Commodore Amiga
Yo! Joe!
Yo! Joe!
Y'know, some things I'll never understand. The popularity of retro gaming, for instance. No, I understand why retro gaming is popular, but there's certain games I've either never played or never understood the hype behind them. Take Head Over Heels, for instance, or the original Batman game. I've just never got into them as much as apparently most people did.
Then there's the games that I really liked that no-one ever mentions. In all my time of retro-gaming, I haven't heard a single mention of Yo! Joe! for the Amiga, except by myself, and I don't know why. Me and several other of my friends loved the game, having originally been hooked on a playable demo of the first half of the first level... and that's not as bad as it sounds because the levels were HUGE.
Basically, then... you, with or without a friend, must make your way through some big levels of various designs, beating things up along the way. Animation is wonderfully smooth, the graphics are highly detailed, and the controls are simple and easy to learn.
The reason you're in this situation isn't abundantly clear. All you can tell is some evil magic circle wants to cause Joe and Nat (the playable characters) pain and suffering, and so make you fight your way through their domain. Well, it's easy enough to just say "Whatever" to the plot, it could be about being pulled up for not scooping the poop for all I care, as long as the main game mechanic remains as it is, because this is one enjoyable experience from beginning to end.
It wasn't particularly difficult, but you did need to exercise a little brain power here and there and choose when to back off a bit. Attempting to simply plough forward was just a little too dumb and would cause you to die fairly readily. Ducking and weaving a bit delivered far better results.
Magazine reviews were mixed, public opinion was and still is mixed. I would be very interested to know what other people think about this game, so please post your comments below. If you haven't played before I'd say it's worth hunting down for a quick blast.
For what it's worth, I played the demo and loved it. Never owned an Amiga myself though, so I never got to try the full game.
ReplyDeleteProbably the most important game of my childhood. For what my childhood is worth.
ReplyDeleteIt is a really good game, it has a good art direction and a great music. The game with my amiga joystick was really hard, now with emulator is much easier (but I kinda miss the sound of the floppy, lel).
Thanks for remembering Yo!Joe!
I've been playing platform games from more than 30 years. And although I love platformers on paper, most of the time I don't like the execution. And there are a lot of these games that became classics that I don't really like. Then, there's this game, unknown and, in my humble opinion, easily one of the best platform games EVER. It's almost a perfect textbook on how to make this type of game. Level design is excellent, the levels are huge, but you can explore them really well. They're also gratifying to explore, there's a lot of energy, lives, weapons, etc. to collect. There's a lot of variety of enemies, but it also applies to our weapons. The controls are spot-on, the game is not hard, but extremely enjoyable. The graphics are amazing, with a lot of variety, the soundtrack is one of the best from the 16 bit era. It's cute, modern and evokes the theme of the level. The atention to detail is awesome. An example is the little main characters moving and reacting from what happens in the game. I had more to write about this forgotten gem, but I'll conclude by saying that the game has a fantastic two-player option.
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