YMMV / Joe & Mac

• Polished Port:
  • The Super NES version. It expanded the length of many levels, the music was superior to the arcade (although the boss theme was replaced by a stage bgm, and said stage in turn featured new music), the map screen was interactive, and it featured bonus rounds that the arcade version lacked. Despite this, some players had a few complaints, see They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.
  • The NES version, despite limitations on the colour palette and graphics, did a great job in translating the gameplay and the levels, and it even included the charged attack that was missing from the SNES version.
  • New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja followed suit in 2022, with a fresh coat of paint, improved graphics, cartoony animation, and remastered soundtrack.
• Porting Disaster: The Genesis version lacked two weapons from the arcade version and fell victim to the system's notoriously stingy color palette, but included nearly everything else and even ran faster than the arcade version for added challenge.
• That One Boss: The dinosaur skeleton in level 10 of Joe & Mac for the SNES. The fight itself is fairly easy, but for the first half of the fight, instead of displaying a hurt animation, the skeleton just breaks apart and showers the screen in bones in an attack that's nigh-impossible to dodge, and can very easily just turn into the player and boss trading hits (and since the boss has more health than you, you'll die at least once.)
• That One Level:
  • The snow level in Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics, thanks to an overabundance of jumping rats and bouncing spiked mollusk enemies.
  • The final level of Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics is not only a Boss Rush, but it's a Boss Rush with absolutely no health pick-ups whatsoever.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The SNES version of the game did get expanded levels, sprites directly taken from the Arcade Game, and a lush color palette... but some weapons and animations were cut, the charged attack and interaction with your co-op partner features were removed (the latter is actually unlocked after beating the game), and had a lower framerate than the arcade.
• Title Confusion: Joe & Mac 2 is known as Tatakae Genshijin 3 in Japan and Joe & Mac 3 in Europe. The Japanese title makes sense, since Congo's Caper was Tatakae Genshijin 2 over there, but the change from Joe & Mac 2 to Joe & Mac 3 is a bit more puzzling (unless they were counting Joe & Mac Returns as "Joe & Mac 2", which came out almost at the same time).

---