Joe & Mac

"Ah, The Competition, The Hair, The Mediocrity! How Sweet Thee Smell!"

Mullets are garish haircuts, out-of-place in the new millennium, and undeniably hip. This is a fact that can not be denied by any woman over the age of twelve, nor any man who truly aspires to be a man. Ugly hair distinguishes a person, separating them from the crowd, and making them appear to be more than what they are. “Oh, he has a mullet! There *must* be something about him!” In reality, there probably is nothing more about the person than a hideous haircut, and a lack of fashion sense. In much the same way, Joe and Mac appears to be quite the game obscured by purposely farcical characters, but a closer examination reveals that it is just as shallow as the mullet haircut. The haircut, the gimmick, it gives the illusion that something more is really there, but it just covers up the fact that there is nothing to differentiate the wearer of said haircut from others besides an ugly haircut.

The comparison to a mullet is appropriate for Joe and Mac, because the main characters have hideous haircuts. Think of the great manes of an eighties hair band mixed with the blue and purple dye of a modern day punk band, plastered on to a caveman character. In addition, they’re very short, around half the height of the modern looking women clad in furs that they must rescue. The women in furs are tasty tarts, but there’s little variation in their shape outside of the fur they’re wearing and their hair color. They carry on the Joe and Mac style of haircuts that would make Christopher Lowell (the effeminate host of a remodeling show on The Learning Channel) scream in agony.

Outside of the Fantastic Sams’ nightmare, the rest of the graphics are impressive for an early generation Super Nintendo game. While the animation for Joe and Mac is a bit jerky, the enemies move smoothly enough. More impressive is the size of the boss characters. Giant dinosaurs, such as pterodactyls and t-rexes, screech and charge after you. They compliment the cartoonish feel that the game aspires to produce, eyes bugging out as you hit them with your club. Sadly though, visuals are where Joe and Mac reaches its height.

The story is the typical “save your girlfriend” fare, except that Joe and Mac are running a prehistoric harem. You venture from stage to stage, whapping away at dinosaurs and evil cavemen with your club, and defeating a boss at the end of each stage. For your troubles, you’re rewarded with a bustacious babe; however, this is the Super Nintendo, and not a PC hentai game, so that’s where the intriguing possibilities end. It’s all tripe you’ll forget roughly five minutes after the game ends.

Problems creep up immediately while playing Joe and Mac. The standard platform-action controls are available - you can attack, jump, and roll-jump, which allows you to easier reach certain platforms. However, it feels as if Joe and Mac are on ice the entire game. They react too much to a simple tap of the control pad. This simple issue throws off the entire difficulty and enjoyment of the rest of the game, as you frustratingly over-jump half the time, and under-jump the other half, overcompensating for the slip factor. What could have been a fun game is reduced to mediocrity.

What else is wrong with Joe and Mac? Well, not a whole lot, overlooking the control issues. You receive a wide range of weapons, all prehistoric in nature; fire, a wheel, bone clubs, and a boomerang. Er, well, maybe a boomerang is more Australian than prehistoric, but it’s nice to round out the arsenal, you know? These weapons can be switched by hitting the select button. Each is useful for taking out different sorts of enemies. The wheel cleans out floor creeping enemies, fire scorches stationary objects, bone clubs fly swiftly through the air to take out flying pests, and boomerangs cause havoc, clogging up the area. They are hidden inside of red speckled brown eggs, along with health restoring ribs and chops.

The previously mentioned enemies are not overly difficult. They work in simple patterns that can be learnt after a try or two. The difficulty comes from trying to navigate jumps over pits with the slippery control. Luckily, you have plenty of chances to succeed. You can take plenty of hits from enemies, have a five heart life bar, and three lives per continue. Even if you die, you are allowed to position where you will revive. In addition, there’s an overhead map with white placeholders. As long as you reach the next placeholder, you will continue from that point when you continue.

I might be too harsh in my tone towards Joe and Mac; it is an early generation Super Nintendo platform game. However, it is still an adequate game, and nothing more. The over-the-top caveman theme does well to obscure the main flaw of the game, the shoddy controls. I attribute the other inflated scores to the fact that Joe and Mac was one of the first platformers released, and really had no other serious competition in the arena of Blockbuster. With plenty of alternatives at present time, you can do much better and much worse than Joe and Mac.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/02/03, Updated 07/02/03