PLAY JET PACO FREE
Steer a jetpack hero through patrolled single-screen stages, collecting every energy cell to open the way forward. Plays instantly in your browser — keyboard, gamepad and touch all work, save states included. No download, no install, no quarters.
▶ PLAY NOW — IN YOUR BROWSER +25 XPMACHINE NOTE — A man, a jetpack, a list of floating objects to collect. No lore, no battle pass, just thrust management. The 1980s really did have the API design figured out.
CARTRIDGE: Jet Paco — The Mojon Twins — CC BY-NC-SA (2018). FREE HOMEBREW, LEGALLY DISTRIBUTED WITH FULL CREDIT — SEE ATTRIBUTION. EMULATION VIA EMULATORJS (RETROARCH NES CORE, WEBASSEMBLY). PART OF THE CABINET — 58 FREE RETRO GAMES AT STARESBACK.GG.
FROM THE BLOG: ARE EMULATORS LEGAL? THE HONEST GUIDE · WHAT IS HOMEBREW? · HOW BROWSER EMULATION WORKS
THE MACHINE’S VERDICT
A man, a jetpack, and a list of things to grab — pure single-screen arcade design with no fat and no surprises.
Jet Paco (The Mojon Twins, 2018) is arcade design stripped to its skeleton: steer a jetpack through patrolled single-screen rooms, collect every energy cell, move on. No story, no progression systems, just thrust management against patrolling hazards — the page's note nails it as 1980s API design.
The pleasure is real but narrow. Jetpack play lives or dies on momentum, and Paco's is responsive enough to make the tight rooms satisfying when you thread them clean. It's also unmistakably Mojon Twins engine-work, sharing DNA with the studio's other CC-licensed carts, so it inherits both their polish and their interchangeability. There's little to distinguish it from a dozen siblings beyond the jetpack hook. Good for a focused score-chasing session, less so as a destination. Fans of pick-up arcade loops will enjoy it; anyone wanting depth should look elsewhere.
Reviewed by The Machine · edited by Sam P. · scored 6/10
THE STORY BEHIND THIS CARTRIDGE
Jet Paco is a arcade game built by The Mojon Twins and released in 2018 under CC BY-NC-SA — meaning the developer chose to make it free and redistributable, which is the only reason it can live on this shelf. Steer a jetpack hero through patrolled single-screen stages, collecting every energy cell to open the way forward. A man, a jetpack, a list of floating objects to collect. No lore, no battle pass, just thrust management. The 1980s really did have the API design figured out. It runs on the NES — a 1983 machine with 2KB of RAM whose modern homebrew scene, organized around the NESdev community, still ships new cartridges every year. Like every cartridge in THE CABINET, its license and author credit are recorded in our attribution file, and it boots straight in your browser with save states, gamepad and touch support.
HOW TO PLAY — CONTROLS
ARROW KEYS — D-pad · Z / X — action buttons · ENTER — start · SHIFT — select · gamepads are auto-detected the moment you press a button · on phones and tablets, touch controls appear automatically. Every binding is remappable from the emulator's settings menu, and save states live under the menu's save icon — stored in your browser, surviving page reloads.
STRAIGHT ANSWERS
- Why is Jet Paco free — what's the catch?
- No catch: the developer chose to release it free. That's the homebrew tradition on the NES, and the license that allows it is documented per-title in our attribution file. We add nothing — no ads in the game, no account wall.
- Does Jet Paco work on mobile devices?
- It does — the emulator detects touch screens and overlays controls automatically. Controllers work too, on every platform.
- Can I save mid-game?
- Yes — open the emulator menu and use save states. They persist in your browser, so you can close the tab and resume later.
