Game Review: ToeJam and Earl Back in the Groove

My latest review for GeekNifty is up and I got the chance to play ToeJam and Earl: Back in the Groove. You can check out the full review here, but when you're done, I have a few thoughts.

I didn't actually get the opportunity to play the original ToeJam and Earl when I was a kid. If the name doesn't ring a bell, it was a fairly notable game back in the Genesis days, mostly for how freakin' weird it was. While I didn't play it, I was most certainly aware of it, and that reputation alone was enough to convince me to take on the sequel when my editor offered it.

I'm not going to spend time talking about how the game works or the mechanics here; you can check out my GeekNifty review for that. Instead, like I did with Cloud Catcher last time, I want to explore what this game means. Not in a philosophical way; frankly the game is way too simple to extrapolate too much meaning from it. I want to talk about this strange balance games like ToeJam and Earl have to perform when they try to make a come back.

So often I hear complaints that a game "isn't like the original." And yet, I feel like I just as frequently hear that a game "just a rehash of the last one." ToeJam and Earl: Back in the Groove is most certainly in the latter camp if such a distinction must be made. Playing through it was strange. It was slow, quirky, and didn't feel like anything I'd ever played. I started thinking about what I remembered of the original and, after a few YouTube playthroughs of the old game, can confirm it's pretty much exactly like the original.

It's really hard to classify this game as a sequel. It's somewhere between that and an HD remaster. Clearly things have changed, there's new characters, online multiplayer, and lots of little pop culture references that weren't in the original, but if I had to put a percentage value on this game, I'd say it's 90% identical to its predecessor.

But is that bad? Well, I think the problem here is that, while the graphics and jokes may have gotten an upgrade, the game play is identical. Game play that was fine in the '90s, but feels very, very out of place in 2019. It feels like a Genesis game. It feels like the original. But we still have the original. We can still access it and play it anytime we like. 

When Super Mario Bros made a sequel, things were different. Close enough to let you jump into it if you were a fan of the original, but different enough to justify a whole new game. And I mean that whether you're talking the Japanese Mario 2 or the US Mario 2, both retain enough of the original to make it familiar while changing just enough to give you something new. And look how that series has progressed. Incremental changes, bit by bit, from the mechanics to the power ups to the aesthetics. But ToeJam and Earl? You could hand the controller to a time traveler from the '90s and they'd never know the difference.

I'm certainly not saying the game is bad, especially if you loved the original. What I'm getting at is the reason this game was made. We live in what could be described as a golden age for indy game developers, people who are stretching the limits of what a small or even one-person team can do. Five Nights at Freddy's and Undertale are cultural phenomenons that didn't have the backing of major studios. In the latter's case, it could even have been released in the '90s with it's retro aesthetics. It does nothing that a game from that time couldn't. But the purpose behind these new games was to make a statement. To tell a story. To leave the player with a certain feeling.

I won't say ToeJam and Earl didn't have a purpose back in the day. It was wacky and unlike anything else on the market. But those days are twenty years past. Releasing essentially the same game seems an odd choice. Sure, there's people who will lap it up because they loved the original (I think that's what Bubsy did, more or less,) but what are these new versions of old classics bringing to the table?

It's not like they're dropping them on the Nintendo E-Shop or Playstation Store as "retro" games for fans to fill in their long since lost retro collection. They aren't meant to sit next to Super Mario Bros 3 and Street Fighter 2 Alpha in your digital library, waiting for a fit of nostalgia to overtake you. These are new games. But they don't feel like it.

And it's not as if ToeJam and Earl are strangers to innovation in the series, either. They had two other games in the series that messed with the original formula a bit while still keeping elements of the classic. One went went to side-scrolling and the other brought the original into 3D. So why then the choice to make this new entry so exactly like the very first one?

So, is it wrong for games to do things like this? Absolutely not, it's their money and yours if you buy it off them. Both can do as you please. But where's the heart? Games adapt and change with the time. People were wary when Mario and Zelda moved to 3D, but now it's part of the identity of those franchises. New advances in gaming came along and they made the choice to explore those avenues. Sure, we still have retro-style games that look like they belong on an NES, but they do something new with the medium. Octopath Traveler. Undertale. Games like these look simple, but utilize that in a way to make a point, to tell a story. ToeJam and Earl... is just ToeJam and Earl.

It's silly. It's fun, if a little slow. It's very weird. But it's only those things because the original was those things. From the story to the game play to aesthetics, it's a carbon copy of the original. If you loved the original, maybe you'll get a kick out of it, but it won't bring anything new to the table. If you missed out like I did, you'll get to experience what you missed... but it will wear thin quickly. 

Does a game sequel need to be different? Should it strive to remove itself from everything the original was? I suppose only the public can answer that over time, but for me, I don't feel like I should ever pay twice for the same game. 

DFTBA

PS. 
I can't be the only one who sees Patrick Starfish when I look at Earl, right?