Joe & Mac Retro Collection Review

Joe & Mac Retro Collection is a bundle of three games straight out of the Super Nintendo era: Joe & Mac, Congo’s Caper and Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics. While Joe & Mac games are proper sequels, Congo’s Caper is a spinoff that initially began as a direct sequel to the first J&M game. Joe & Mac 2 acts as a sequel to both games. The first game intially released as an arcade game which was ported to a myriad of consoles such as the SNES, Amiga; just to name a few. The games released between 1991 and 1995; depending on consoles and region.

All three games are straight forward action platformer; complete levels on your way to the boss. The main difference here is that in Congo’s Caper, you can clear each world in whatever order you want (post first world). Once you’ve cleared all levels of a world, you’ll come head to head with the area boss. While Joe & Mac 2 lets you tackle levels in a non-linear way.

Our group of protagonist use a club as their main way of defending themselves. In the first Joe & Mac game, you’ll be able to pick up a few power ups; fire, boomerang, giant wheel and bone. Once you’ve collected them, you can switch at any time between them. You also perform high jumps by pressing up along with the jump button. In the second Joe & Mac, you can eat up chicken and peppers and shoot bones/seeds from your mouth; not really helpful when it flies over or under enemies. The high jump, for some reason, was omitted for the sequel.

The games are quite challenging by today’s “standards”. More often than not, you’ll have a fraction of a second to react as enemies often appear last minute considering the characters move so close to the right side of the screen. You’ll definitely make use of the Rewind feature; mechanic commonly added to these types of collection to make things “easier”.

Congo’s Caper does feel like a proper evolution. The visuals are a bit smooth, gameplay is tight and responsive and the gameplay as a whole feels like an upgrade. Managing your health is different, although the lack of proper long-range power-ups does make it a bit harder given the short range of the club. Akin to the first Joe & Mac game, you can perform high jumps to get yourself out of sticky situations.

Along with the aforementioned rewing feature, each game offer the Save anywhere feature. Once you’ve conquered all three games, each of them offer a Boss Rush mode where you’ll try to beat every boss as fast as possible. If you’re looking to go down the path of nostalgia, you can also unlock and view images in the Gallery and listen to the game’s (mid) soundtracks.

All three games still look great by their standards. The visuals have aged well considering the 16-bit styling is still used in today’s gaming. Each game feature a myriad of unique and colorfully theme world. The theme do repeat given we’re talking about cavemen; fire, forest, ice, caves; etc. Enemy variety is a bit limited given the old school technology. The soundtracks hold up pretty well, but they are quite forgettable.

The main issues here are with the first Joe & Mac game; proving once again that not all games age gracefully. The controls feel heavy and the collision system does feel a bit cheap and questionable. Also, more often than not, the bosses take longer to beat than it took to reach the boss. Levels are quite short, but some bosses have lengthy health bars and it takes three to four hits to take a notch off. The final boss takes forever to take down. The collection also feels light; including a few more versions of the first game would’ve been nice.

Joe & Mac Retro Collection is a great look into the past. And also being able experience growth within the same franchise in a nifty package. While the first Joe & Mac hasn’t aged all that well, while still enjoyable, you’ll have a blast with the sequel and Congo Caper. It’s also a reminder of the classic 16-bit (and 8-bit for that matter) difficulty and cheap attacks. Thankfully, there’s a Rewind and Save anywhere feature to provide support. No matter if you’ve enjoyed these gems in the past or curious, Joe & Mac Retro Collection is worth the price of admission.