Joe & Mac (Co-op) -- Opening, Title, Stage 1

What, you were expecting walking, talking turtles? Ninja, even? What about a caveman ninja? ... ... ...you might have to keep looking, that's just a nominal artifact title at this point.

If Turtles in Time is hailed as one of the triumphs of its time, Joe & Mac is... ... ... wait, do people even know what Joe & Mac is?

The now-defunct developer called Data East (that's their name being said over the splash screen for the company itself, by the way... it's almost as mysterious as Kirby's "Test-o!" if you're not used to hearing English words said by native speakers of Japanese... ... ...with an extra layer of distortion probably attributable to some hefty compression) made many games, most of them drastically different from and unrecognizable compared to one another (that's a compliment!) ...one of these was known as "Caveman Ninja."

Caveman Ninja is... a pretty interesting, but horribly broken arcade game in a lot of ways, most of them based on the fact that you're meant to die a lot and chunk more quarters into the machine to keep playing. It spawned quite a number of ports, reinterpretations, and even some bizarre sequels, but the way I first came to know it was in the form of Joe & Mac, one of its re-brandings for Western release.

My original introduction to it was as a two-day rental from the local Blockbuster, and when it was clearing out some of its older video game selection, it was among the titles that found themselves a personal home in my collection instead.

It's interesting, because... on first impression, it's... not a very... ... ..."good" game? It's very weird. You have to kinda get on its wavelength to understand how to play and even thrive in its world. Its arcade roots are a bit harsh and severe for anyone seeking a gentle ride, but it has also been graciously retooled to take on a new set of quirks for its new home release format, making it a unique case study in the seemingly endless litany of two-player games the SNES enjoyed. (Put that other controller port to good use!)

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This game is... very weird. I can't stress that enough. It's about two buff cave-dudes named Joe and Mac, and the localization goes all totally radical, but only in the way that some other old fossil of a writer could hope to pretend to be hip to, making it end up totally square. I think it's a good thing for all involved that it's basically limited to one easily-missed blurb of an excuse for the plot that requires you to WAIT and NOT PLAY... a game ...what? Why?!

Ironically, with all its trappings and distractions, this is the most functional and actually explanatory version of the excuse plot I've seen... most of the time, you just have a boss and a random cave-babe thanking you before moving on to the next stage. The pieces are still there, but the dots are usually not connected quite as bodaciously as seen here.

The weird part that's missing from other editions is that there's a scream from within the hut when the "neanderthal nerds" arrive, but... nobody actually goes anywhere. (Protest a bit more than that, babes! At least pretend to be out there and in need of rescue! ...this suddenly paints a very different picture that I wasn't prepared to go into...)

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For the record, the 2P "Super Game"... about as unintuitively named as the options available in Contra III... means that Joe and Mac will actually be able to interact with one another. That is, you can bonk each other over the head with your clubs and roll attacks (thankfully not your projectile attacks!) ...but, more importantly, you can also stand on each other's heads... which is very important to negate the potential for twice as many attacks filling the screen to wreck some temporary foothold you needed to get some nifty swag. (You also get to do some interesting things in terms of overall gameplay strategy, but I'll leave that up to your imagination.)

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Play is relatively simple, you have a club of pitiful range and can collect various projectile weapons with differing attack properties along the way. Your objective is to reach the end of a stage, fight a big boss creature, and save a cave babe. Depending on who did more to defeat the boss, either Joe or Mac will receive a kiss from the formerly-distressed damsel as an absolutely meaningless token reward before proceeding to the next stage.

There are obviously a fair few more details than that, just based on what we're seeing here, but those will be tackled and de-mystified in their due course, seeing as how we've got the whole rest of our adventure to go for that kind of thing. What, you expected me to be up-front and forthcoming with you on something new in the first episode for a change? Sure, right, and description lengths grow on trees! Get out of here, nerd! Wanting to READ. Sheesh.

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Like Turtles in Time, this has also been a long time coming. It ALSO had no game audio on its first attempt. Check your settings and output instead of just assuming everything's okay!