Red Art Games is bringing Data East's three classic prehistoric SNES games together in the new Joe & Mac Retro Collection, and judging by the contents of the boxes, someone at the publisher understands exactly why we still get excited about old game packaging as much as the games, and you don't need the best retro game consoles to play them – the collection is coming to consoles, including Nitendo Switch 2.
The collection brings together some of the best games of the 90s: Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, Congo's Caper and Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics, released on the Super Nintendo between 1991 and 1995. These are very much games of their time, with bold, goofy character designs, grinning dinosaurs and bobble-eyed prehistoric beasts.
There's a particular charm to 16-bit game art like this that comes from making everything work with very little; it’s why fans love games of this era, and why remakes like Manic Miner HD cause a ruckus. The new Joe & Mac Retro Collection isn’t a remake; it’s the old games running on new consoles, with character designs readable at a glance, enemies needing a strong silhouette, and backgrounds that suggest a whole world without turning into an indistinguishable wall of pixels.
Joe & Mac is full of chunky characters, big expressions, bright colours and ridiculous creatures, with the whole thing leaning into a cartoon version of prehistory rather than anything resembling an actual history book. Dinosaurs, cavemen, monsters and weapons all get thrown into the same visual soup, and somehow it works.
It looks like one of those releases that will go the extra mile. The Joe & Mac Retro Collection also includes the Japanese versions of the games, including the uncensored Japanese version of Caveman Ninja, so there's a bit of preservation work going on here too. You can play the games closer to how they originally appeared in Japan, or slap on the CRT filter, adjust the aspect ratio and pretend you're back in front of a chunky old television.
There are modern concessions, such as save states and rewind to make the famously old-school difficulty a little less brutal, while a new Boss Rush mode gives returning players something they haven't seen before. Joe & Mac 1 and 2 also support two-player co-op. But the really nice touch is the Virtual Unboxing Experience, which lets you explore digital versions of the original boxes, manuals, and cartridges, celebrating how we used to collect and handle these games as much as play them.
Red Art Games is leaning into that with its physical editions, too, which include reversible covers, posters, stickers, badges and manuals, while the Rock Edition adds an acrylic stand and a retro-inspired box.
Pre-order Joe & Mac Retro Collection now; it releases digitally on Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Steam on October 29. Physical editions for Switch and PS5 are due in early 2027.
