Joe & Mac (NES) Playthrough
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- čas přidán 27. 03. 2024
- A playthrough of Data East's 1992 platformer for the NES, Joe & Mac.
Joe & Mac, originally a 1991 arcade game called Caveman Ninja, is a hop'n'bop platformer starring a couple of Neanderthal buddies who are out to save their kidnapped cave babes.
Thanks to the coin-op's popularity, the game saw releases across several platforms in the early 90s, including this unlikely 8-bit NES adaptation by Elite that appeared in stores during the 1992 holiday season. The original was quite a looker in its time, and the already released SNES, DOS, and Amiga versions all did an impressive job of recreating its look and feel on consumer-level hardware.
The NES clearly couldn't compete in the same league, but that's not to say that Elite didn't try. Elite was renowned for their talent and ingenuity, and Joe & Mac is an exceptional show of their skill. The sprites are nicely detailed and animated, the bosses are huge, and the backgrounds feature more layers of parallax scrolling than most 16-bit games did - the first and third levels' backdrops are split six ways!
But the problem with Joe & Mac for the NES is that it tries to do the impossible. The broad strokes are there, but the attempts to faithfully mimic the original drag all of the game's shortcomings into the spotlight. The often monochromatic color palette choices, the uneven quality of the background art, and the flat and featureless level designs all make it feel like a compromised imitation of a 16-bit game instead of a game that was built with the NES hardware in mind.
The gameplay is similarly lacking. The moves are the same as in the other versions - you can somersault jump, charge your weapon, and jump while shooting upward - but the laggy response time and being limited to just two buttons makes it frustrating and cumbersome to play, and the problem only gets worse as the swarms of infinitely respawning enemies grow thicker and thicker.
It's also worth noting that many stages have been outright cut, and others have been dramatically pared back. The branching paths and multiple endings are all MIA, and the roided up difficulty comes across as a weak attempt to disguise how short the game is.
That last boss is pretty awesome, though. Weird, but awesome.
Joe & Mac isn't a total bust - it can be fun in very short doses - but the obnoxious challenge, mushy controls, and ugly graphics end up costing the NES game everything that made the original so appealing.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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Joe & Mac on the NES makes a valiant effort, but it looks and plays like a game that has no business being on this hardware.
The SNES version of this was one of my main jams when i was a kid
the 80’s were a big time for both cavemen and ninjas - joe & mac were merely the next logical evolutionary step in this caveman ninja hysteria
Man I forgot about this one ! Remember putting a lot of hours into this as a kid
The last boss is the caveman/dinosaur hybrid from the original arcade versión unlike the SNES version.
When I played this game I really loved it especially the second game
I rented this when it was new and my biggest takeaway was that there was an options menu and, man, only 16-bit games had those!
Man this video just reminded me I played and finished this not too long ago. What a forgettable experience.
Wow core memory unlocked
I remember asking for this game for Xmas '92. Never seen any gameplay just thought the game name sounded cool. I was so disappointed. My friend got an SNES that Xmas and the SNES version of the game, I was so jealous.
On NES this actually impresses me quite a bit. On SNES, not so much, especially when compared to the Genesis version, and doubly so when comparing both in 2-player. I think the SNES version could definitely have been quite a bit better than it was to be honest.
This reminds me of so many Sega Master System games that are just single plane scrolling beat-em-ups...
great video and gameplay, this version has good graphics but it seems inferior to me compared to the snes and mega drive versions, by the way I knew it from
This has such a bootleg look and feel. It was destined to be included in pirate carts with Mario drawn over it.
Great video.
Mario 16
This and the Game Boy version should be called:
Why did the devs use so much black on the screen? Really deadens the flow of the gameplay.
Not a bad port, honestly.
All things considered, this wasn't a half-bad effort.