Gold Miner Joe Review

Gold Miner Joe is a 2D side-scrolling platform game starring the man himself, Joe. Joe is a gold miner who must explore four different caves to collect gold. In each cave there are twelve different levels. On each level you must collect enough gold to fill the Gold-O-Meter at the top of the screen. Of course, there are plenty of enemies and platform puzzles to slow your progress. Luckily, Joe can run, jump, throw rocks, drop dynamite, and push boxes. The levels are pretty straightforward, but after a while they start to get repetitive. They all look exactly the same, and while some are harder than others, you usually won't lose more than a single life on any given level. The only difficulty comes in dealing with the controls. Using the arrow keys to move and the Ctrl key to jump makes it difficult to move with any precision, which leads to a lot of frustration because the entire game is built around platform puzzles that require a lot of jumping. Gold Miner Joe is unremarkable in every way, but if you absolutely love 2D platformers, you might be able to find a couple hours of fun here.