The Wonder Years 01.03.08: Week 37: Joe & Mac
Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 01.03.2008
Start the new year by zipping way back in time!
Welcome to the column where all gamers of a certain age come to wallow in 16-bit nostalgia. I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield, and I'll be discussing some of the hidden gems and instant classics of gaming's golden era. Some of these games may crop up on the Wii's Virtual Console at some point, some may be consigned to the annals of history. Either way, they're worth tracking down if you missed them first time round, or replaying if you were lucky enough to catch them. Let's take a trip to:
JOE & MAC: CAVEMAN NINJA
(Data East, Genesis & Super NES, 1991)
My first experience with Joe & Mac was way back in either '91 or '92, playing the DOS version on an old 386 PC. Those were the days, eh? Back when Apogee Software ruled the shareware world, the internet was in black and white, and games came on a disk the size of a man's head. Hard to believe that was almost two decades ago. But I digress - playing Joe & Mac with a bulky keyboard in jerky DOS-o-vision wasn't an experience I enjoyed, and try as I might I think I only ever beat the first boss once. Whether this was down to the severe hardware limitations of the computer or my relative lack of expertise in the gaming world at that point is up in the air, but I was soured on the game and left it in a box somewhere, never to be seen again. A few years later, I chanced upon a Genesis title that looked pretty similar, and decided to give it a blast for nostalgia's sake, and whaddya know? Turns out that it was actually a decent version of Joe & Mac, which as I then learned was a port of an arcade machine from Data East, one of the early pioneers in non-linear progression through an action game.
As the Caveman Ninja suffix suggests, the game is set in the Stone Age, and takes the form of a side-scrolling action platformer - imagine Metal Slug set in prehistoric times and you'll have a fair idea. Of course, this is the prehistory of video games rather than real science, so cavemen, mammoths and dinosaurs mingle with impunity and scant regard for historical accuracy. So much for the possibility of an educational game. Anyway, the story goes that a gang of nefarious Neanderthals have kidnapped all the cave-babes from Joe & Mac's village, prompting a quest from the green-and-blue haired heroes to rescue the damsels in distress. Of course, they have to battle through a horde of enemies to get there across a series of 2D stages to get there. It's clichéd, sure, but you can't really ask for much originality from homo erectus and their pea-sized brains, can you? It's interesting, though, to find that it's one of the few platformers whose stereotypical level settings actually make sense - with all the turmoil the Earth was undergoing millions of years ago, it's no real surprise to find verdant grasslands neighboring ice caves and volcanoes, so the usually generic "snow" and "fire" levels don't feel out of place in the slightest. Levels themselves are dealt with in a different manner depending on which console you use - the Genesis gives you a choice at the end of each stage as to which route you wish to take, whereas the SNES presents an overworld map, although all the levels must be completed in the order you choose.
The gameplay itself is remarkably simple, and all the better for it. The D-pad moves your chosen caveman (there's no difference between the two other than appearances), with a double tap on Up enabling a higher jump and a double tap left or right giving you a basic roll attack; other than that, one button jumps, one button uses your weapon, and select toggles between weapons. The are four kinds of tools to assist in your violence: clubs, boomerangs, fire and stone wheels. These can all be upgraded, and there is actually some semblance of tactical usage in choosing which you want to use. For instance, boomerangs are fast and have a large range, but will take a few hits to dispatch even the weakest enemies. It's nicely appropriate that a game set in such a basic age should be stripped down to basics. Unfortunately, despite the simplicity of the controls, the mechanics of it all can still feel clunky and the collision detection is at times pretty poor - not great when you're being swarmed by pterodactyls. Still, it's reasonable compensation that the game is so easy to pick up and play.
Visually, Joe & Mac belies its age, with some lovely primary colors and a pleasing array of intimidatingly large bosses and dinosaurs. The bosses need to be intimidating, too, as the actual game itself is very short. The dozen or so levels usually last for only a few screens before throwing the boss at you - while the first level gets away with it in a charming manner (the stage sees you battling foes up and over the back of a sleeping T-Rex before it wakes up and attacks you on a clifftop), later stages come across as disappointingly short. On the upside, though, the bosses are for the most part decently challenging, and enemies tend to attack en masse rather than in an orderly fashion. There are a smattering of bonus stages, too (at least in the Super NES version - I honestly can't remember whether they were included in the Genesis port), which involve scouring out hidden keys in a handful of places and are tricky enough to locate. If it all gets too much for you, you can take the game on in two-player mode, either taking turns to complete each level as Joe and Mac, or in a Contra-style co-operative mode which can be huge fun when the framerate manages to keep up, even if it does sometimes degenerate into a hoard-the-powerups free-for-all. Certainly makes dodging fireball-spitting mammoths that bit more manageable.
The game would go on to spawn a SNES-only sequel which saw our heroic cavemen Lost in the Tropics, but it failed to successfully recreate the appeal of the original. It's an easy charm that the game possesses, and is certainly one of the most fun recreations of the Stone Age seen on consoles. You know, when put in terms like that, you have to wonder why there aren't more caveman-oriented games, as it seems a sub-genre ripe for exploitation. A 3D adaptation of the game, provided it strayed away from Spyro-esque mediocrity, could prove to be a fun game for kids and adults alike - maybe something like a cross between Rayman and Turok. Let's face it, who doesn't like beating up dinosaurs? The original, though, is still a fun little platformer, even if it won't last you too long. I've never seen a copy going for sale in the past few years, although I did once see a classified ad offering the original arcade machine for sale. It was probably out of most gamers' budgets though. It would be a real pleasant surprise to see this on XBLA or the Virtual Console, but I think the most viable means of playing a copy is to get a hold of the ROM, as it can easily be finished in the 24 hours you can legally own the file. The perfect game if you don't like being reminded of the relentless march of time, Joe & Mac offers old-school gameplay in a truly ancient setting. It might aggravate a paleontologist, though.
Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja trivia
The game is more correctly known as simply Joe & Mac in the West and Caveman Ninja in the East, but has come to be known by its collective title.
The game was co-developed by New World Computing, who in this day and age are most famous for the legendary Heroes of Might & Magic franchise.
The majority of the game's ports featured a brown-haired caveman on the box art, who could be neither Joe nor Mac. A long-lost cousin maybe?
Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja is an honorable mention in my official all-time Top 100 games.
The Videosphere
Let's take a look at this week's video highlight. Inkeeping with this week's ancient theme, here's the intro movie to a show featuring one of the most under-rated cartoon superheroes of all time. That's right folks, it's the object of Peter Griffin's affections, Captain Caveman. What a dude!
General indulgences
Every week in this section I'll endeavor to provide you, the faithful readers, with a fascinating insight into the various forms of entertainment currently dominating my spare time.
This week, I have been mostly enjoying:
Wii Sports Baseball. God, I can't get enough of this, and finally got to Pro level after a day of constant gaming. If such a plain vanilla version of the sport is so enjoyable, I have high hopes for the upcoming Mario Stadium Baseball.
Return to the Last Chance Saloon by the Bluetones. While it doesn't have anything as instantly catchy as 'Slight Return', it's still a fine Brit-rock record with a peculiar Old West-type atmosphere about it.
X-Men 3: The Last Stand, which I rewatched the other day to see if it would stand up to a second viewing. It doesn't, really, and the alternate ending on the DVD is better than the real ending. Bah.
and New Year's, which is always good for a laugh. I saw in 2008 live on stage which was pretty cool. Have a good one, folks.
And finally…
As always, reader feedback and suggestions are welcome, I respond to everything so just drop me a line or leave a comment. You can also check out my science fiction column "The Flux Capacitor" over at 411 Movies. Next week in "The Wonder Years" - the best action game ever to star a puppet. Until then - keep it real, keep it retro.
