Popeye (Parker Brothers)
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Entry posted by DoctorSpuds
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There are a lot of strange games out there, I know I keep reiterating this point but it’s like if I sneeze I find more weird games. I had previously though this particular game to be fairly normal but then I gave it a little though and realized that no this is a strange game indeed. Cast your eyes over to Japan and to Nintendo, it was 1982 and their home console, the Famicom, was still a short while away so what do they do in the meantime? Arcade games I guess. I don’t know why they chose Popeye to be the star of one of their arcade games, after a bit of research I found that Popeye has never really gone away, I had always assumed that after the cartoons came out Popeye vanished from the public eye completely and was only pseudo-revived when the film came out, but it seems I was very wrong. Now that I mention the film, it came out in 1980, the arcade game came out in 1982, perhaps Nintendo saw that there was a movie and thought the time was right for a Popeye arcade game. Well, whatever the reasons were I’m glad that Nintendo did, because Popeye is a damn good game and as such was ported to almost all of the popular home consoles of the time, even the Odyssey2 got one. We’re going to be looking at the 2600 version, as is standard on the blog, but I might throw in a bit of comparison with the other version along the way.
As is standard with the 2600 version of any game it doesn’t look that great, at least when compared to its competition. I would still, however, say that it looks pretty good for the 2600 in general, everything is represented faithfully. With a little bit of imagination you can discern Popeye Olive Oyl and Bluto scooting around the screen, Bluto in particular is given some nice animations, he’ll hop up while reaching at the platform above him to grab a hold of Popeye and he’ll wildly swing his outstretched fist at the platform below in a frantic attempt to clobber you, good stuff. The environment has been simplified to a massive extent, while all the basic elements form the arcade game are present much of the eye candy has been removed, I suppose you can say that the graphics, much like the 2600 port of Q*Bert, are functional not pretty, you can tell what everything is supposed to be and that’s good enough. I’d like to take a brief moment to look at the Odyssey2 port of Popeye, and despite me not owning it, it needs to be looked at, scroll down to the screenshots and just look at it.
The sounds in Popeye are… Really quite good, when starting the game you are treated to the final few bars of the Popeye theme song, which is a great start. Once the gameplay begins you realize that this game actually has background music, and it’s really catchy. When you collect the spinach you hear the classic… well I called it the ‘spinach song’ and anybody who’s seen a Popeye cartoon knows exactly what I’m talking about. Otherwise you are treated to various melodic beeps when collecting hearts amongst others, it’s all quite good.
As were many arcade games, actually games in general, at the time Popeye is a very simple game. All you have to do is collect a set amount of hearts, or other various floating object, floating down from the top of the screen, whilst avoiding the hulking Bluto, and punching bottles hurled by ‘The Sea Hag’ out of the air. This is a difficult game; much of your positioning must be very precise to be able to use the stairways the reach the different levels, and you can’t do any fancy maneuvering on them you have to go up or down, this usually leads to you getting stuck on the staircases when you are trying to escape from Bluto or the bottles being thrown at your face. You can punch the bottles out of the air, but unlike in the Colecovision version where your arm actually emerges, in the 2600 version the Popeye sprite changes and if a bottle makes contact with you while you have that slightly altered sprite then it won’t kill you dead. Due to the lack of feedback punching is extremely hard to time and will likely lead to many deaths. You may notice that off to the sides of the screen there are flickering green squares, that is spinach, it’s a lot like the power pellet in Pac-Man, allowing you to punch Bluto into the ocean for a brief period, and be invincible to bottles, but as far as I can tell you get ONE per level and they don’t replenish after you lose a life so use it sparingly.
I’m rather torn here, while I like the smother movement of the 2600 version the Colecovision version is a bit easier to play with the improved punch, I’m not touching the Intellivision port with a ten foot pole and the Odyssey 2 port just makes me laugh, It doesn’t even have the punch. Thankfully copies of Popeye are plentiful and cheap, if you can’t find one in the wild then expect to pay 5-10$ for a copy on Ebay. No Collector’s Zone for this game, its level of quality and cheapness of price make it a game everybody with a 2600 must own.
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