This POPEYE Game is ABSOLUTE HELL | ZX Spectrum

[@mrc1190]

You have no idea what you're talking about and this is the best thing that has ever been made!

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

How dare you say something so controversial yet so correct

[@Retronomy]

I remember this game as the slowest one on the ZX Spectrum. But it was still interesting to explore the game world. Like most games, I had from about 5 to 8 years old.

[@arostwocents]

I tried this about a week ago and with save states i got stuck on the dragon burning me to death lol

[@Justin-TPG]

Truly the Dark Souls of Popeye games.

[@DaglessTV]

You just know Olive kicked him out immediately afterwards.

[@billybollockhead5628]

As long as he got to put spinach in his pipe, he was happy.

[@docthefaust4519]

She's not his, it was just his turn

[@Jayce_Alexander]

We grew up during such a weird time. We grew up when all these major media franchises that continue to this day like Transformers, Ghostbusters, and TMNT were just getting started, but at the same time cartoons that were already decades old even back then, from stuff like the Flintstone to Popeye and Felix the Cat were still really visible and relevant in pop culture. It was the same with music: you had the big artists and bands of the day, but then occasionally a really old song would pop up and become ubiquitous on the radio and music television (oh how I miss you) and a massive chart hit again for some reason (for example Reet Petite by Jacky Wilson, a song from the 1950s that went all the way to number 1 again in 1986, or Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers, which became a hit again after the film Ghost was released). I feel like we had one foot in the future, and one in the past, and I love the pop culture perspective that gave us. I kind of wish we still had that kind of pop culture diversity, where everything that is and everything that once was all seems to coexist in the same space simultaneously.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

We still see it now, though not nearly as heavy - you just have to look at the rise of Kate Bush after her track was featured in Stranger Things. The problem now, I think, is that we used to just have a few channels to find things; so everyone had the same funnelled experience. These days, there are still trends, but they're spread over this enormous global media sphere to the point where one person's childhood experiences of games/music/film/etc. may look absolutely nothing like someone elses, even if they were neighbours.

[@Meebzorp5200]

The 80s had a ton of 1950s nostalgia in TV and movies of the day, Back to the Future probably being the most prominent. My mom loved it but as a teen, I got sick of it fast. It's not much different than today's endless 80s nostalgia that's been going on for years. The difference is I think that the 80s are much more endearing today to all ages than the 50s ever were.

[@mr.a8315]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum The lovely Kate Bush. ♥

[@primokarmasilver]

I own the one VHS tape that had the running race and the baseball episodes. *Seaman*

[@GadgetUK164]

Your best episode yet! So many laughs lol!

[@Jamieangus]

It’s almost impossible for me to believe now but as a young lad in the 80s my father and I spent many nights playing this and eventually managed to complete it ourselves, with no help that I can remember. How we accomplished this amazing feat shall forever remain a mystery. I went back and played it on an emulator a year or two ago and was amazed at just how slow it was. All I can remember of it 35 years on is that you obviously had to collect hearts and the hellish fruit machine and the UFO. Oh, and I remember the pause key had two functions - to pause the game but also to “hold” the fruit machine spins. I thought this rather nifty at the time and still do if I’m honest! Bloody hard though. I asked my dad there if he remembered anything about it. He just shuddered and said nothing. 🙂👍

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Hahaha, probably some PTSD you just unlocked in him there

[@Jamieangus]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum definitely. He’s been a bit out of sorts all day since my reminder. You know - dazed, a bit winded 😉. These were good memories for me though. We all had such patience with games back then, we just accepted all their little annoying quirks and eccentricities! I will show him your video later when he’s calmed down a bit.

[@funkyweapon1981]

Popeye was my favorite classic cartoon character.

[@ataritufty]

One of my favourite speccy games. Loved it bitd and one of the few games I managed to complete

[@VaterOrlaag]

Yeah, this game was pretty esoteric for my impatient childhood self. I very quickly went through 3 phases: 1. Wow, nice big sprites, looks a lot like the cartoon. 2. But...what am I actually supposed to do here? 3. Screw it, imma play something else.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Hit after hit after hit after hit... How do you keep doing this!? You should have more subscribers.

[@TimberwolfK]

The reward for doing all of that appears to be some kind of serious roof maintenance problem. 8-bit logic.

[@andrewmorrice9139]

I still play this one. As a child I think the only thing stopping me from completing it was my inability to figure out how to get the hearts out of the one-armed bandit.

[@leesmithsworkshop]

I wish I could post a GIF, it would the the exploding head from Scanners haha.

[@cthulhuhasrisen1009]

I went back and played Pengo on the atari 2600 and for once I was not disappointed. It's hard to find games that hold up over the years.

[@arostwocents]

Popeye on 2600 is playable and my first experience of that version of Popeye

[@kickstart_1.3]

15:50 Come on, I figured that as a kid.

[@SuperJim]

Please get out of my mind. My exact sentiments on this game. Stayed for the graphics, to hell with the game ❤

[@chrishowarth6623]

Still play it on emulation to this day - i loved this as a kid

[@speedincooper]

I had the Gameboy version and remember it being quite good. Congrats on the 10K subscribers!

[@GenerationPixel]

But it looks so majestic, and it had rear case screenshots that made you proud proud to be a Speccy devotee. Let's just continue to focus on the good stuff moving forward 😂

[@CartmanBF2]

That was a really entertaining throwback to a game from my childhood. :) I wish I had something unique to say about my experience of playing it, but ... never got anywhere, usually shut it off within 10-20 mins. xD

[@jamespoole76]

I had this game for my birthday in 1988. I didn’t really know what I had to do. I was quite disappointed when I played it I found it so confusing. Thank you for completing it for me with that anticlimactic ending 😂

[@RussMichaels]

I remember playing the ayari vcs and c64 versions

[@volo870]

Cat at 22:00: My hooman finally died, it's time to eat its face off.

[@Pridetoons]

Popeye was my a Childhood!!! I used to watch Popeye along with Flintstones and Speed Racer at night on Cartoon Network.

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

I had the exact same copy... and got about as far as you did too!

[@andrewalexander4331]

My experience of the c64 version was like yours. Thanks to your video, it all makes sense now.

[@lurkerrekrul]

I had a pirated copy of this for the C64. It was just as slow as the Spectrum version, maybe more so. I played it a couple times, had no idea what to do and found it more frustrating than fun.

[@andyc8257]

I completed this back in the day. I remember it being really hard, especially to begin with. I think you could basically "learn" which planes things like the bird and Bluto were on and once you did, avoiding them became a lot easier. Some of the puzzles were a bit obtuse, but i also played (and completed) enough Dizzy games to learn that sometimes you just try everything until it works.

[@MT-cd7cs]

I’ve still got my copy of this (the Alt Software version) and remember enjoying it. My mum bought it for me from WH Smiths after I had a tooth extraction when I was about 4 years old. Still looks amazing for a Speccy game. But yeah I don’t think I ever got any further either 😂

[@prpwnage9296]

“Gibbering wreck” very good in joke for gamers!

[@billybollockhead5628]

I loved this game as a kid.. I liked the gfx.. I had no idea why other games didnt look this good. I had f-all idea of what i was doing, but that was true for 90% of spectrum games I owned... Ever played Ant Attack? Back then I played games to fuck around, i had LOADS of games, I completed ... ZERO of them.. I never played games to win, I played for fun, and to experiment/fuck around/etc.

[@billybollockhead5628]

watching your vid, i got further in this, than f-ing trap door.. had no idea with that game

[@ZacHawkins42]

"Huh huh huh, huh huh huh. He said angry seaman." -Butthead (probably)

[@craigix]

I remember refusing the believe this would run on my 48k spectrum. So I never tried.

[@Lbf5677]

Review zoids! 😆😆 Oh I've had the olive experience many times in life

[@JellyMonster1]

Innovative game for its time. Huge sprites avoided colour clash but made the game sluggish. I Never got that far either, thanks.

[@consty715]

Lovely video

[@danburtonwood2388]

Did you get this from Lee's in Morecambe? I traded a copy of this in about 12 months ago? Would love to think you had my copy!

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

I did indeed!

[@sheets75]

Aw, kitty! The Nintendo arcade game/Colecovision port was my Popeye game of choice, even if he was wearing the lame white sailor uniform in that one.

[@TeZXSpectrum]

Loved Popeye but yeah, feel your frustration. Do Benny Hill's Madcap chase soon. 🙏🙏🙏

[@Steve_UK77]

Why are you doing this to yourself? Oh yeah, WE LOVE IT!

[@sirrichardpitchard]

Gotta say - not sure I could deal with this particular angry SeaMan or the sex pest or the noodle armed bint

[@al3k]

Hah.. Olive clearly just drove Popeye to an early grave and went and married Jet Set Willy..

[@holdingpattern245]

Why didn't they show a little bit of the ground, like in Pitfall? Then it would have been easy to indicate the depth of Popeye and the things he's navigating his way around.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

No idea - definitely a major flaw in the game on playing it now. There's a LOT of guesswork involved.

[@Lbf5677]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum I think it's done on purpose to provide challenge

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

@@Lbf5677 I'm not so sure - when you look at what Priestley went on to do, he fixed this issue in pretty much every other game he made by having the characters visually move between 3 planes.

[@Lbf5677]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum lol oh ok , he must've gotten many complaints about that

[@Vakantscull]

angry seaman....ackackackack

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

There's actually an offcut of me saying "hurhurhur, I said seaman"

[@Vakantscull]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum if I lived on that much spinach mine would be angry too

[@JimboDoomface]

This is great.

[@RetroSegaDev]

That video was quality! 🤣

[@AllOuttaBubblegum123]

Same style graphics etc as The Benny Hill and trapdoor game. I had no clue but still played them for hours lol.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Yep! Both Don Priestley games. He was a master at making those games stand out.

[@billybollockhead5628]

Is it bad, I figured out the cannon thing as an 8 year old ? That was all i figured out though, if im honest.. And a friend mightve told me.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

You filthy genius, you

[@stewsretroreviews]

Ok Dude, I also thought the game was great at the time when I was young, I never did complete it, as it was just to hard to play really, but I enjoyed just wondering round the different screens as the animation was nice 😊 All that crap Popeye had to do, just to get a quickie 😂😂

[@johnsnowdon2939]

LOL! I hated, hated, HATED this game! The back of the cassette box promised so much and delivered so little!

[@BinnisRetro]

Needs more cat 🎉 Oh I hate nothing more than games with timers, who have no business having timers!

[@tombstoneharrystudios584]

80s was like the Wild West for games…unchecked and unregulated 😂 Popeye reminds me of other games, especially those from CodeMasters, which looked absolutely awesome from the screenshots on the cassette, but In real life were buggy, third-rate conversions But we didn’t know better 😂

[@arserobinson7118]

I like Popeye 2. Couldn't work out what to do in this first one though.

[@mr.a8315]

Great stuff! This game was bewildering so I didn't really enjoy it, nice to watch others play it though.

[@jessragan6714]

I dunno, Roquette-Tasting Sailor, I think this game might have actually worked on a computer with more oomph than the Spectrum. The programmer clearly had ambitions, but they're dashed by the limitations of this potato. Clive Sinclair never intended this machine to be a video game system, and it *shows*. On the plus side, the characters are surprisingly colorful for a Spectrum game, and it is the first video game instance of implied sex between Popeye and Olive. I don't want to imagine the logistics of sex between Popeye and Olive Oyl, so thank goodness they shut the window before he, uh, dropped anchor.

[@ironmanTetsuoTV]

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was a good game goddammit!!!

[@jasmith85]

Oi your British so it was HERO turtles. I had this on the C64 I didn't have a clue what to do, this and Trap Door for the C64

[@wisteela]

Great video, but I'll be giving this game a miss.

[@HappyCodingZX]

Did you get the game more Lees Games in Morecambe? Andy who owns the shop is a huge Spectrum fan. To be fair, it was a pretty revolutionary approach to coding a game on the Spectrum at the time, and well, let's now mention Popeye 3: Wrestle Crazy, in which Popeye battles the Xenomorph from Alien in a wrestling ring.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

It was from Andy! Always drop in and chat with him when I'm through there

[@HappyCodingZX]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum nice! Incidentally I've just finished writing another Spectrum game and would be happy to send it to you as I always gift my work to content creators as a thankyou. I'll see if I can find a contact email, look out for it.

[@steve16384]

Popeye's problematic physics and multiple planes of existence can be explained by advanced quantum mechanics, probably. And the cannon is shooting spinach I'm guessing. Obvious! (not).

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

How dare you try to instill logic into my angry tirade. Banned! Banned for a 1,000 years!

[@Pridetoons]

This looks very impressive for a ZX Spectrum game however the Game Design is not very good.

[@mamehaze]

Ah, depth but only on fixed planes. The most recent major release game to remind me of this was LittleBigPlanet, alas we didn't get any Popeye content for that. It was definitely interesting to see the different approaches taken to representing depth/3D without going full 3D back then though. How To Be A Complete B*stard (to YOU, the player) (I believe that's the full title) had an approach that stood out at the time too.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Yes! Covered that game in the past, and it's method of representing a 3D space is pretty unique. Popeye was definitely bettered in Trap Door, with an actual 3D space.

[@jimkrom]

Still better than the turd they released on the switch

[@eldraque4556]

pmsl

[@burbercat3558]

Popeye is the most pussy whiped of all the cartoon character's

[@blatherskite3009]

I'm not even sure how you'd go about fixing Popeye if you were remaking it for modern systems while trying to keep it as faithful as possible to the original. I guess you could make it clearer what plane things are on with some kind of camera-focus effect, so the sprites and scenery are only sharp and "in focus" if they're on the same plane that Popeye is on. Get rid of the yellow cannon flame, so it's more obvious that red is deadly and green is something different. Little "danger" arrows to warn you when something's about to appear at the screen-edge. Etc. You could fix some of its problems, but there's probably too much wrong with it for it to ever be "a good game" no matter what you did. It's just too weird and abstract. I used to hate games like that. Just give me responsive controls, a sensibly-sized player sprite, scenery where it's clear at a glance what's what and where you can go, no unfair nonsense, an objective that makes some kind of sense, and then just turn me loose in the game-world. That's all I ever asked for from a game, then and now. Oh, and countdown timers to a completely arbitrary death can get in the sea as well. Looks like Popeye meets precisely none of my fairly basic requirements for a good game.

[@AndyHewco]

This comment is wrong.

[@z.s.7992]

do you have a d is cord?

[@B_T_B]

PMSL. Superb. Used to play this on the Amstrad. It was on then off. Please tell me you did some time at demo parties! AMIGA FOREVA! ;)

[@AntonyRG1]

Did you ever play the game Strangeloop [1984] from Virgin Games?

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

I did not, will have to check that out!