Joe & Mac - SNES. I might have rented this game two or even three times in the early 90s, and for the years afterwards the title was a mystery to me. I didn't find out what it was and buy it until after 2000. Nevertheless, so much of this game is just engrained in my memory - the title screen and music to me was akin to something like walking into a Showbiz full of arcade machines. I don't know if this would be a good idea for a War Room thread or not, but do any of you remember being so young playing a game and just becoming entranced with it, as if it was actual magic? Maybe the same way toddlers look at iPads nowadays? This is what that game was to me.
I always play through it every few years, which is bittersweet (but more sweet than bitter, at least) because what were these epic, long levels to me as a child are just something I can walk through in a minute nowadays. The charm of the game is still there, at least. The game is like pure happiness, from the bright colors to the neanderthals running away like children after hitting you to the dinosaur bosses' expressions after getting hit.
The Super Mario World-esque overworld map is easy to deceive players - you think you're going to get a big game to play, with multiple levels based on a theme as in World, but nope, at most two levels are similar, like two lava levels near the end, but most are standalone, which as an adult now seems like an egregious waste of assets. Business-wise, I'm surprised they didn't stretch the game longer as so many other platformers do with putting at least three levels of the same kind together - I often forget that there's only one ice level with the wooly mammoth boss. You can see a lot of work went into the backgrounds here, so playing only one ice level, one boneyard level, etc. just makes them all the more special, while also leaving you wishing they had put more time int making more levels.
Then again, when I was a stupid kid, I never even beat the game. So in that sense, the game was at a perfect length. But going through it in 30 minutes nowadays really leaves me wishing for a fuller experience like the overworld map suggests.
Every few years when I sit down and play this game, perhaps moreso than any other game, it takes me back to being a kid, just like that guy at the end of Ratatouille. And for that I am grateful.
I also somehow manage to Ninja Spirit myself every time I play this game - much like the first time I played through all of Ninja Spirit and beat it without realizing I could cycle through weapons with the Select button, the same happened here. I also played through it all without realizing the shoulder buttons made you run. Oh well. Maybe I'll forget this again when I play again in five years.
