Alright, so this video is gonna get some thumbs down and people are gonna look at me like I’m a tracer at a comic-con, but I have to be honest. I really want to like this game more than I do. I’ve been a huge fan of Kevin Smith movies for decades now, my favorites being Mallrats and Chasing Amy. As soon as I heard that Jay and Silent Bob, Mall Brawl was coming to Switch I was really excited because while I feel like a video game version of these characters is something Kevin Smith himself would be more than happy to make fun of, the idea of playing an NES game with these two characters would actually be a great way to make use of the all the references and in-jokes available.

Unfortunately, I found some parts of this game to be a lot more punishing than fun, and as a beat ’em up, it’s just okay. If you’ve already played the game, you probably already know what I’m talking about but for those that haven’t, let me enlighten you.

But before I even do that, I’m going to do a quick intro to these characters in the off-chance anybody watching just isn’t familiar with them. Jay and Silent Bob are 2 characters featured in most of Kevin Smith’s movies. They made their debut in Smith’s first movie Clerks, and made their way in many of his other View Askew movies as recurring, major, or lead characters. They’re a classic team in that you have Jay’s constant mouthiness and inability to shut up, coupled with Silent Bob, played by Smith himself, who typically only has a couple sage lines at most.

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get onto the game. It’s an NES game in every sense, except that it wasn’t made in the 80s. The game’s developed by Interbang, who’s also developing another Jay & Silent Bob game, called Chronic Blunt Punch. Coincidentally Mall Brawl was free for crowdfunding backers of that, and the rest of us shlubs just have to plunk down the $15 for it or get it as a bonus for pre-ordering Chronic Blunt Punch. The game was created within the framework of the NES like a homebrew title, so it’s not something like Shovelknight that has the NES look but actually could never fit in a cartridge of that era. So for that, I think it’s awesome and I’d love to see more of it.

Mall Brawl’s story basically takes place right after the ending of Mallrats, where they helped crash the dating show Truth or Date, saw TS and Brody reunite with their girls, and now they’re trying to escape the mall and make their way back to the Quickstop. It’s a simple premise that works. Honestly I would’ve enjoyed a map screen or something just to show my progress through the mall, but as it stands it just shows a quick little picture of the incoming level and that’s it.

There’s a lot of variety to the levels, though. You’ll start at the Truth or Date set, go through food courts, video arcades, and so on. If you’re wondering whether you’ll get the full mall experience, it’s all here except maybe the cookie stand where Brody said those new amazing cookies are at. But then I don’t know how much we need to see an autonomous unit for mid-mall snacking in this game anyway.

The game has a great look that reminds me of River City Ransom, and also of the later NES titles called Mighty Final Fight, a beat em up that was based off of the Final Fight series in arcades and on the SNES. The cartoonish violence, little mini characters whose eyes bug out when they take damage, it’s all here. You’ll fight memorable characters like the mall security guard La Fours, the Golgothan Shit Demon, some bad guys that at least to me look exactly like Walt Flanagan, Mooby, and more. The music is fine, it’s just your basic fast-paced 8-bit music.

The action itself isn’t bad, but the computer can get pretty cheap and really, really, REALLY wants to get on each side of you like a pair of finger cuffs, or they’ll interrupt your combos just by sneaking a fast punch in.

The action itself isn’t bad, but the computer can get pretty cheap and really, really, REALLY wants to get on each side of you like a pair of finger cuffs, or they’ll interrupt your combos just by sneaking a fast punch in. It’s also really easy to whiff an attack because the hit boxes are really tight to each character. There were times where I’d swear I was right next to the character and the attack should’ve connected but didn’t. Fear not though, little shaver, because as long as you keep on your toes and keep all of this in mind, the combat isn’t that difficult. On single player you control both Jay and Bob and can switch them out at will. They don’t share a health bar so if one of them’s got low health, you can switch out for the other one. If one gets KO’d, you’ll have to wait until he gains back half his health over time to use him again. Attacks can gain you stars, which you can use for character specific finishing moves to get an extra advantage.

So all that said, there’s some sections where I thought the difficulty spiked pretty hard. Namely, the shopping cart section at the end of level 3. See, the developer wanted to do some homage to the Turbo Tunnel in Battletoads, so they made this section where you’re in a shopping cart and racing through the store, avoiding things like banana peels, old women, moms with babies, and nuns. However, as someone who’s got Battletoads in his top 10 games of all time, this section is far inferior to the Turbo Tunnel as the controls are really floaty and a little inaccurate, and also the track moves so quickly that combined with the controls, it’s infuriating to get through and you have to basically learn to do a near perfect run to make it through. For those of us who have full time jobs and children and therefore have the same memory problems as the guy from Memento, this level will be extremely difficult to get past. It’s a shame it comes so early in the game. Getting a KO during this section knocks you back to to what I’m assuming is the previous checkpoint, but you’ll likely lose more health smashing into things to get your bearing and figure out the correct sequence you have to move your cart in.

Obviously reviews are just opinions, but to me, the Turbo Tunnel was challenging but fair, starts you slow and ramps up the speed and gets you accustomed to everything a little bit at a time. This shopping cart level was just badly executed and not fun.

So if it’s a View Askewniverse-related game you’re probably wondering about references to previous movies. This is were I get REALLY dorky so sorry in advance. Other than the characters you’re fighting, you’ll see references here and there but really I wasn’t impressed with them because the references have little to no context in the game. Fighting the Golgothan Shit Demon as a boss felt weird to me because they don’t meet him until Dogma. Seeing the name Finger Cuffs scrawled on a bathroom wall is kinda funny, but it had nothing to do with anything either. Seeing Jay and Bob fight La Fours or the Easter Bunny though? Seeing the Rug Munchers store in the background? Yeah, that makes sense since it’s all from the same setting. So I like that there’s references, but I guess I just wanted more and I was disappointed. Not as disappointed as, say, a particular someone finding out his girlfriend sucked 37 dicks – hopefully not in a row – but still.

So at the end of it all, it’s not a bad game to play with a friend and you’ll get some chuckles out of it, especially if you’re a hardcore Kevin Smith fan, but there’s flaws that come with the game that are a little difficult to overlook. If I had the chance to time travel back a couple days and talk to my past self, I’d tell him to wait until it’s on sale. I’d also tell him to stay away from that week old pizza and garlic butter because his iron stomach is not what it used to be.

That’s another one in the can, everybody. This is Ed with the Broken Controller Club, reminding you to subscribe after watching the Youtube review for more videos, and speaking of videos, return that copy of Navy Seals to the video store. You’ve had it checked out for like 25 years.