavish praise on something, but we're only human and sometimes something just works for you. There's no shame in admitting that even if you don't have the words to elegantly express why. I'm trying my best here, but I dunno if "elegant" is the word I'd use to describe my little ramble here! I really like the way this game looks, I like how it's almost perfectly paced, I appreciate how it puts a spin on the usual power-up system, and I enjoy its cast of goofy little characters. Congo's Caper just works for me, you dig?