 Thanks to Sean for a question this via my Patreon page, sorry it's not an LP, but I figured this would be a good one to do a regular video on. This might sound kinda weird, but when I play a game like Toejam and Earl, I'm reminded of Mike Tyson's Punch Out for NES. That's a game where, when you get down to the basic nuts and bolts of it, the gameplay is as simple as it gets, it's predicated on reacting to patterns, and it starts out easy and it gradually gets more complex. But what makes that game stand out as one of the greats is all the personality and charisma. Nintendo took a simple pattern recognition game and made it memorable for an entire generation by injecting it with a metric ton of color and charm. The developers Johnson Vorsanger Productions took the same kind of approach with Toejam and Earl. The gameplay here is pretty dang straightforward, you wander around randomized maps looking for parts of a spaceship, but I'll be damned if this game still isn't goofy, hilarious, and a lot of fun. When it starts with the main characters, Toejam is the red guy, and Earl is the big orange guy, and is pretty much Toejam's hype man. So yeah, that means this game is two player co-op, one of the best you'll find on the Genesis. The game neatly divides into a split screen when the two players drift apart, but joins back together when you're near each other, that's a nice touch. But yeah, the gameplay doesn't take much to explain, in fact in another nice little detail here, Toejam and Earl explain the story themselves to you, the player. I always kinda like that, you gotta find 10 rocket ship pieces on 25 different randomized maps, so you can put your ship together and get back to your home planet. You go from each map using an elevator going up one floor at a time. The game helpfully tells you when there's a piece on that floor, although since you can only go through floors one at a time in order, so you'll often go several floors in a row just looking for the exit, that's kind of annoying. Toejam is faster but has less health to deal with enemies, and Earl has more health but he's a bit slower. Not only are the maps randomized but the items you find are as well, and they can either be a help or a hindrance. You could get sneakers that help you move faster, or a tomato that you can launch at an enemy, or it could be a storm cloud that hits you with a bolt of lightning. You can also collect money so you can buy stuff later on. But yeah, there's all sorts of bizarre enemies that are straight out of a game like Zombies Ape My Neighbors, and there's also certain terrain you have to manage as well, like quicksand where you sink and water which can contain sharks. You can also fall off the edge of the map to the floor below. The game does give you a choice at the beginning if you want randomized maps or the standard map layout that's structured the same through every playthrough, although I'm not sure why you'd want to do the latter after you've played through it once. The biggest flaw with Toejam and Earl is that there's no saves or passwords at all, that really kind of sucks. But the game is at least available on other platforms where you can utilize save states like on the Wii Virtual Console and the Sega Vintage Collection. But yeah, this is the rare 16-bit roguelike game that's focused on exploration, and not only that, but it's all style over substance here. Sure, that style is painfully stuck in the early 90s, but I think that works to the game's advantage if you play it today. You're going back to that particular time and place. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, I guess the game can get kind of boring. But even then, I mean, just listen to this music. Even the elevator jam is great. Plus, the fact that co-ops work so seamlessly here makes this one of the most well-made multiplayer 16-bit games. Toejam and Earl received a sequel on the Genesis, Toejam and Earl in Panic on Planet Funketron, and the franchise goes in a different direction here, settling for a more traditional platformer, which is kind of disappointing. It's still definitely a good game, but it's definitely a lot less unique. And I guess that's why I like the first game so much. Toejam and Earl is something unique for the time. It seems like Sega took a lot of chances on some real off-the-wall stuff like Echo the Dolphin, Moonwalker, the Mutant League games, and Toejam and Earl. From the music to the visual design to the simple gameplay structure, if you want the fastest way to relive the early 90s with a friend, it's Toejam and Earl.