HISTORY
Fiction has more or less cemented the general vision of the prehistoric past as “caveman and dinosaurs” for entertaiment media as a whole, despite the fact our unshaven ancestors did not live at the same times as the dinosaurs, there’s no hunting down brachiosauruses when the things had gone extinct 65 millions years ago, or writing middling yet kinda charming newspaper comic strips (the fabled “western 4-koma”) that can change that.
But it was not reality; it was the 90s.
Indiana Jones discovered ancient shit every so often, and Jurassic Park ignited the dino craze… no, the dino mania, got the fever for these ancient creatures sky high, and Data East, a company mostly dealing in pinball machines but also occasionally videogames, was more than happy to oblige and carpe the dino diem quick and hot, by releasing Joe & Mac: Tatakae Genshijin (the original japanese subtitle translating roughly “Caveman Fight”), better known worldwive as Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja or simply Caveman Ninja.
The “Ninja” in the title is there because the 80s craze with the japanese born assassins still made for attractive videogame marketing, as fun and crazy as it would have been to have a game subtitled “Caveman Ninja” to actually have caveman ninjas…it’s just marketing.
But boy it worked, as Joe & Mac proved to be a smash hit for Data East, a very big hit (so big you couldn’t avoid it going into arcades even in my country as well), so much that many ports followed for basically every system of the era, including the NES (which was quite old back then) and many home computers, not the usual for a Data East game, so much it cameoed in Tumblepop, had a spin-off in the vein of Tumblepop itself, Joe & Mac Returns and eventually spawned sequels.
For reasons i will explain later, this also – if indirectly – counts as a review of the original Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja game that released in arcades and today can be found as a Switch download, part of the Johnny Turbo branded series of releases…. Well, could.
I might release a mini-addendum on the SNES version and the other ones at a later date, since there are some version differences that do change the experience to a degree, but i might also never do that, thought apparently the SNES version (which i never played, i did play the arcade game in a cabinet, not the original one, just a cabinet loaded with ROMs as it was often the case here) has some notable differences for the better and some extra content, but i’m gonna refer back to the arcade original, and – as i said literally one paragraph above – this also counts as a review of that, since this “new one” is a direct remake of the original arcade Joe & Mac.
Maybe if have some extra time i’ll get to play and compare the other console versions of the game, but i’d prefer to cover the other Joe & Mac games before doing that.
PLOT & GRAPHICS
Yep, despite the title promising the delightful nonsense combo of japanese assassins and cavemen people…. Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja does not feature nor is about a “Caveman Ninja” in any way, shape or form, unless you consider a single power-up. Even if it does have a great ring and did the job of making people flock to it during the 90s, be it on its arcade cabinet or in one of its many home consoles, handheld and PC ports of the era.
The plot is actually quite simple and essential videogame motivation fodder: they kidnapped the women. Some rival caveman tribe came in the night and kidnapped women of your tribe, and fearing the caveman cuckquean implications of such actions (assuming some of the women were the brides-to-be of Joe and Mac), you run out to rescue the cavewomen, which entails exterminating a lot of dinosaurs and irsute cavemen, a lot of dinosaur bosses, facing the jungles, the river, the mountains, the and even lava-ridden enviroments to do so.
Again, remember, it launched in arcades, so, the plot its there to briefly set up the reason why you’re doing whatever you’re doing, and then leave you to get your ass kicked and your wallet (or Bobby Hill approved purse) drained of coinage.
There are multiple ending depending on the path you take after beating the final boss, which are tellingly very outdated, with the good one having Joe & Mac “escaping” from a group of beautful cavewomen, the second running away from the token fat cavewoman, and the third legging it away from the gay caveman willing to mate with the duo.
It was the 90s and it was Data East, this wasn’t really….. “notable” back then, pretty standard actually, for better or worse, and it is preserved intact in the remake.
Let’s make things clear: the “new” monicker, implying maybe a newly made but faithful to its roots new entry in the vein of the “New Super Mario Bros” series… ‘tis but a lie, mystification, because this is basically a visual remake of the first Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja arcade game, with a brand new look and some tweaks, all handled by Mr. Nutz Studio, the developer already behind Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All, a studio that carried on the namesake of an even older and more obscure platformer, curiosly enough one Microids didn’t remake… yet.
Hence the new visuals also align with the ones for Toki Going Ape Spit “remake”, and i think the new style it’s quite ok, but some of the over the top expressions and visual gags of the original game sprite art is gone, some stuff is oddly less detailed or cheaper, like Mac not having his own model but being a palette swapped Joe in the character select screen (despite the title screen showing Mac having it’s own similar but not identical sprite, which IS reflected during actual gameplay), and the cavewomen too are palette swaps of the same sprite, when they were different looking in the original, just the lack of care for most detail it’s telling.
And frankly it’s not well animated, its clear the studio behind it can do better because their Asterix & Obelix Slap Them All is a gorgeous looking game with more care put in every animation and visual detail, here it feels cheaper and more “flash game” than hand crafted curated design, with some really robotic animations going on, artstyle change aside, maybe including the option to revert back to the original artstyle as a toggle (like for Asterix & Obelix XXL Romastered, also published by Microids, incidentally) would have been nice, but nope.
Also, some of the recreated moments that did stand out in the original, like the mammoth boss losing its trunk when defeated, had to be patched in later, and STILL, even after patches, there’s no transiction for the final stage, where instead there was a little cutscene showing you were going inside the snake boss for the final fight against a weird caveman and the creature’s heart.
Instead here you’re just inside something alive after beating the snake boss, if you didn’t play the original you’d have no idea. Couldn’t be even fuckin bothered to remake that 10 seconds cutscene? Then again, it’s a Microids published game, most likely it was rushed as usual.
GAMEPLAY & LEVEL DESIGN
Gameplay is basically untouched from the arcade original, meaning you can jump and use the equipped ranged weapon (which can be charged for a stronger attack) to damage enemies, there’s the regular jump and a super jump by pressing Up and the jump button at the same time, and that’s really it in terms of controls to remember.
There’s also not much to say about the gameplay itself, the weapons are the same as the original, with the level design will try to bait you into picking up ones that are not fit for the situation (especially the ones dropped from eggs left by defaul in the boss areas), but on the other hand you default back to the stone throwing axe thingie, which is an ok weapon, and you don’t keep the same weapon you died with like in Ghost N Goblins, for example.
Don’t forget you also have a hunger system that depletes your health bar if you don’t constantly pick up food items to restore health tacks lost, meant to incentivize players to rush through the stage and not play it safe, but at least it stops when you enter a boss fight.
I kinda get this “hunger system”…on paper, as a way to always ensure you’re on the move at all times; BUT this isn’t quite the very same game Data East copied the idea from, since in Adventure Island the player character is a fast moving one, as where Joe & Mac instead take a while to move and jump compared to Higgins, so it’s even more of a cheap ass way to fabricate extra difficulty.
Basically, is mechanically the same as it was back in the day in terms of gameplay.. or is it?
So here comes the rub, the bamboozling, the facepalming, as there are changes made to the gameplay. Subtle ones, and all for the worst, almost as if they didn’t think the 1991 game wasn’t hard and cheap enough, so here you go bitch, enjoy more fabricated “difficulty”.
I’m almost impressed because if you didn’t check back with the original, you might be led to think the arcade game was about this hard and frustrating, but nope, someone had the great idea of inflating the bosses lifebars at least twice the size they originally were, have the character player take more damage from a single collision with an enemy or obstacle, and – this is the kicker, the cherry on top – make the hunger system drain your HP almost THRICE as fast.
Also, just for good measure, take the exact same and simple to remember controls (which you can’t remap, because the devil is in the detail and says fuck you)…. and make them worse.
Yes, i could complain about the fact having an option to map/remap the super jump as a specific button/key would have helped since it’s so often necessary, but it doesn’t matter because, somehow, the characters feel floatier and juts plain worse to manouver than how they did….34 YEARS AGO.
I’m not joking, i was playing this, then replayed the arcade release on Switch of the original Joe & Mac, what the fuck, the controls are better, tighter, jumping is less floaty…
It’s just unbelievable that they managed to make Data East seem like a premiere developer of the era, but they did, and yeah, some bullshit was and is still preserved with all the “fun” it always had, but this time, the original wasn’t more fun just in your memories, it’s actually a better game, for what it’s worth.
Then there is the Extend mode, which means well and its the only new real piece of content, but just makes the already worsened experience even more rotten, desperate and cheap.
See, the Extend mode offers.. well, extended versions of the normal stages/levels, which on paper sound fine, even more so considering how short the levels are/were, but clearly no one stopped to think of WHY they were designed this way. Or probably cared, because – remember – they did care to make the already cheap difficulty even more cheaper in subtle ways, which are made even worse when the levels are longer and hence offers more ways to get shotted by cheap ass bullshit.
Maybe these extend stages wouldn’t be so bad if they removed, made optional or at least nerfed the hunger bar consumption, which alone contrasts with the level design, as do checkpoints, added just because they made levels longer… not better, just longer, elongated, peppered with more enemies meaning more occasions to easily lose chunks of life on top of hunger steadily decreasing it already.
These two being the only two things they actually tinkered with in terms of gameplay, i can’t stress this out enough.
Just lazy ass way of making “more” game, without actually thinking of how it affected the level design, especially since they don’t add any new enemies or gimmicks for this Extend mode.
Nothing that makes the game better, anyway.
They added some more obstacles and that’s it, i doubt the developers actively set out to antagonize the prospective playerbase, but what could have been a cutesy variation on the game and something to once done with Arcade mode…. is an even worse, more frustrating crock of shit.
What’s the point of making longer levels and trying to have the player consider and ponder before a difficult section when the hunger mechanic keeps consuming their health like a rabid dog, meaning they just can’t stop to ponder or plan shit?
And these Extend versions of the levels are like 5 or 6 times longer than the originals, too.
Horrendous.
DIFFICULTY & LENGHT
Joe & Mac, even with a new coat of paint and the “new” monicker, it’s still a game of its time, that being 1991, and an arcade one, sure, but this doesn’t mean you had to drag lots of those ancient, often outdated designs back from the grave for an “authentic” experience of things we mostly left behind for good reasons, like being forced to finish the thing with a stock of 3 lives and 3 continues, you can pick up 1UPs but like in the olden days, memorization & repetition is the way to eventually finish the game.
No, you can’t remove the lives system, nor add extra credits/continues, and a lack of options is the name of the game, as you don’t even have alternate controls schemes .
Yes, the game does save between levels so you don’t have to complete it all in one sitting… but it almost doesn’t matter, since you will eventually HAVE to beat in one run after you’ve memorized the levels and bosses so to not run out of credits and lives.
It’s unfair as hell as it always was, though, that much is true, and to be honest the game was always just okay for the era, it had personality, but even at the time there were better games with this approach to difficulty… But to be fair on that regard is not THAT bad.
Bosses especially highligh the unfair factor as most are deceptively simple (sometimes far easier than the stages they cap off), becoming piss easy once you know where to stand and you’ll will find these easy exploits as you try and retry these fuckers, motivate by spite of not having it, more than actual desire to see the rest of the game.
There are a few branching paths leading to different stages depending if you took exit A or exit B at the end of the level. Btw, don’t expect any real extras in terms of endings, as i said they just recreated the three ones you can get by choosing the upper, middle and down exit after the final boss, the same ones you’d get in the old arcade release, there’s nothing new.
Even more hilarious is how most of the other extra modes included weren’t even in the launch version, Boss Rush and Speedrun Mode (alongside some language options, fixes, balancing fixes and checkpoints, i kid you not), they were added in later software updates.
Heck, hilarious on PS4 the trophies for the Extended mode version are treated by PSN as DLC trophies, as in they were added later too, which is true because the Steam version still has only achievements made for beating the levels on Arcade mode. XD
Even stupider, they added trophies for half the levels, that or extend mode just ends midway… actually, it did had just half the stages, they did add the rest in but i guess on PS4 and PS5 didn’t bother to add trophies. So very indicative of this fuckin game, and in accordance i too didn’t even bother trying to finish even half of the Extent mode stages, not even for this review.
Less fun is that it’s still buggy; despite the many patches i’ve seen enemies stuck in their cartoon dashing animation, a foe stuck in a jumping loop against an obstacle it would never escape from, boss attacks sometimes hitting you where they shouldn’t, enemies not spawning food items even when they should, and once in Extend mode, i also had my player character get a bell pepper power up (which was in the 1991 arcade release but wasn’t in the game at launch as well) and literally go through the level and falling into the endless unprogrammed freefall limbo.
Once it crashed entirely, during a boss victory jingle, too, stuck on a note. Perfect.
OVERALL EVALUTION
As much as i have sympathy for Data East’s series that literally as old as i am, i struggle to find a reason for this release to exist in this market, for many different reasons.
Fans of the series might already have replayed and bought the entire series on Switch (i know i did) before it got delisted, with the Nintendo back-catalogue also including Congo Capers and the SNES version of the first game, so why did Microids put New Joe & Mac Caveman Ninja out in the wild?
This is not a rethorical question, what did Microids accomplish with this besides rereleasing a 1991 arcade game with just a fresh new visual style and little to no extra content?
It’s also a barren release, lacking any kind of accessibility options, customizable settings like lives stock and difficulty sliders, incentives to replay it… or even stick with its dated design to begin with, let’s be real, even in the “modern-retro” market there’s so much better offerings for platformers it’s not even funny, so i can’t blame new comers don’t caring about it,
Plus, people that did play the original game will find nothing of real substance to play that they haven’t already experienced back in the 90s or even on emulators, wishing they actually tried to remake the game, or straight up make a new one instead of this shit.
The only way it could be worse it’s if this didn’t have local co-op play… it does have that.
Even so, at a budget price of 30 bucks (40 bucks on consoles physical), this is a fuckin lot to ask for relatively nothing done, and what has been done is just for worse.
It’s honestly amazing how hard they fucked it up, it’s pretty ass, being a visual remake that not only leaves the gameplay and mechanics untouched from its arcade debut… somehow makes it sloppier, with less tight controls, and also decides to crank up the already unfair difficulty with floatier jumping, bosses having a health bar that about twice (or more) than they had.
And while the level design is mostly untouched… the suddle touches here and there help in you eat cheap shots and have your character lose even more health when getting touched by an enemy you couldn’t yet see on screen, on top of the hunger system eating away every two seconds at your HP, as these cavemen fuckers digest 3 times faster than they did in 1991, somehow.
In a game with levels that are designed to be zapped through, to boot, and , sure, the game also did this originally to avoid you playing it extra safe, to keep you moving and avoid you being too much on the defensive, but it should have made been more lax, this hunger mechanic, or a customizable option, with a toggle to set the intensity or remove it entirely. Not just worse.
The only new content is an Extend mode that’s somehow worse than the Arcade mode recreating the original Joe & Mac, as this mode just makes the levels like 5 times longer… without removing the pain in the ass hunger system, which fights any attempt to build levels that last longer than 2 minutes and have more complex obstacles pattern that require you to wait a bit before moving, which you can’t do because of the fucking hunger system with extra tapeworms added for cheapness’ sake.
LEGACY
Honestly i don’t see much else coming off of this badly marketed and honestly bad remake-port, it does feel like this release itself was the last gasp of air in order to see something come out of the brand, since the reboot that was discussed back in 2009 has been quietely never been discussed of again and i think it’s safe to say it has been cancelled for at least a good decade.
It’s a shame because we’ve seen these retro-revivals can lead to some good stuff and older cult titles getting new life, but honestly, if this is the quality we’re to expect from any Joe & Mac going forward… just fucking make a new Bonk game or a collection, instead.
It’s time the Turbografx/PC Engine caveman mascot (and other ones like Chuck Rock) had a chance, since Joe & Mac blew it, and it pains me to say it, since i do like the series, nostalgia for it i do posses aside, but there’s no excuse for a remake that just updates/changes the visuals, doesn’t improve shit where there was plenty of room to do so, and somehow makes the original arcade coin muncher Data East game play better AND come off as less frustrating.
Plus asks 30 clams for this shit job, 40 if you want the physical edition, which admittley has some sweet goodies, from sticker to a recreation of the original arcade game Japanese marketing poster/flyer, mere consolatory tat when the actual game is fossilized kidney stone soup.
You’d be WAY better off just getting the Johnny Turbo Arcade re-releases of the original and the various sequels that are on the Switch’s digital shop, you can literal experience the whole series on there for cheap….. or you COULD, i know because i bought all Joe & Mac games there but they have been since delisted on the eShop, meaning at the moment of writing, Congo Capers is the only game in the series you can play in the original form, as its part of the SNES Online catalog.
So you know what, emulate away, because sure as hell New Joe & Mac Caveman Ninja isn’t worth the 30 bucks, maybe 20 for the fans of the series that do want a physical edition, but even so, i don’t recommend it even if you’ve never played the series and might be curious to play the new remake version of just the original Joe & Mac.
Even on a strong sale, i STRONGLY advise against it, it is a shitty low effort nostalgia cashgrab.
Just play the old/original Joe & Mac, and-or its sequel/s, any way you can, instead.
Or be on the look out for the Joe & Mac: Legacy/Retro Collection, which has been successfully kickstarted back in 2025 and will drop on Steam and modern platforms next year (with a physical regular and limited edition for Switch planned), there is no specific date as of yet, just a generic “2026”, but it will have modern features expected from a retro collection, some new modes, and will feature all 3 Joe & Mac main titles in their SNES iterations/versions, meaning no portable versions or their Tumblepop clone.
Not that the latter one missing will be a deal breaker, it just won’t, but it feels cheap, when even the fuckin Bubsy collection is going the extra mile, you know?
Wise Cafe (International) 