I never played Toejam & Earl in 1991. I didn’t own a Mega Drive, and my friends with one never had it. And, children, in 1991 we didn t have a The Internet in our houses back then, not even a bit. So I grew up in a world where it simply didn t exist. Playing this revival of the series – Toejam & Earl: Back In The Groove – almost incomprehensible in its strangeness, I m a bit sad that was the case.
There was a 1993 sequel, also on Mega Drive, and then almost a decade later, peculiarly, an Xbox only release in 2002. I didn t have an Xbox either. It s been a game of cat and mouse. I didn t even notice that Sega released both the first two games on Steam in 2012. But now, at last, we are united. Gosh, it s odd. It s definitely not very good.
90s-as-heck aliens ToeJam and Earl have returned in ToeJam & Earl: Back In The Groove, one of the more surprising fruits of the recent retro revival crowdfunding craze. The designer of ye olde original ToeJam & Earl from Sega Mega Drive in 1991, Greg Johnson, took this follow-up through Kickstarter in 2015 and now it launched this morning. TJ&E is… a roguelikelike actually inspired by Rogue, except it doesn’t have much fighting, and you collect loads of random items with weird effects, and it’s funny, and it’s silly, and it has hot jams, and it still can’t be easily compared to another game after 28 years, which speaks to how curious it is.