ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove!

It pains me to write this since I am a huge fan of the original Sega Megadrive/Genesis TJ&E game from back in 1991 but, TJ&E Back In The Groove is a second-rate rehash of it's awesome predecessor. I get the feeling the devs went live with this game on a small budget and limited resources. There are many flaky problems. The game input seems confused between controller and keyboard which causes some intermittent disruption issues during play. Controller vibration is set to OFF yet it's still ON. Opening a present with a timed resource or power up jumps all over on the duration clock. Frequently saving a game with presents in your inventory ends up deleting them when relaunching that saved game later. They're all gone. Connecting in multiplayer is sketchy at best. There is no option to remap the control keys on the keyboard. This game is nearly seven years old at this point so it's likely been long abandoned by the devs. Don't expect any support or fix updates. For players new to TJ&E, Back In The Groove is a super casual walking exploration in a Saturday morning cartoon world. It's kid-friendly and silly. The art style differs from the original game's pixel art quite a bit but it works well enough. Veteran TJ&E players here for the nostalgia will find it familiar yet different enough that you can jump in and mostly know what to do right away. I think the main changes between the two games revolve around resource management of the Christmas presents and dealing with the larger army of earthlings. This time around there is a lack of strategy with gathering presents and managing discovery of the Randomizer. A larger more diverse pool of presents along with a diluted RNG drop rate makes it tough to save up offensive/defensive presents for the later levels where they will be needed the most. Around level 15 the difficulty scales up rapidly and the amount of earthlings seems too high. Once they're on to you they don't give up the chase for far too long. Many of them can mob and even nail you through the elevator which should be a safe zone once you set foot in it. That's annoying. Playing as Earl makes this double difficult since he's so damn slow. He just cannot get away fast enough. Once you reach level 10 you can unlock a random world generator for the next playthrough. Completing the game on a Fixed World at normal difficulty will grant the opportunity to unlock one new character and a Power Hat. These along with the random world means there is some replay value to be had- if you like this enough to keep going. Regardless whether you are a new player or an old hand with ToeJam and Earl I'd only buy this on sale. It's not the best game in the series which ain't bad, but it's not great either.

Great game. I'd go so far as to say it's even better than the Genesis original. However, the translation into PTBR was very poorly handled.

I ignored this game for quite a long time thinking I would not have as much fun as the original first episode which I'm a big fan of, but I was wrong. I'm actually having a lot of fun with this one. Never mind the negative reviews if you enjoyed the original, this one is very entertaining, and frustrating just as was the first one sometimes but it's entirely part of the fun of it.

Good rougelite alone or with a friend. Get on sale.

THe majority of the appeal of the original was the art and music. They are ruined in the remakes.

The original TJ&E was and still is one of my all time favourite games. My sister and I had spent hundreds of hours back in the 90's sitting in front of our old CRT mindlessly playing and verbally mimicking everything. Going into this remake I was very skeptical because I was so used to the original of old. I purchased it at launch and spent very little time on it as I was put off by the new artwork and music. Fast forward years later and I managed to give it a good play and beyond the new look and music it still feels like the original game to me. We always would play the random level game and it took me a few attempts to even beat the fixed world. There's a lot of memories that flood back and it's brought back old recurring dreams of myself walking among disappearing/reappearing platforms in outer space. There's quite a lot of nostalgic humour and I'm ecstatic that the secret level is still hanging around. ...and seemingly the hula dancers aren't as rage inducing as in the original. It's not a perfect game but it has a ton of replayability and is a great game to play with a friend in either couch co-op or online.

Goodness, me. This is an absolute delight. A faithful recreation of the first game with lots of new elements added including some groovy bits from Toejam & Earl 2 (this thrillingly includes occasional visits to the Hyper Funk Zone). Thanks, Macaulay Culkin! (...no, really)

ToeJam & Earl are odd games. Their structure is unusual, they’re most similar to roguelikes before the genre became popular. The style is drenched in 90s nostalgia and the gameplay still feels fresh thanks to elements such as stealth and how exploration is handled. I had a hard time getting into the older ones on the PS3 (ports of the first two games), but this one won me over after getting used to it with time. The gameplay loop is finding 10 ship parts scattered throughout 25 levels. It won’t be easy as there are pesky earthlings trying to make your life harder. And the levels are connected, you can drop down from level 25 to 24. And if you’re unlucky, you might drop down further. You have tools to help you against the onslaught. There are gifts that contain unique skills, you have good earthlings that can make a huge difference and your stats increase every time you level up. XP is gained through different actions such as exploring a level, using gifts and doing some mini-games. All of this comes together to create something very unique and addictive. It’s super rewarding to learn earthlings’ patterns. It’s impressive that the game has many different enemies to keep the gameplay engaging for a long time. The game also has a lot of personality in every facet. It scores high in art, music and originality. The biggest problem I have with the game is how some of the achievements were handled, mainly the ‘have 10 gifts explode on you’ and ‘unlock all hats’ achievements. The later requires you to complete 15 runs on normal and 4 on hard difficulty. It feels super grindy on normal already but being forced to play hard 4 times makes things infinitely worse. I’ve completed hard twice and it wasn’t a fun experience. I was willing to put up with it if it wasn’t for the other achievement crushing my hope of getting all the achievements. Realistically, you are unlikely to get 10 broken gifts during a run and keep your stat for presents low (to make them explode). You would have to work against the way the game is meant to be played by not leveling up and put yourself in unnatural situations, and still you will not get far. What you will need is a hat of breaking and this one is incredibly RNG dependant. It used to be easier to get the hat you want (by removing it from your current run) but this was changed with an update (you have no control whatsoever now). This achievement shouldn’t be more difficult than completing a run with no deaths, killing every unique bad earthling, having 99 bucks, visit all backers etc. It’s the definition of an awful achievement and it makes me sad to end my time with the game on such a negative note. The game is special, there is no doubt the developers are very passionate about ToeJam & Earl games. I can definitely recommend the game to players who are willing to experiment with something different. But completionist gamers might be better off skipping the game if they want to keep their sanity. Some of the achievements are just too brutal and it makes me question if one of them is intended to be that hard to get. The price of around €12,50 is definitely worth it. I spent around 54 hours getting all the achievements except for the two I mentioned.

I got super happy when ToeJam and Earl followed me on Twitter.

A real masterclass in how to modernize an older game. The original was amazing for it's time, but hasn't held up. Playing it now... the original feels too slow and events are too spread out. Which makes it hard to revisit - even as a diehard fan. Let alone trying to convince people that aren't wearing the same nostalgia glasses that it's a great game. Back in the Groove fixes that problem. This title respects your time much more than the original. Fun events and presents are much more frequent. You've got to strategize nearly constantly or you're not going to go the distance. A real masterclass in how to modernize an older game. The different tiers of presents & enemies really spices the game up. The addition of searchable trees and bushes adds tons to consider when taking chances. I didn't like this feature at first, but once I got used to the search action and understood the game loop more, I really appreciate it. I just wish they had included the tree shaking animation from the 2nd game. That would've added some extra jazz. The inclusion of the hYpErFuNk Zooone is a ton of fun, and is a great throwback to the underappreciated 2nd game. In the harder difficulties, jumping into the hyperfunk zone can be strategic and can literally save you. And the money you can get inside can help extend a dying run. This game is actually difficult! Which I love. The little lumps and hills in the terrain are awesome. Ramping over them feels amazing. Really awesome idea to add this bit of 3d to what is a 2.5d game. The rocket skates feel aaaamazing. Really well done. Slapping earthlings off the edge or into water is great. My negatives are that -> the rhythm game doesn't work properly and the instruments in it sound bad (they have no weight to them, they're empty). The buttons never seem to hit at a place the makes sense, leading to constant false negatives. The background music to the rhythm game is just bad too. please fix and make more like the rhythm game from TJ&E 2. There's no joy in it as is :( -> some of the background music in the game has bad sounding instruments and effects -> movement is 8 direction for some inexplicable reason and not analog... making precision movement difficult. -> sometimes your character just hops over the side of the map...instead of giving you the "I'm about to fall" animation -> sometimes you just can't use the shops, and you get mopped up trying to interact with the good earthlings Things I'd like to see added -> some really awesome music from TJ&E 2 that is not present -> Funk scan & maybe the funk vac Thank you for not including funk fu! I think you guys did a really amazing job on picking and choosing which mechanics to bring back and which to exclude.