Joe & Mac Retro Collection hits digital storefronts for $20

The Joe & Mac Retro Collection is now available digitally across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam for $19.99. Publisher Red Art Games released the compilation alongside a launch trailer, bringing the Kickstarter-backed project to digital storefronts ahead of its physical print run.

Developed in-house by the Paris-based publisher's Red Art Studios division, the package pulls together all three of Data East's 16-bit prehistoric platformers originally released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. That lineup covers the 1991 console port of Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, the 1992 spin-off Congo's Caper, and the 1993 sequel Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics.

Three SNES games, two regions, and one strange sequel

Data East's original Caveman Ninja started in arcades in 1991 as a slapstick two-player run-and-gun where green- and blue-haired cavemen clubbed rival Neanderthals and giant dinosaurs to rescue kidnapped village women. When it moved to the SNES later that year, it traded some of the quarter-munching brutality for longer stages and an overworld map. Its 1992 follow-up, Congo's Caper, dropped the cooperative play and the main characters entirely to focus on a half-human, half-monkey boy chasing down a demon who kidnapped his girlfriend.

In Japan, Congo's Caper was actually released as Tatakae Genshijin 2: Rookie no Boken, making it the official second entry in the series there. The West got a different numbered sequel in 1993 with Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics (known in Japan as Tatakae Genshijin 3), which brought back the two-player club combat and bolted on light RPG mechanics, stone-wheel currency, and village reconstruction. Both the Western releases and the uncensored Japanese versions of all three games are included here, and at $19.99, getting six total ROM variants is a much cheaper route than hunting down loose SNES cartridges on the aftermarket, where Lost in the Tropics and Congo's Caper regularly clear $40 to $60 apiece.

From 2003 bankruptcy to a multi-game Boss Rush

When Data East filed for bankruptcy in 2003, its massive catalog of 1980s and 1990s franchises (which also includes BurgerTime, Karnov, and Windjammers) was largely bought up by Japanese mobile and retro company G-MODE. Red Art Games licensed the Joe & Mac properties from G-MODE to build this compilation, adding the expected modern emulation wrapper: save states, rewind, screen filters, and custom aspect ratios.

The standout addition from Red Art Studios is a newly built Boss Rush mode that strings together the oversized dinosaur and prehistoric monster fights across all three games into a single challenge. I'm curious how well the transition between the three games holds up inside a continuous Boss Rush, given that the physics and hitboxes shifted noticeably between the first game and Lost in the Tropics. Still, for anyone who just wants to grab a second controller and bash a Tyrannosaurus rex with a stone wheel, the whole trilogy is finally in one place.