Most people tend to think of No Man’s Sky when studio Hello Games is mentioned, but well before their interstellar epic was released they made a name for themselves with a colorful and charming stunt bike game called Joe Danger. It launched exclusively for the PlayStation 3 in 2010, with an enhanced Xbox 360 version releasing the following year. A sequel called Joe Danger 2: The Movie was also announced that year and released in 2012. In April of 2012, just shy of a decade ago, Sean Murray of Hello Games announced that Joe Danger would be coming to mobile devices in the near future. Officially titled Joe Danger Touch, this new mobile spin-off launched in January of 2013 with a second mobile game, titled Joe Danger Infinity, launching almost exactly a year later in January of 2014.
The Joe Danger series was popular on all platforms and especially on mobile, but right in the midst of all this Joe Danger mobile stuff No Man’s Sky was announced and immediately became the most hyped upcoming game in town. The tiny Hello Games team was suddenly under the spotlight and under the gun to deliver what was by far their most ambitious game to date. Needless to say, all of their time and effort in the following years went into No Man’s Sky while poor ol’ Joe Danger got left in the dust. The iOS versions specifically haven’t been updated in more than 7 years, which has made me extremely sad on multiple occasions over the years.
Today however, I became extremely happy when I woke up to an email from Hello Games announcing that they’ve released updates for both Joe Danger Touch and Joe Danger Infinity completely remastering them for modern iOS devices and iOS 15. They’ve spent the last two years working on these updates as a side-project, “Slowly rebuilding it piece by piece through eight years of Unity changes" Hello’s Sean Murray tells us. You can expect improved visuals, frame rates, controls, and more, but most importantly the Joe Danger mobile games actually work again.
It’s safe to say that the Joe Danger mobile games are among my very favorite mobile games of all time, and as I said I’ve lamented on many occasions their lack of being updated for so long. Something I touch on frequently and something that was a huge driving force behind picking Rocket League Sideswipe as our Game of the Year for 2021 is the ability to bring an established series from console or PC to mobile in a way that feels like it was meant for mobile, without completely stripping it down or losing the magic that made it great on those other platforms. Joe Danger Touch did exactly that back in 2013, and that was a huge part of us awarding it 5 stars in our review.
Joe Danger Infinity is a slightly different take with its near endless supply of levels and focus on character collecting, but it’s darn fun in its own right and I couldn’t be more thrilled to see both of these games back on the App Store again. You can pick up either for just $1.99 or save yourself an entire dollar by buying a new bundle with both games for just $2.99.
