Popeye

Honest and Unpopular Reviews No. 27 Popeye (NES) Donkey Kong is the most overrated arcade game Nintendo ever made, and the proof is sitting right next to it. Both games are the same three pieces. Platforms, a girl up top, a big guy chasing you. Donkey Kong gives you four screens, one of which everybody skips, and a jump button that gets you killed on a barrel you can see coming. Popeye takes the jump away. You punch instead. Olive stays at the top throwing stuff down and you're running the platforms underneath catching it before it hits the water and disappears. Brutus is on you the whole time and you can't do anything to him until you get to the spinach, and the spinach is always somewhere you don't want to go. Three stages and they're all different. The docks, catching 24 hearts, with the bucket you can drop on Brutus. The street, catching 16 notes off Olive with Wimpy on the seesaw. The ship, catching the letters that spell HELP. Later rounds put the Sea Hag on the edges throwing bottles and rolling skulls at you while you're already busy. Donkey Kong runs the same four boards over and over. The music lives rent free in my head 24/7. Nintendo wanted Popeye first. King Features told them no, so they took the same idea and made Donkey Kong out of it. The license came through right after and the arcade version was a hit anyway. It was the number one arcade game in the country in April 1983 and it was there at the start of the Famicom. I've never beaten it and it's still one of my favorites. I rate Popeye a 4 out of 5.