You can now pre-order the physical Joe & Mac Retro Collection

French publisher Red Art Games has opened public pre-orders for physical copies of the Joe & Mac Retro Collection. The compilation bundles three 16-bit prehistoric platformers and follows a successful Kickstarter campaign from June 2025.

The digital version launches on October 29, 2026, across PC, Nintendo Switch, the upcoming Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. If you want a box on your shelf, the physical editions are limited to the Switch and PS5. The digital launch covers nearly every active platform, but the physical print run is aimed squarely at the current console generation.

Three games and a boss rush

The collection includes the Super Nintendo versions of Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, the 1992 spin-off Congo's Caper, and the 1994 sequel Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics. Red Art Games partnered with Japanese rights holder G-Mode to include both the North American and uncensored Japanese Super Famicom ROMs.

They also added standard modern emulation features: save states, a rewind function, and CRT display filters. The Boss Rush mode is entirely new for this release. It stitches together the major encounters from all three games into a single gauntlet. The option to toggle between the North American and Japanese ROMs is a welcome inclusion, as regional censorship often altered enemy sprites and difficulty balancing in 1990s localizations.

Data East's prehistoric trilogy

Data East launched the series in arcades in 1991 before porting it to the SNES. The games follow two green and blue-haired cavemen fighting dinosaurs and rival Neanderthals in cooperative two-player platforming. Data East was a major player in the arcade scene, known for titles like BurgerTime and Bad Dudes, and Joe & Mac became one of their most successful original properties during the 16-bit console generation.

The transition from the arcade original to the SNES involved some compromises in graphics, but the home version added an overworld map and longer stages. Congo's Caper shifted the focus to a half-human, half-monkey protagonist and played more like a fast-paced action game than its predecessor.

The 1994 sequel tried to mix things up by adding light RPG village-building mechanics, which is an ambitious choice for a game about hitting a T-Rex with a bone. Original North American cartridges of Joe & Mac 2 are notoriously difficult to find today and command high prices on the secondary market.

A €69.99 box of rocks

Red Art Games, founded in 2018, specializes in bringing indie and retro titles to modern consoles with limited physical print runs. They operate out of France and have spent the last few years securing physical publishing rights for niche Japanese titles. Their partnership with G-Mode is crucial here, as G-Mode acquired a massive catalog of Data East intellectual property back in 2004 after the original company declared bankruptcy.

The standard physical edition of the collection costs €39.99 and includes the game cartridge or disc in a standard plastic case. The Rock Collector's Edition is priced at €69.99 and includes a retro-style cardboard box, acrylic character stands, pins, and posters. The retro box design looks accurate to the era.