Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl

Old-school beat 'em ups don't get much more authentic or enjoyable than Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl. Snootch to the nootch!

Kevin Smith built a career on fan service, and Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl is as fan service-y as it gets. On its face, it’s a typical arcade beat-’em-up, but with a shiny View Askew coat of paint. If you’re looking for a solid brawler that harkens to the NES days or you’re an aficionado of Smith’s filmography, it’s easy to recommend this charming title.

Though the difficulty is going to put off a lot of newcomers to the genre, the truth is that most of the love for this title is still going to come from gamers who grew up, not only with a yearning for an age where the achievement was simply completing a tough brawler, but for the age itself; when stoner humour was prevalent, and where, with just a little scratching of the surface, you could find real emotional depth and good feeling in movies such as Mallrats. Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl doesn't rest on its laurels, though, and provides as much depth in its combat as any Smith vehicle. The health regen through character switching also makes it far more tactical and rewarding than expected. Fun as a solo adventure, and a riot with a hat wearing friend, settle in with a chocolate covered pretzel, and tell them and as many others to check this one out.

Remove the video game jokes and Kevin Smith references, and Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl is a run-of-the-mill retro beat-’em-up. There’s nothing bad about it, but it also doesn’t do anything special. As a backer bonus for Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch, it seems like a great deal. As an individual game, it’s a harder sell, but if you can recall quotes from Mallrats and still occasionally toss in a “snoogans” into everyday conversations, Mall Brawl is a good time.

Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl is tons of fun for fans of 8-bit brawlers. This is a great freebie for people who backed Chronic Blunt Punch, and for those who didn’t it’s easy to get your money’s worth from the cost of admission. As an NES beat ’em up rated E10, it’s a short title with simple gameplay and the tone is more in tune with the short-lived Clerks animated series than how Jay and Silent Bob are portrayed in Smith’s films. But that may have also been intentional since the NES did have puritan content standards that would have never allowed Jay’s rap to exist in glorious 8-bit chiptune. Either way, Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl is a fun title that retro gamers and Kevin Smith fans can enjoy while they wait for Chronic Blunt Punch or his next film.

It may not be perfect, but if you're a fan of the source material, it's well worth the price of admission. [Issue #47 – July/August 2020, p. 23]

The sheer amount of references in Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl made me want to rewatch all of Kevin Smith’s catalog of films, probably while replaying Mall Brawl to find any I missed (I know what you’re thinking, and yes - Dogma is in Mall Brawl). A serviceable beat ‘em up makes it a fine enough game for fans of the genre. Mostly, it’s a game for fans of Jay and Silent Bob as a way to pass the time until Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch makes its way into our loving hands.