Action/Platformer
June 1986 (Nintendo)
Here’s where things really start to get a little weird. This game had already been in the arcades for a few years. That isn’t too weird. It had already been on the Japanese Famicom for a few years too. In fact, this was the 3rd release for the Famicom. So why are we in the US just seeing it now?
Who knows. I’m not going to worry about that sort of thing. Maybe Nintendo wanted to stay away from arcade ports for the launch. Mario Brothers hasn’t come out1. Let’s just look at the game.
I’ll start off by saying that I’m not a huge fan of Popeye. Which isn’t to say that it’s bad, just that I’m not going to spend hours playing it. I can certainly see why others would. Hopefully I’ll be able to get over that. I went and played again just to be sure. Now that I have a better grasp on it, I actually like the game.
My biggest problem was wrapping my brain around the fact that you can punch, but you can’t punch Bluto2 unless you eat spinach. That should make sense since in the cartoon Popeye is a bit of a weakling without his magic substance.
Anyway, once that got cleared up the game went a lot more smoothly. Not great mind you, but definitely a few steps beyond enjoyable. I wish there was more spinach, but other than that it’s really not bad. And honestly, that’s just the not very good at games but likes playing them kid in me coming out.
- Or at least it hasn’t come out with our made up release schedule. [↩]
- who for some reason is called Brutus here [↩]
Bluto is called Brutus in this game because King Features thought for years (starting in the early ’60s) that Paramount (and, by the time this game hit the NES, Ted Turner) owned the name and character Bluto because it was thought that Bluto was a creation of the theatrical cartoon series. Once they realized this wasn’t the case, Brutus essentially disappeared.
That makes a lot more sense. The only reason I could even come up with a misunderstanding translating it to Japanese for the original and then back for our version, but I didn’t see why they didn’t just fix it over here.
Nice to know there was a real reason.