Arcade games were likely the first introduction to video games for people up until the mid-1990s, and this includes me. The cabinets would attract all sorts of groups of kids, teens, and adults, furiously dishing out coins for deep runs into notoriously difficult games. Mr. Nutz Studio is bringing that same energy back to life with the ‘New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninjas’ for a bit of wacky arcade action across all last Gen and current Gen consoles, including the Nintendo Switch, for either single or co-op play.

This port/remake sets to revitalise the colourful and wacky prehistorical side scroller, and the two burly Cavemen dressed in green and blue grass skirts, Joe and Mac, have to brave the wilderness to save the local damsels in distress. There isn’t much else to say from these silent protagonists when the Neanderthals steal your girls, so grab the heaviest stone axe you can find, march yourself out there, and bring them home.

The vibrant and eye-catching colour scheme is the immediate pull for this game, as the rich shades of green layered on top of each other make the grassy flats and trees pop against the backdrops. The backgrounds are stagnant but have the illusion of a lively set piece as the clouds scroll across the screen as you move forward. Later levels have cliff faces, waterfalls, and bubbling lava pits that progressively offer a darker colour scheme the closer to the final stages you get, which made the limited number of stages feel somewhat unique from each other.

The sound design did try to pair up with the pleasing hand-drawn art style with a collection of upbeat and simplistic soundtracks. A rhythmic toe-tapping beat was a welcome addition to keep the spirits lifted, and I will cover why that was important in a moment. What did strike me as odd was the sound design seemed to struggle to interject itself seamlessly and often didn’t match the onscreen actions.

The water geysers would pop in and out of the screen but the sound effect sounded off, almost as if something was being dropped into the water rather than shooting out of the ground. The enemies would randomly grunt off-beat or silently die when struck, or my attacks would offer no sound at all, eventually catching up and throwing in a few clinks or thunks. It could be a little off-putting.

Of the two modes available at launch, the arcade mode was the closest to its 1991 arcade release with especially short levels. The very first mission starts at the base of a T-Rex’s tail, and once you reach the head, the boss fight starts against that very T-Rex before moving on to the next stage. A big thing that sticks out to me is the bare-bones complexity of the platforming. The challenges of getting to the end of the level for the enjoyable boss fights never came, and instead of having to navigate a bunch of platforms, deal with an absurdly brutal amount of enemies that can, and will, make quick work of you.

You can throw an unlimited number of axes with the attack button and jump on the enemies with the jump button, but this is the extent of your controls outside of moving, and most of the time, the randomness of the throwing arc will do you in.

Charging the axe throw for a bigger axe seemed to be the play as the unique weapon pickups, ranging from a boomerang to a literal stone wheel, were hit and miss on how effective they could be. All of this already offered enough of a challenge, but the hunger meter that depleted your health unless you constantly keep defeating enemies to eat the various food they drop would drop your health faster than actually being attacked.

The Extend Mode offers a little bit more of a build-up, but it brings more issues due to the enemy density and hunger meter, causing a frustrating affair to reach the boss with enough health in the first place. A patch is on the way to add a training mode, boss rush, and a speedrun mode which would have helped at launch, given that a perfect run of the arcade mode can see the game’s six areas be finished in about 20 minutes.

New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja is an eye-catching nostalgic hit weighed down by its coin-eating difficulty. It’s no secret that arcade games of old would offer brutal difficulty to hide the short length of their games, and New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja hasn’t brought anything new to the table at launch. Here’s to hoping the addition of the few extra modes in early 2023 gives an extended life to this arcade classic.

Written by: Shane Fletcher