Joe & Mac (1991). Play online

Summary

Joe & Mac (also called Caveman Ninja) feels like an absurdly wild ride through a neon‑tinted prehistory. As a side‑by‑side co‑op platformer, you control a green‑haired Joe or a blue‑haired Mac, flinging everything from boomerangs and bone clubs to flaming torches and electric flints at rival tribes. The health meter slowly erodes, forcing you to keep moving and grab power‑ups before the timer kills you.

The original arcade version lets you choose alternate routes after each boss and even offers three different endings, while the NES port—handled by Elite Systems and released in the U.S. in December 1992—drops the routing and final‑exit choices, replacing them with a slightly re‑tooled boss lineup. Two‑player mode works brilliantly, though in some versions the cavemen can accidentally damage each other, adding a chaotic, competitive edge.

Storyline

Joe & Mac, also known as Caveman Ninja, follows two colorful cavemen—Joe with green hair and Mac with blue hair—as they battle through a chain of prehistoric levels. Their mission is to rescue a group of women kidnapped by a rival tribe, fighting dinosaurs, giant insects, and other ancient hazards along the way. In the original Japanese version, the game opens with a graphic scene of the cavemen entering a hut and dragging the cavewomen out by their hair. That opening was cut from the U.S. release, but the core premise remains the same: a daring rescue across a vivid, stone‑age world.