Joe & Mac Retro Collection review for PS5, Xbox Series X, PC, Switch

Joe & Mac might not be known to many people, but back in the 1990s they were arcade and home console legends! With super bright visuals, wacky animations and challenging gameplay. While versions of the game reached many systems, Red Art Games have brought what are considered to be the best 3 games from the series together in this collection.

If you’ve never experienced a Joe and Mac game before, they are fun and colorful 2D platformers where you play as the title characters either alone with just Joe or with a friend taking control of Mac as they set out to rescue the kidnapped cave ladies from deadly dinosaurs, cro-magnon grunts, and a slew of other dangerous enemies. It’s wild fun as you try to get from beginning to end, battle screen filling bosses and challenge the difficult platforming. This collection gives you the first game, Joe and Mac, it’s sequel Joe and Mac 2, and a third game called Congo’s Caper, which is the only single player game.

All the games included are the Super Nintendo versions. Sadly, the Sega Genesis, handheld and arcade Versions have been left out. You do get the USA, European and Japanese versions of each of the three games included, and this is where the game titles get a bit confusing, patricianly with the USA and Japan versions. In the USA, Joe and Mac 1 and 2 are considered the main games with Congo’s Caper being a sort of Spin Off. In Japan, Congo’s Caper is considered Joe and Mac 2, While Joe and Mac 2 is known as Joe and Mac 3 in Japan. So, to be clear all three Super NES games are included and there is no difference between parts 2 and 3 other than the language.

Along with the collection of games, you get a nice art gallery, some promotional art, and a really cool unboxing feature where you can see boxes, cartridges and the instruction manuals of every version of the 3 games included. You can even look through the manuals with animated pages and check out every part of the original cardboard boxes. The renders of the boxes, carts and the manuals are all top notch and look fantastic. It’s little extras like this that make these collections worth picking up in my opinion. The additions don’t stop there, there is also a Boss Rush Mode where the bosses from all of the games are put together in a new challenge. Try to survive every single boss from every game and try to beat them in the fastest time.

The games are completely intact and as far as I can tell, are using the original ROMS right down to the Nintendo Copyright left on the title screens. Nothing has been altered from the originals, they look, sound and play exactly the same. There are modern “emulator” additions to each game like save states, rewind and a CRT filter for that authentic look. I will say that the CRT Filter looks pretty decent here and is not as dark as other collections that feature it. The graphics of each game are all bright and extremely colorful.

The animations are fantastic with some decent parallax scrolling and fast smooth gameplay. Sound effects are a bit muffled at times (mostly in Joe and Mac 1) but the original ROM was also like this, which also shows that Red Art Games changed nothing. All of the games are fun to play and all have awesome gameplay.  Joe and Mac 2 (3 in Japan) is the most difficult of the three, while the first game and Congo’s Caper seem to end rather quickly but offer a nice challenge.

Joe & Mac Retro Collection is a very cool collection where the original games are left untouched with no quality of life features that change the look and feel of the games. The rewind feature would be the only real “change” to the game, but I don’t consider that a big deal, plus you never have to use it. If you’ve never played these games on the Super Nintendo, now is your chance to experience them in their original glory. This is a solid retro collection release and I hope Red Art Games have a few more planned just like this. Check this one out if you can, it’s highly recommended.

Note: Red Art Games provided us with a Joe & Mac Retro Collection code for review purposes.