Another two player Evercade game. I’ve played Joe & Mac (Caveman Ninja) before, and the sequel, but hadn’t even heard of this. In fact, I thought it was the sequel when I started it up. As it turns out, it’s a completely different sort of platformer.
Whereas the other two Joe & Mac games were sideways scrolling platformers where you club baddies, Returns is a two player Bubble Bobble/Snowbros/Rodland type single screen “clear the baddies” type game. You still club the baddies, but they now need multiple hits before they get stuffed into a snowball bag and you push the snowball bag into other baddies to knock them out too. Defeat enough baddies with the same snowball bag and you get larger fruit meat and more points. Yes, it’s very much like those other games.
With the exception that each between-level animation has the pervy cavemen spying on, or “accidentally” undressing one of the cave women. You’d never catch Bub or Bob doing that.
We completed it, which was surprisingly easy for an arcade game, and found it enjoyable although it isn’t surprising it never hit the big time like those games it apes as it lacks the cute factor and isn’t quite as much fun. Snowballs and bubbles are more satisfying than bags, obviously.
