Retronauts - 513: Popeye

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

His hairline is fading, he talks about gaming, he's Stuart the podcast man! Let's dive into the mostly-forgotten world of Popeye games, once again accompanied by the hilarious and thoroughly wise Dave Bulmer.

This week in Retronauts, I mean, I mean, I mean, you know what I mean. another episode of Retronauts, presented by your favorite retronaut, Stuart Jip. I know I might not be your favorite retronaut, but one person said that to me this week, so I'm considering that sort of a knighthood of sorts, and I'm taking that as my role, basically. If you didn't guess from the humorous reference that I did a few seconds ago, today's episode is about Popeye, the Sailor Man, he lives in a caravan. I don't know, I can't think of a non-obscene way to end. this. But of course

I'm joined as ever by the erstwhile I don't even know how to describe him any more. Internet funny man. Yeah. Dave, bono, hello, hello, hello there. There he is. There he is. It's here.

I know, look at me. There I am. I might seem a bit groggy because I had a small sleep earlier in preparation for the podcast and I forgot that when you sleep it makes you tired. It's not, it's weird. Yeah, it's rubbish, isn't it? Yeah, I hate that.

I wish I just never want to sleep again, truly. The way, it's Freddy Cruy when you need it. I know. I know. You're only going to get you, you're only going to eat a clock stolen by a ghost. Oh, no. That's a reference. You'll understand later, listeners.

That's a deep, that's quite a deep cut reference as well, isn't it? It's such a deep cut that I wouldn't have got it an hour ago. Yeah, because while we are going to cover a, a multitude of Popeye games in today's podcast. I have to admit there may be a slightly unfair bias towards one in particular. Yep. And it's

the one that you in America land will be the least knowledgeable of, so that's either very cool if you want to learn more about Popeye on microprocomputer or not cool if you just want to hear things you already know regurgitated back to you. But you know what?

I'm not here to be your pal. No. I'm not here for your benefit at all. I'm here to amuse myself for two hours at a time by talking about things. It'll be all right. I'm going to share something really deeply personal about me and about my relationship with my dad when I was really little and stuff like that. You're going to like it. It would be nice.

Oh, I got a bit emotional when you said that. Yeah, good. I actually got a bit emotional. Good. That's as emotional as you're going to get, probably, because my relationship with my dad was like fine and remains fine. But, go, there we go. Do you know what I mean? They sold it now.

Yeah, I just want to burst that bubble early on. Just in case anyone's there, like, gripped by the idea of drama happening. It's not going to. Yeah. Just in case anyone was looking forward to that. Just cut them off. Yeah, just make sure we knit that in the mud right now. Yeah.

Okay, so the best, I think the best thing I would normally would happen on a good podcast is, is we would tell you what Popeye is. But the fact of the matter is everybody already knows who Popeye is. You know exactly who Popeye is. he goes og-gug-g-g-g-g-g-g-g, or something. He goes and he has a bit of spins and he does a little bit of punch. Yeah, he does a spinach, doesn't he? He has a spinch and he has a punch. Loves his spinach. On first day of life, yeah. Do you think that Popeye eating spinach was intended to motivate children to eat their greens?

I don't know, because you hear that, don't you. People say it was. I don't know that it was. I think it was just meant to be like, oh, what can he do to get, you know, he does something healthy. It was probably like, if it had happened to have another idea that day at the Fleischer Studios, it would be the, I don't know, like, did, lifted some weights and then was powerful then or whatever. But it, as I understand it, had the effect of increasing the sales of spinach. Well, we're going, I mean, the thing that Popeye is, right, Popeye is a very strong fellow. He is. Physically strong. I don't know if he's mentally strong. He seems, but he might be a bit cracked, to be honest. He's a philosopher, you know. He's a

philosopher. He's a simple man, but he's got a good thought in his head is what he is. I like that. That's nice. But in order to, I'm sure this is very well-worn observation. It's like, I bet Shaggy was on drugs, man. Can't wait to see what this is going to be. Popeye squeezing a can of spinach to the extent that it shoots

the spinach out of the top. That itself is a feat. Yeah. You have to be strong. Yeah, I see what I mean, yeah. You already have to be strong, yeah. If that multiplies his strength, like say, tenfold, I I honestly think it's like he starts seeing the world as if it's made of tissue paper. Yeah.

Imagine what he could squeeze. That's how powerful he becomes. Yeah. He can squeeze a human and all their guts and blood in their body would come shooting up the top. We're tiptoeing around it, aren't we? But yeah, that is what he could do. It needs to be very careful with Olive is the thing. All I'm saying is, I'm thinking Tetsuo and Akira right now.

Yeah. That's how bad it is. Has anyone ever drawn that, do you think? All they must have. Yeah. I like the idea of Popeye just beating everyone up, to be honest. Just like, I think it did like... Then you're in luck.

Yeah. Because I remember reading a Popeye versus Mars attacks comic book. Oh, yeah. And where he beat up lots of like Mars Martians. You know, that was nice. That was fun. Mars is. That's nice.

Was that around when the film came out? Or was that like classic? No, it was actually surprisingly recently. Yeah, I was going to say, they're being like... No, we still know that they were cards. You're like, yeah, jogging. You only heard about it because of the film. film. No, yeah, nobody knew that they were cards. Shut up. You knew it because of the Tim Burton

film. Yeah. I don't even know if they were cards or if that was just like a seeded memory that was part of the marketing for the film. I don't know. The only thing I know about Mars Attacks, the movie that I remember, they used to be near my house a book sale that would occur where it was like a factory remained a book sale and loads and loads of books would turn up and they were one pound each. Yeah, it was ridiculously good, like, good I was eating good back then. That's how I got into reading, I think. But two of the books I bought, for some reason,

I don't know why I had both, were the children's novelization of Mars attacks and the adult novelization of Nice Tax, yeah. And I remember reading both and noticing that in one of them, the character who charges the Martians at the landing shells die you alien butt heads, whereas in the adult he says,

die you alien shitheads. And I was like, my first realization that I was being lied to by, You know, the government. Yeah. Famously, the authors, the ghost writers of all novelizations of the government. Well, it's a metaphor, isn't it? Yeah.

The initials Alan Dean Foster actually stand for American dudes fighting, which is what the government is in America because they've got an army. Oh, man. This episode rules already. Yeah, this is great. We're properly talking about Popeye. Yeah. So Popeye, his actual origins, which, again, I'm not going to go do deeply into

is there was a comic strip called Thimble Theatre in the New York Journal, and that was back in, like, 19, by E.C. Siga. Now, E.C., what was that standing for? I'm going to find out. I should have written it down by Forgot. I don't know, Albert Clifford. It stands as Elsie Chrysler-Sigua. Now, that's an old-school name. Yeah.

Elsie Krista. There's also a picture of the guy, and he looks a little bit like Vince McMahon. That's a bit scary. Oh, does he? But Popeye was introduced as a side character who was not exactly sort of nice. he was quite like, you know, censored, sweary and unpleasant and violent. Yeah, they just wanted to, they needed to hire a boat one day, and so they hired it from sailor, and that was him. Whereas the main characters were actually Harold Hamgravey and Olive Oil.

Now, olive oil, of course, predating Popeye is an interesting. Yeah. It's an interesting thing. I didn't know that till today. Oh, yeah. No, I've got the, well, I've got the start of a collection of the books because they did these lovely reprints of all the Popeye comics. Sadly, not any, well, or at least not many Thimble Theatre ones.

leading up to it but and they're these big hardbacks and they say P-O-P-E-I-E on the spines and I've got as far as Pop and if anyone can find me the eye books you know Was it that they went out of print or something? Yeah they went out of print

Fantagraphics right I assume they were fantagraphics I think they were doing those back in 2006 they started doing it It's too far away for me to check Well I mean Like having Pop is okay At least you know has something like P-P-Y

That would be awful Oh God Just thinking about that It just brings a cold sweat across The back of the neck, doesn't it? So it's olive oil It's castor oil Was one of the main characters

He was her brother And then ham gravy is her boyfriend Because Yeah Because olive oil predated Popeye Did you see? Because she dated I like it

I like it I get it That's good I think I honestly think That olive oil is one of the great Comedy names Like that is really good

Doesn't it? That's very good Yeah. But Popeye's first actual appearance was 1929. He was just like a minor character. He was hired to crew a ship for a voyage to a casino. Yeah, and because of that, he was there on the boat when they went on that multi-week adventure or whatever it was.

Yeah, but then he sort of was after that adventure, he was like gone, but then all the readers were like, this won't do. Yeah. And they were contacting East Seeger, and they were just like, bring back the Popeye guy, bring, bring, we only want Popeye. Get rid of all the other rubbish characters. Yeah. and have Popeye, just Popeye.

We don't want ham gravy. What does he even mean? But then Popeye came back. He was given a bigger role and the more newspapers picked the strip up. Like, it became much more popular. And Ham Gravy actually left the strip in mid-1930. Imagine that. Imagine that ousted from your own strip by Popeye.

I mean, if anyone's going to do it, like, if Popeye got into podcasting, I'm doomed. Like, I'm gone, mate. Oh, I imagine. Oh, Popeye'd be brilliant at podcasting. It's Popeye's Pop-Cast. Come on. They probably do this, don't they? Yeah, they probably do. I mean, nowadays, Popeye's like an internet meme.

Like, he's on Twitter doing, like, funny tweets now. Like, I am disgustipated with my Instagram or whatever kids like, haven't they. It's a bit funnier than that, actually, I think. Ag, gag, gag, gag. Yeah. That's, because Popeye likes to post a gag on. Yeah. I know nine gag

What do people Oh, should we not do this? This isn't a very good bit This is dating us big times We don't know any memes No, we can't remember anything We're like Where do you do little kids

With their memis We're so old It's embarrassing how old we are Yeah But it means that we Experience the old things And we could talk about them On Retronauts

It means we experienced Peak Popeye Mm-hmm Well I don't know about that I think Pete Popeye was like I mean it was the 20s Wasn't it Peak Popeye The Roaring

Yeah, we weren't alive then. Thank God, imagine it. Jesus. I know. We'd be dead by now, probably. Suddenly I feel all sprightly and young. So Popeye became one of those always popular kind of things,

like primarily popular with the Max Fleischer cartoons, which are excellent. They really are. I've got the DVD collection of, like, the first one, of all the Black and Light cartoons, and you kind of go in going, well, I guess I'll look at this for historic, and then you're like, ah, ha, ha, this is great.

Mm-hmm. And they're just full of just ridiculously funny jokes about punching, essentially. Yeah. From there, of course, he went into sort of Hanna-Barbera, what's the word, ignominy, ignominy, with the all-new Popeye hour, which is what I sort of grew up watching. That was my kind of concept of Popeye, which is these hastily animated, kind of not very funny. Yeah, they had a walk cycle sorted out. They just put that down and had them walk along, and then they would have him, it was Hannah-Barbera. So his mouth would move and his head would go up and then down, and then up, and then down.

And he'd be in stories that were called, like, Guerrilla My Dreams. Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. This is my joke, my running guy, which is that every Hanna-Barbera cartoon has to have an episode called Gorilla My Dreams. I bet they all do. This is actually shaken out surprisingly, like accurately over the years as well. Yeah. Whenever I've had cause to check, which is surprisingly more than you'd think.

It is. Yeah, I wouldn't really ever put even put thought to how often. You don't have to check that. But the all-new-pop-a-hour sort of also had made heavy use of the other characters such as sweepie and the Jeep. What's the name of the Jeep again? Eugene. Eugene the Jeep, that's it. I don't know what his deal is.

You know, olive oil, Alice the Goon, who was originally a henchman of the Seahag, but then ends up being in the army with Olive for some reason. Yeah, because they were doing, I bet it was like a mash joke or. something, wasn't it, in those days? Or was there a thing with, was there a women sitcom about being in the army that it was actually... Leverna and Shelley in the army was a thing. Yeah, to be honest, it probably was a joke on that. Like, they probably thought it was going to last longer than it did. Well, I got to say those strips, those strips, those shorts were a laugh a second, I have to say. So, um, listeners, they weren't very good at being in the army. They were, were they? Here in the UK, um, the all new Popeye show, no, it wasn't called our

because I didn't play it for an hour. You wouldn't sit through an hour of that. But it was called the All New Popeye Show, and it was on like every day or something. It was just constantly on the kids slot. Because we had, you know, we only had four channels, but on one of, on two of them, there was kids programs every afternoon after school.

And on the BBC, you had the new Popeye show just constant. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised it was on multiple days a week. I wouldn't swear it. It never, it was permanently on. Yeah, it just felt like it always. It was like that. Pink Panther repeats. Yeah.

But the all-new Popeye show was also sandwiched with Popeye and Son at random, it felt like. Yeah. They would throw on Popeye and son sometime in which Popeye had sex and had a child. Yes. All on the street. Presumably with Olive, I don't know. Yeah. Did they show him having sex with Olive?

Yes. Bloody hell, that's surprising. Yes. Oh, it was in the intro. Yeah, that's, wow. It was very... I never saw the intro because I was always at school, so I guess I missed the explicit. It was very, very explicit.

Like, he used to, he had this spinach, and he went, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-bying. Oh, no. The sheer logistics of it just baffle me, honestly. So, yeah, Pop-I mostly, in my head at this point, there's a slightly creatinous cartoon that's always there. I mean, I had, for some reason, a VHS tape of Popeye of the All-New Popeye show,

which was given to me, I don't know why, because I never expressed much of interested in Popeye. You didn't have to, did you? It was just, it was on, and you watched it at the end. But I did wear it out watching it. Like, I watched it a lot. So I must have liked it. To some extent.

I don't recall laughing at it, but I think I just liked cartoons. Yes. Absolutely. No, you never laughed at that sort of thing. You just put it on. And the idea that you were supposed to laugh. Did they, I think, was it one of those sorts of cartoons that had a laugh track? I feel like it might have. No, it actually didn't that one, no.

It was one of the few that didn't at the time as well. Like, Scooby-Doo having a laugh track despite having next-to-no jokes, which is quite funny. The main joke in Scooby-Doo is a character's not seeing a ghost and then seeing a ghost. Like, that's pretty much the only joke that happens. Yeah. And then they go, ah, what shit.

A ghost. Wasn't a big fan of Scooby-Doo, you know. Mind you, but then we were in the scrappy era and they tell us

that was bad, but I don't know. I like Scooby-Doo. I don't, I have a soft spot for the old doer, the old Scoobster. Yeah, yeah. The Scoobmeister.

When they did a Scoop movie a few years ago, a CGI Scoop, it was called. It was rubbish, unfortunately, but they did, introduce a really silly like this is the beginning of the

Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe thing by dropping in hints about loads of Hanna-Barbara characters and having loads of Hanna-Barbara characters appear in it and that's kind of my like oh man that's exactly how you get my attention by doing stuff like that because I've got a huge huge soft spot for Hanna-Barbera which I don't know because there was so much of it on

when I was a kid it was just constantly there It was either yogi's treasure hunt or, like, quick drama of grower, Huckleberry Hound. Not a laugh to be had, any of them, but they were always there, and they were cartoons, so I watched them, and I was fascinated by how they all looked very similar. I think it was my first awareness of a kind of house style, almost, like, so it worked a lot for me, and Popeye does kind of come in for that, because that's what I associate Popeye with, rather than the thimble theatre or anything else. Yeah, absolutely. But I would say a resurgence in Popeye interest came in 1980 when the Robert Altman Popeye movie came out, which I understand you're quite fond of. I flipping love it, and I think it's genuinely a genius piece of wonderful art.

But everyone hates it, don't I? Well, I bought the DVD because of what you said about it. Oh, dear. Well, I wanted to see it for myself. And I don't love it as much as you do, but I do appreciate it. as a very singular piece of art, I think. Yeah, yeah. Because it's a, it's a movie that's a sensibly cartoonish,

and yet it's shot in an unflinchingly realistic manner. Yeah, that's it. It's so weird. Which is fascinating. Yeah, and it's because of that weirdness that I love it. It's not, I'm under no illusions that it's a normal film. That's the point. That's why I like it.

Normal films annoy me. That's why I love the Super Mario Brothers movie, and I'm not going to like the new Super Mario Brothers movie, because it's going to be normal. Oh, who's, oh, yeah, but. the new Super Mario Brothers movie. Jesus, the new Super Mario Bros. movie, though. Oh, my God.

Just the absolute state of everyone on Twitter going like, this looks amazing. Yeah, I get that you recognize it. Does it really look amazing? Does it look amazing? Or does it just look like a thing that you already know? Like, is that really that impressive to you that you're going to go to the cinema and watch two hours of Mario saying,

well that just happened yeah really it's it's sickening to me like not only is it I mean Mario I love Mario and the point of Mario is that it's the guileless thing like Mario doesn't really have much

for personality it's just a jumpy wahoo you know and to turn a Mario movie where the characters or anything where they're all in that illumination kind of like arched eyebrow kind of mode I suppose it's...

That makes me want to fling my body into a whirling thresher. Me too. And just be done with it, to be honest. Me too. I mean, it is one way of depicting characters who don't have any personality, isn't it? Well, it makes them have no personality in a different way. Yeah, in a worse way, yeah.

Like, if you want to see a Toad, voiced by Keegan Michael Key, then knock yourself out, honestly. Dear Lord. And knock us out while you're at it because we don't know. Yeah, knock me out, yeah. Having said that, I did like the Sonic movies, and they were pretty much just that as well, to be honest. So I have no, like, defence whatsoever.

Oh, they were fine, weren't they? Anyway, I'm going to make this about Popeye. Oh, yeah, they were developing a Popeye CGI animated movie with Gendi Tardukovsky, and the entire workprint, like, animatic for that movie has leaked. Yeah. And it's out there, and you can watch it, and it's extremely entertaining. I've not, do you know, I'd forgotten, I haven't watched it.

I'd forgotten that. I mean, it is very much. within that modern CGI animated kind of framework, but the sheer dynamic animation and drawing, which you can't get a sense of even with still drawings. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think it's very much

worth watching. But it's the 1980 pop-a movie that prompted the actual point of this podcast, which I swear we're getting to. Oh, yeah. Which is the Popeye video game from Nintendo, the arcade game, if in 1982, I had a little go of this,

because I have never actually played this game, and it's fairly typical for its time climbing up and down like ladders and staircases and basically olive oil is at the top of the screen and she's throwing hearts down and the hearts float down in a kind of amusing cartoonish way like they're made of paper almost yeah like petals they flutter down yeah like petals exactly and you grab them if they land on the ground you have to get them quickly they'll start flashing and if you wait too long they'll break and then olive you'll lose a life and olive will like point at this broken heart and it's kind of a cute idea actually. It's a good little cutscene. She tells you off for letting the heartback. Yeah. It's good. And also, I learned in a nice bit of arcade game, like, efficiency, I learned how to play the game by watching the attract mode of the game once.

It's so efficiently done that I was just like, oh, I see. I understand everything about this game now. Yes. Because the attract mode shows you everything without using any dialogue or any instructions. It just shows you how to play the game, and you're like, oh, got it. Yeah, and it's quite simple because basically there's several tiers on the... You never, like, move from screen to screen. Well, you do, not only when you finish the screen, go to the next one.

Yes. And there's several tiers there. The hearts are fluttering down. And then there's stuff that gets in your way, including Pluto, basically. Yeah, Bluto is a singular kind of hazard moving around the screen. Now, you can do a Pac-Man style, escape to the left of the screen, and wrap around to the right side, which you need to do a lot. While Pluto isn't exactly, like, all over the place, he can get you.

if you're above or below him. Yeah, he can punch upwards or he can like swipe down. Which really surprised me because I didn't think he can get you from above because I ran over him and he just jumped up and grabbed my leg and I was like, oh God. But I love the animation when he, the animation is surprisingly a good and true to the cartoons as well. Is it the arcade version that you played, the original one? Yes, it is, yes. It's really good, isn't it? It's very fun.

It's extremely enjoyable. I had a great time playing it, the single screen arcade game. I want to say it just, yeah, it follows. Donkey Kong. Well, yes, and of course the famous trivia is that Shigeru Miyamoto started off making a Popeye game

but they couldn't get the license back then and that game became Tetris. Oh, fascinating. That game became Doki Ducky Panic. Yeah. Their game became Project Hammer. Yeah. That game became Skyrim. Wow.

Yeah, that's a good gag. I'm glad that we hopped on it. That was good. But no, the arcade Popeye was also reported to, like, a game and watch, which is quite popular, I believe. I've not seen that, but I did play the NES version around my friend's house, and that was a quite popular version. I did not play the Nes version, actually. I didn't, I forgot. Was it basically the same thing except with worse graphics? Yes, it was a very good conversion of the game to the NES, basically. Well, that's great. I mean, it's a solid game. I don't think enough people really talk about it as an arcade kind of classic.

I'd put it up there with stuff like Donkey Kong. Like, when it goes to level to level, it's not just the game gets harder, the layouts change significantly as do the visuals, which is... It's completely different. Like, there's a level where what she's throwing at you changes. There's musical notes in the city level,

and there's what the letters of the word help in a boat level, I think? Yeah, it's actual proper transition. It's not like old school, super old school arcade, just gets faster, it gets harder. Though when it presumably eventually it loops and then it does start actually doing that. Well, let me tell you it, when it loops. So in the first level, like, you know, the first go-round,

as well as Bluto, that sea hag shows up, and she'll sometimes throw bottles at you and you can punch them out. Yeah, you punch them out of the sky. Yeah, they just smash when you punch them. That's pretty good. There are cans of spinach. That's the only way you can fight back Pluto,

but he's usually guarding the level, the tier, that the spinach is on. If you get that, you can go and get him and you can punch him into the sea. It's dead good. It's incredible. He goes, it's so funny, like, still, and it's so satisfying to just bop him off, like, so he goes flying. Yeah.

That's something that some of the other games get very right, so we'll get to that as well. But then, sorry, when it loops round, the sea hag shows up, and she starts yaking skulls at you. And there's skulls coming after, and she's got a little pile of skulls next to her, and she's throwing them. There's another thing where Popeye, this is quite good. Popeye can punch, like a punching bag, and it hits a barrel, and that drops down, and you can get Blueton on the end with it and now he's running around with the barrel on his head

going where am I What's going on here? It's a good Get it's full of stuff He says that That's what he says In the opening to the Only Publisho show isn't it

When I think Doesn't he put him in a box Then like a crate or something Oh what's good Probably He goes Yeah I remember God

This is like Prostin rush right now He puts him up a flagpole Doesn't he Probably He wears him up a flagpole Going He he he

He has something to do with like the washing lines and things and then rocket and stuff. Yeah, yeah, oh God, it's wretched. And olive oil goes, Popeye, help. Doubtless.

Useless. And it plays the sort of slowed down version of the music from Wizard of Oz. Yeah, that's really strange. It's really weird. Never mind anything like that. I do like the attract mode

that has the actual like Popeye blowing in this pipe and going, do, that's cool. Yeah. It's a good game. And, And elevated by, can you imagine it being 1980, whatever year you said this game came out? I can imagine that, yeah.

Can you imagine that? And going in and like, there's a Popeye one. And like, you know, if you happen to be into Popeye for whatever reason, you're like, oh, Popeye one, I'll go and have a look at that. And it not only does everything Popeyee, but it's good as well. It's a good game as well. You would have had a brilliant time. Yeah, so not only do you get your dose of Popeye action, you also get an enjoyable video gaming experience, yeah. As a video gaming experience, it's pretty much strong to the finish.

Nice. That's a funny reference to the lyrics of the Popeye song. It is. Yeah. But the next Popeye game, chronologically, is, I'm we going to call this? I've got to go ahead and call it the main event. For today's episode, yeah.

For today's episode, because it was... Now, this was published by... They're called DKTronics. But I think there's an apostrophe in there. Fine. So, I don't know if they're supposed to be Dicktronics. Because that seems like a bit naughty, don't you think? If they were called Dicktronics, then yes, that would be naughty.

Duktronics, very naughty. They could be Ducktronics. Let's say Ducktronics, then. That's much nice for the listeners. Don Priestley, a fairly well-regarded spectrum programmer, he had previously done the game based on Minder, as well as some others. He made this Popeye game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K microcomputer.

He was well known for producing extremely large sprites that didn't suffer from colour clash using some kind of arcane Pascal basic powers. God knows what they were. Now, I didn't actually have this game. Well, you missed out then. But my understanding is that I erstwhile co-host, Mr. Dave Bomber, did. This game is one of the biggest video game love affairs of my whole wide life. Oh, my God.

This is one of my key memories of playing any game. I love this game, and I will try to explain why and why it was so good. So I remember the day I got it. I remember the day I saw it in the shop. It was a shop called Children's World, which was also where I first saw... Remember Children's World. Do you? That was also the shop where I first played Sonic, which, you know, and I'm from Sonic the

comic, the podcast, by the way, listeners. So that's kind of like my sort of job now. And so, like, this, there was a lot of stuff centered around this wonderful shop. It's an amazing shop. But never mind that. Just imagine an amazing shop. And imagine a shop so amazing that the way in is a healthless shop. Skelter. That's how good this shop is, right?

And in this shop, I was in the game's computer games, the area. I don't know if they would have had a Mega Drive yet, probably not. And they had just like an end, what do you call it when it's the end of an aisle, the display on the end? And I know what you mean. Yeah, and I think they may have had a Turney Roundy as well.

And on either this Turney Rowdy or some sort of thing, there were all these spectrum tapes. And... You mean a rack, a revolving rack of games? Yes, that's what I mean. A Tony Roundy. Yeah. And Okay, let's say with your name. Invented and patented by Tony Roundy in 1960.

Nice, nice, nice. Make up a number. So, Popeye was on there, and I recognised him from the all-new Popeye show off of Telly. So, I'm looking... And you're like, oh, that's that guy from that rubbish cartoon I don't like. Yeah. No, I didn't.

I liked it. Well, fair enough. Because it was on. And it was drawing... I looked at the back of this tape. Now, what I should have done, if I was being professional, I would have come to this podcast with my copy of the tape, which is paces behind my back now.

I could go and get it now, but I'm not going to. That's a waste of time. Screw that. And then I would read to you what it said on the back. But the gist of what it said on the back was that in this game, you're going to be collecting hearts. And I can imagine that people who are into the arcade game might have thought, brilliant.

I like that game. I'll buy this and then become disappointed because it's literally nothing like it. What's really odd is that collecting hearts is like the main thing you do in nearly every Popeye game anyone's ever made. And I don't know why. And also every game anyone's ever made That'll be why That will be why

But I can't explain What happened to my brain In that moment or why But there was this flash Of inspiration that went off And I wonder if that is the moment In which I gained a sort of sentience And I stopped being a little tiny boy

And was aware of the world around me Or something Because what it did it described Popeye You've got to go and look for hearts And they could be hidden anywhere in the world And however it was that it described that That was what kicked off my imagination

I was like anywhere in the world And suddenly I'm aware of how much world There is around me that I don't usually concern myself with Oh my goodness Like what about over there What about over there And there's pictures screenshots on the back of

hearts that can be seen through windows and I think there was probably a screenshot of half a heart poking out from behind something because that was a strong image that I had and I am not kidding when I tell you that A, when I got the game home it lived up to this thing that I'd imagined

of like wow, anywhere in the... If I just like went into someone's house, would there be a heart there? If I looked through a window and I went in, would there be a art there, it lived up to that. And B, it's completely changed the way I view the world. I still see these hearts everywhere or places where they would be. Today, I was out on a walk and I was like, there's one up in that window. There'd be one there. And I'll tell you how you get

to it as well. You go up that staircase. I can see you around there. You go around here, you go up there. This was already unlocked in my brain. And just in that moment, when I saw it in the shop, I haven't played the game yet. I get it home. I play the game. And it's exactly as I I was imagining. So, Popeye. Before we continue, could I interrupt you? Because I have found the inlay for Poppa on the internet. So I'd like to read it.

Instructions, you need to demonstrate your love for olive oil by collecting 25 hearts and taking them back to her at home. While on your quest, Olive's love, shown by the love meter, slowly fades. So you must keep returning to renew her love with hearts. When she has all 25, you will be rewarded. Yep. Collect spinach for recovery for when you are knocked over. collect keys to open doors each key fits a particular door

collect other items they're all essential no more than eight items can be carried as well as walking climbing etc you can also move forwards or backwards through layers to take you in front of or behind objects true doorways and to avoid hazards i'll tell you about that in a minute yeah up can mean climb a rope or climb up steps or move back depending on where you are all moving objects in set olive are dangerous and will knock you down if you're on their layer they can pass harmlessly in front or behind you but bluto has a nasty habit of changing layer some of them are dangerous and helpful score one thousand for each heart delivered if you get all 25 hearts delivered to olive score a time bonus cryptic clues and these are in bold space travel green bang hold but no nudge That's it. So, picture, if you're not already, you know, looking at it on YouTube, which I'm sure people do when they listen to these.

Picture a very colourful, very bright screen. Not normal looking for the spectrum, really, where you imagine everything either drawn in one colour or eye searingly, you know, primary coloured sort of laser sprites that look a bit weird with dark backgrounds. This is a fully colourful screen, more or less all over it. As already mentioned, Popeye is enormous. By way of illustration, I'll tell you about the first screen. You start in an archway at the top of a flight of Little Stairs, and you're Popeye, and he's most of the screen tall, and he's standing there, and he's doing something Don Priestley's big sprites used to do.

This was just a... Don must have figured out how to do this, and it must have made him laugh as much as it made my dad laugh when he first saw it because Popeye is standing there and he's just his face is just going off there are loads of frames of animation

going on in Popeye's face all the time and it's not like don't imagine an idle animation where he's looking round and going like like whatever no just his eyes are squinting open and closed and his mouth is roving around his face

and he's just pulling all these faces it's really funny and um he's guerning essentially yeah yeah and he is standing as I say this sort of platform on which is a window, a locked door, and then you can walk down

this flight of steps. If you stand there long enough, Bluto will walk along on the ground, down at the bottom, and you have to avoid him. Also, that bird, that vulture that's in Popeye a lot, that will fly back and forth as well. And you can see a door, and above that door, with the implication that there's a staircase there, you can see a window with, I think, a key in it. So, okay, I've got all the information I need here. I can go and get that key and go you walk down the steps. And he walks in such a jaunty animated Popeye way. It's well good, the animation. And you are immediately punched and killed by Bluto straight away. That's what happens. Because you haven't yet learned the 3D system. As alluded to a minute ago, there's no,

it's not like streets of rage or something where you can tell that there are, you know, that you can move back and forth in the screen. You just have. You just have to know about it. And if you know that there are three layers of 3D at all times, then as you're standing there as Popeye, if you press like down, as in towards you, the player, Popeye will just do a little walking on the spot animation. And he doesn't get any bigger because it's a spectra, we can't do that. It doesn't, the sprites don't scale.

But now you are in the foreground. And if you're in a screen where you can do all three layers, then you could just hold up and he'll like, ooh-de-do-do, and now he's in the back layer. I want to interject with two things. First of all, the in the way I read, that may not have been the exact same one you saw, because they were on more than one. So the one that actually sparked your little heart with the bencher.

Well, you were reading the instructions there, not the blurb on the back, which would be what I read. Oh, I see. Well, that's my error then. Because there's one here that says, it's very different. On the actual tape, on the back, it says the hearts can be anywhere up the lighthouse on board,

ship under the ocean locked in the roof, locked in the house on a roof. That sounds like it, doesn't it? Yeah. It's part, changed your life forever. What I want to do, just to make it clear to the listeners who aren't familiar with this game, the system of going from each, from one layer to another, think of Guardian Heroes on the Saturn, where you jump either into the foreground or into the background, only it's not animated as such. You will do a walk towards the direction you're going, but you won't actually leap into the background. Yeah. You just will be that you have to use your imagination. Yeah, but what it means you can do,

yeah, and you have to keep track of where you are by just knowing, by remembering. But what it means is that, like, so the net, if you go off to the left, which you tend to do for some reason, there's a lighthouse there. And straight away, you can do 3D stuff with it. So if you go into the background,

Popeye can like, you know, hide behind this lighthouse. Yeah. And just a little bit, you can't go around behind it, but you can just tuck in. And that makes you safe from Bluetooth. because on this lighthouse is your first encounter with hearts. There's a couple of hearts up there,

and if you're in front of the lighthouse and you jump, you can get it, but you'll be hit by Bluto if he arrived. So you hide round the back, wait for him to go. Then you come round and you get your heart, you get your first can of spinach as well, which are like extra life mushrooms, you know. And there's a door, and I guess, do you get a key there? I can't remember to unlock that door to teach you how to do that.

But you can go up this lighthouse anyway. through a set of steps that's in it. I'm not going to tell you what you can do in the whole game. This is just the examples of what went on. And at the top of it, you're at the top of the lighthouse. There's the light, and there's a fly circling round it to show you, you know, about the 3D. And now you can follow that fly. You can go round to the back, behind the light, to the foreground, in front of the light,

and chase this fly round to avoid getting hit by it. It's, I never thought about it before, but it's a clever little tutorial. Anyway. It is. people I've multiple times just today getting ready for this I've just been thrown on a video

of this game just to remind myself of anything I might have forgotten and whenever people are making commentaries about it they tend to say they don't like it now they tend to be American but what a surprise

what a huge surprise that Americans wouldn't like a spectrum game so it's my understanding that perhaps people don't really like this game but I think that that is

I really think this is one of those cases where, like, yes, the reason I love it so much is because of my nostalgia and I had it in my childhood. But it's not just that. It's a crash smash. Of course, yeah. It was a crash smash. It was a crash magazine, by the way, very influential newsfield publication back in the day. If a game was a crash smash, it meant it was really good. And if one would buy it and you really wanted that stick on the front of your game case, didn't you?

This is a crash smash. The dizzy games were crash smash. Of course they were. I bet some of them weren't, but... Yeah, presumably. Oh, and speaking of Dizzy, I've said, if you've listened to our Dizzy episode, I said in that that was the game that, like, managed to make a cartoon beyond the spectrum. And I shouldn't have really... I shouldn't have said that without mentioning that this guy, Don Priestley, who made this game,

he did that. He had a totally different way of doing it, but his games looked even more like real cartoons playing out on... They did, though. I think the original Dizzy has the... has the justification of having come out somewhat earlier. I may be wrong about that. Or the same year, but it just squeaked it, I'm not sure. I don't know. I do know. I don't know. I mean, I will say, as someone who wasn't...

I mean, I've seen screenshots of this game before. I never had this as a child. It is extremely remarkable how big the characters and expressive they are, even, like, compared to most other spectrum games, because not only are they extremely big and expressive, but they're also not clashing with the other colours. Like, they are just actual... It doesn't have colour clash.

Don Priestley is the only person who figured out how to not have colour clash. And I don't think he told anyone because, like, no one else did it. It's not telling, yeah. The colour clash is a very common thing cited in Spectrum games where if one sprite passes over another sprite, the colours will blend to, like, merge together, and it looks kind of weird. Because when you see what's actually going on is that a sprite is just a window into a big square of colour on the spectrum, and you start to see that square as it passes across the background at the items.

I mean, I had my first. I mean, I had my first little go on Popeye today, and I didn't go left. I went right, and I saw that there was a rope I could climb. Yes. So I climbed up the rope to get the key and heart that was up there. I got them, and there were more things to the left, but I couldn't get to them. And I assumed there was a wall there, and I had to go down and open the door and then climb up within the house. But I didn't get much further than that, because I didn't really know what was doing.

But I'm going to go back to it, because I really liked what I played a bit. So, oh, yes, and that leads me to finish a sentence I started earlier. There's two of them. Sorry. One was where I said, I recognize that I like this because of nostalgia. But also, it's because I did that thing where you put loads of time into it. And in doing so, I figured out how it works and what it is. And how it works and what it is, I think is really, really clever.

So it's a tight map. God help me, but I'm going to make the comparison. It's kind of a Metroidvania in a way. You fucker. In the way that, you're not powering up Popeye, but the whole map is made out of very, very, very tight. It's a small, small map. But once you've found your way from one screen to another,

you start to unlock or figure out ways from one place to the next in a kind of dark-soulesy metro-any way. So, like, did you try, having gone up that rope and gone in those windows to find those items and found that, oh, what I thought was just a row of windows next to each other that I would pass along as I walked along this whole corridor. Actually, it turns out I have to go somewhere else to get to these other ones. Well, from there, I accidentally climbed down into an underground-y kind of area.

Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to ask you. Yeah, if you climb down that road, because you can climb further up the rope and end up on the roof. Oh, wow, I did not know that. Yeah, or you can climb down and end up, like, are you under the sea even? I don't know where it was. It was just an unusual area. It is unusual, isn't it? It's weird.

Up on the roof, by the way, if you go up there, there's something, a heart, I think, and a coin, I think. And if you stand there long enough, and this is what the instruction thing said about items that can hurt and help you, if you stand there long enough, a UFO will fly past, and it'll take your head off. Because it's a head height with Popeye, and it'll hit him. But if you go up the lighthouse, you can hop onto it.

bit as it passes by. And you can get carried along over the rooftops of Sweethaven and into a new place. That's awesome. And if you go down that rope, you're in a new place. And if you go through certain doors, you'll end up in new places. And they, there's a bit where you can have travelled what feels like really, really far and done all of this stuff. And then there's a door and you're like, okay, go through the door, where does this lead to? And it leads to the door that you come through at the very start of the game at... An olive oil's house. Pure spectrum. But up till now, if you've gone through that door in the opposite direction, you've not ended up there, you've dropped down behind Olive Oil's house, and you can walk along behind Olive Oil's house and everything.

Outstanding. And I think there is something you can do, and maybe it's walked through that door that changes Olive Oil's, like that arch next to Olive Oil's house, into the way back to that other place. I don't quote me on that, but it's that sort of game. Things lead to things, lead to things. And there's weird stuff everywhere There's one bit where there's just like a sleeping dragon And you can't get too close to it Or he'll come to life and breathe fire on you And the animation is so good

It's Don Priestley is an animator As much as he is anything else And so everything always looks fantastic And it moves brilliantly What was the other thing I was about to tell you There was a sentence I'd started and stopped again I can't remember what it is now, never mind It's all right

We'll do a full art where we just do that sentence and uh Yeah but oh I know yeah this is the other thing so you've already brought up that you will be rewarded if you give olive or if you deposit your hearts in olive because that's how it works yeah you you collect these hearts everywhere and they're in really interesting fascinating devious places and sticking out behind things and up on the roof

that's what I think that's the phrase I saw that really got me because I remember imagining things on people's roofs you know you can't even see up there like is there are there who knows what they're keeping up There's hearts up there. Whenever I see, you know, do you ever have this? You walk along in an interestingly built probably old town and you'll be walking along the pavement and somebody's window in their house will be like at pavement height and it looks really weird. There's a heart in there every time. And so when you, I was watching a video today, one of the ones I was using to remind myself with and the American, I believe, said, so you're collecting hearts in order to, and I quote, this is what he said, in order to rescue olive oil.

And I went, Huh? Ha! This, this fella doesn't know what's going on, because no shade to him, it's a perfectly good video of that. No, no, no, shame, please. I'll tell you exactly what happens,

because I know what you're thinking. So, and when you collect these hearts, right, when you walk down those stairs on the first screen, the window is thrown open, and there is olive oil in all her glory and she's there and she's mugging as well she's doing all that gurning animations if you go back up the stairs

oh there's olive oil I'll go up the stairs to her she slams the window shut she disappears can't get to her the door's locked you can't get in there but if you go away and collect hearts now as you return to her she'll stay at the window and you walk up to her

and you deposit your I mean there's no other way to say it you deposit your hearts in olive oil this is depicted presumably they're kissing it's depicted by her arms flail around and that's all you can see of her because, like, Popeye's facing she's in the way.

Her arms flail around, you get a noise that's like, which is probably meant to be like kissy noise and hearts fly around everywhere. You need to not do that because you're going to make me feel very aroused. Very aroused, yeah, sorry about that. Well, I mean, don't watch or play this game

and it's very arousing. But then what happens is... Oh, I know. Powerfully so. Yeah. And then she slams the window shut, of course, because you have to go and get more hearts. But here's the thing. When you win the game, when you deliver the last heart to Olive, she closes that window again, and she opens the door.

Oh, hello. Oh, no, she doesn't close the window, because when you go in the open door and you walk in along, you now see Popeye in that window. He closes the window. You know what happens next? The roof boings up and down for a bit, and that's the ending sequence. Oh, my God. Now, I never saw that when I was five years old and just starting school. Oh, I promised you a little story about my dad.

Oh, yes. But first, I'm not finished talking about that ending. I'm sorry. Okay, okay, sure. So the implication is, I mean, Popeye absolutely is getting laid in there. That's probably what's going on. Like, that is not up for debate. No.

He's cleared all the hearts. The door's been open. He's been invited in. Then he closes the window because he's going to, be up to some shagging. Now that... Now, that's an ending. That's an ending.

That's a game ending. It's absolutely brilliant, isn't it? I'm not even making fun. Did you beat that ever on the spectrum? No. Well, yes, but with save states on an emulator when I was in the 20s. No, I'm going to posit something now. Yeah.

That is going to be controversial. Okay. And this is a strong distinction between British and American video games, I would say. British gamers, especially as kids, did not expect to finish any of their games. No, that wasn't really in question. I had a hand-me-down spectrum with a hand-me-down games collection, which was, and I'm not complaining,

I was very fortunate to have this, because it was a lot of games. There's probably about 40, I would say. Yeah. I never finished a single one of them, despite constantly playing those games. I never have, and I never will. I never finished spectrum game even now

using an emulator I don't think apart from manic minor which I definitely did with saves I'm trying to think if I actually have ever beat in a spectrum game like legitimately I truly can't think of any Fair and Square as a child I beat Bruce Lee but it's very short And also Bruce Lee is shockingly like good

And contemporary weirdly enough Fantastic game And it has that It has what this game has Where we don't know this picking episode We'll talk about that but yeah Go on sorry Well, it has what this game has, which is that thing where, oh, now that place you've already been to leads back to this place you started out at.

And it does that, that connected thing as well. That's a very specky thing, though. Olli and Lisa 3 does that. Yogi Bear does that. There's a lot of that in the spectrum. Oh, the Yogi game! You know, thinking about it. Let's do one about the Yogi game one day.

Yeah, let's do it. I think I might have actually beaten Count Docula no sacks, please, we're Egyptian. What? No, you can't have. That's one of history's hardest games. No, I think I might have beaten it just by pure. dicking about. Plus, I think I might have had a map from an issue of crash or something. Oh, possibly.

Because you had to... Oh, I remember the map, actually. Yeah, yeah. But you had to, like... You had to do it in exactly the right order in just like... You had like a minute and a half to do the whole game or something. It was ridiculous. I think you had ten minutes and it was incredibly tight. Yeah. But the main reason I used to boot up the Ducular game was because I liked hearing the Ducculum music that would play.

Of course. Duda, do, do, do, do it was great. If we can get the Ducular theme, I'd appreciate it. Thanks very much. In the heart of Transylvania, in the vampire hall of finger There's not a papaya's any other We won't buy beast of men Cause he's a vetting again

And things never And we need to also get some Popeye music We need to get the Popeye and some music in here as well Oh yeah I can't remember how it goes Remind me how it goes again Well, I mean, so there's the intro And then there's the outro

And those are two different songs And the intro is, I don't forget the hell with the intro. Yeah, exactly. No, no, just sail with that. Get the intro, can just get in the bin. I don't care about the intro. I care about the outro only because it was excellent.

And I'm trying to remember how I go. Getting down, running downtown, riding around with the boys. That's it. That's it. Yeah, that's classic. Same exact time. Oh, God. that's oh man

yeah that's a classic the sort of surf rock kind of ending for Popeye and son it's the only good thing about the whole cartoon rad rad rad-rad feeling all right yeah that's the thing that was why you watched the cartoons had a great end theme

and like whoever it was at the time Andy Peters or whoever would you know speculators to what they were saying what they were saying was it's a rad rad-rad feeling all right but Andy wasn't ready for the word rad so he was going to say red

what are they saying what is this American nonsense he would say. Yeah. Oh, Andy. Jump in in the Woody. Jump in in in the Woody. Let's go surfing,

says the intro. I had to really like, I had to check through Beach Boys lyrics to figure out what they were saying with the word Woody. I didn't know what a Woody was. It was a kind of car that surfers had. Oh, I see.

A Woody car. A Woody Car. A Woody Mobile. Yep. Yep. A surfmobile. I mean, you have a video of you doing 80s cartoon themes, right?

Well, yes, but it's Patreon only, so No point of mentioning it really. Okay. Unless someone signs up to your Patreon, which case they would be able to listen to it. You know, it's not very much money, is it? It's a small amount of money. It's very good. That's why I brought

it up. I didn't bring it up to plug your pageant. I brought it up to plug the video. Yeah, it is quite good. It was a, yes, I made it for a friend's wedding. I don't know how to say this sentence. For the wedding of two friends that are now wedded friends, you know? Was it requested in any way, or did

You just decided to, like, premiere your new video at their wedding. They requested that I do some singing of my silly times, and I decided, well, I'm going to go one better than that. I'm going to make a 15-minute medley of all of the things I can remember off the telly as mostly as an excuse to sing Popeye and Son. That's so good. At someone's wedding in front of sensible people who are just trying to enjoy their day, and people's mum's and dads and stuff.

You know, I think people from Retronauts and the Retronauts community are starting to cotton on at the fact that you made all of their younger YouTube video things like Roy not Roy and the Sonic 2 so you've reached the end you finish Sonic 2 yeah that was

I don't like singing because you're good at singing and I'm not so it just embarrasses me well but I think they're starting to realise because I have this MP3 from many many years ago this attributed to Dave Bulmer is the same Dave Bulmer it is the very same

yes that was when I was mucking about on forums and people were like, oh, wouldn't it be funny if we did some acopella recordings of video game music? And I went, I used to do this on cassette,

so I'm going to be quite good at this, and I did it. And I wasn't. It was dreadful. Like, they're bad. They're bad like. But the thing is, nothing on the internet was good back then.

So I was ahead of the curve. It was fine. The fact that you put the effort in got you all of the glory. No guts, no glory. And anyway, see if there's anything else left to say about the Popeye game,

probably not really, but just, it really, that thing of like, okay, what door is this? the key to, because I don't think the keys were universal, I think you had to find what door they were and finding your way

up through one of those and along this corridor and down there to find the keys. So there's one bit that's really, really clever towards the end, where Don just starts being really silly with the 3D thing, and he just presents you with a room full of about, like, it might be a nine grid of tall, thin

rooms, maybe a 6 grid, but it might be a 9 grid, and you and some of them have hearts and some of them have keys, but you've got to figure out how to get through them in 3D it's no good just going left and right it's like oh wait now I have to go two forwards to get round that

wall to get in there and then one back and then one forwards and through this and all the time the sea hag is flying past and you have to avoid her by being on a different layer to her and it's it sounds aggravating but the thing is it's funny that's the right don priestley

was like he was like a bino cartoonist but for games I think is I think he's still alive so he is like there's been a question for games. Don, can we be friends, please? I want to talk to Don. I want to have a conversation with him about how good is. He may still be.

I'm not sure if he's alive. I'll try and find out. I think he's kind of gone slightly reclusive. Yeah. But there is, the most recent interview I could find with him was from 2005, so it's quite possible that he is now a corpse, but I hope not. I hope not. And if so, someone drops some spinach in him,

and he'll kick his legs about and drag out. Oh, dear. I'm not sure that works. It does, it does. He taught me it does. And he's a teacher, as well as before he made games, he was a teacher. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he went with his son to a coding class, Pascal coding class, and his son dropped out, and he was like, screw that, I'm going to keep doing this. So he was like, kind of old even at the time for a spectrum programmer. That rules. Oh, was he? Oh, it might be too old to be alive. Yeah, but he's probably fine. There's sadly no way of finding out.

I dispute that. Yeah, just find his email address and go, Dear Don Priestley, are you alive? Love David Bormer. Yeah, well, don't put that, put whatever your name is. Whoever it is listening to this, does it? And then put, Dave Boulmer is definitely the biggest fan of your Popeye game

that there is to get in touch with him because he thinks you're cool. My dad, when, I don't know what it was. I don't know why this one, but this was the game my dad would play. My dad has never been Neither of my parents have ever played video games Except, you know, mum would play Tetris

on the back of a Walkman that we had once And she had a DS for things like Pickross But she's not Neither of them played games But Dad would play Popeye I mean I'm pretty sure he did it entirely for my benefit But it became the thing we did together Like when he would be home from work

we would play Popeye for a few minutes because he could and I couldn't he could operate it and it was a bit too fiddly for me because I'm like five years old it was one of the first games we had and it was just lovely that was just the thing we used to do

after that like dad only ever used computers for mucking about with like 3D software and you know just sort of doing things that are interesting tinkering after that but yeah it was lovely I remember actually being at his work

and going on about, oh, shall we play Popeye tonight? Yes, all right. And that was nice. And there's no, like, you know, again, again. If there's any dramatic tension here at all, you know, let me dispel it again, which is that we've never fallen out, me and my dad.

Do you know what I mean? This isn't very important because it's the last time. No, he's fine, and we're still friends, and it's all fine. So, really, I haven't got a story about my relationship with my dad and this game. But we used to play it together

And it's nice It was really nice I think you should play it With your dad's listeners Find your dad And make him play this Popeye game with you If they're alive If not

Then sorry If not I don't know I'll play it with you I'll be your dad Yeah I don't think me and my dad Me and my dad used to play Spectrum as well now that I think about it

They're mostly like World Soccer and like Oh boo Well, that was what he liked, you know. Typical dad's sport and beer and ties. That's the thing Dad's like, aren't it? Your aversion to sports video games is both understandable, but I find slightly regrettable.

Yeah. Because it has locked you out from a lot of genuinely good things. However, I choose to think, and I do not judge you on this, please understand that this is not a judgmental thing. You, by doing what you have done and completely disavowing any kind of sports-related entertainment, which is what I think you have done. Of any kind, yep, correct? Of any kind. You have saved yourself

from sifting through some shit, so the nuggets are there, but you still have to get your hands very poohy to get to them. Very, very, very poohy. So very poohy. Well, that's the thing. The poo ratio is so high. Thankfully, you've opted to the Sonic fanbase,

which in no way is like that. It is a flawless diamond from top to bottom. I mean, I definitely don't hate it. I managed to not be involved with that for the longest time, but STCTP did need doing, and now, yes, I'm stuck in it. It had to be done. It simply had to be done. Yeah.

Getting down, running downtown, riding around with the boys. Pop-pop, pop, pop, boile. With a hip-hop, funny, hop-pop, we'll be making some noise. Pop-pop, pop, pop, pop-willy. It's a rad, rad, rad, rad, Brad, Brad, Brad, feeling all right. So, is there anything left to say about Spectrum Popeye, probably the most anyone's ever talked about Spectrum Popeye ever since its inception. There's a couple of small addendums to say, which is that there were two more games.

Yes, there were, yes. And there's not very much to say about either of them because I don't care about them. They weren't darn priestly and they weren't really interesting or good. Popeye 2 was an absolutely... I don't even know if I ever had Popeye 2. I know I had... I know I played it, but I don't know if that was just a demo or not. but I barely ever played it because it was a fairly standard platformer Popeye 2. It was back to the standard spectrum graphics where it's all just like a blue background with things drawn in black.

Popeye on a construction site, like that one Popeye cartoon where the baby sweet pea crawls around on a construction site. And sure enough, he's up there, but he's only one of many things. You just head up the ladders and girders doing stuff. There's bombs. You go and touch them to diffuse them. There's burgers. you pick them up, give them with a wimpy, there's the baby.

Oh, mate. Oh, God, I love wimpy. Yeah. Jay Wellington Wimpy. What a character. He's a good lad, and he? Yeah, and he inspired

an entire fast food franchise as well. All he wants is a burger, that's all. He just wants to eat burgers. And doesn't it, like, I was just thinking about this today. It's the most relatable character in history of fiction. Yeah, he's right, isn't he?

He is right. If you could base your life around just having burgers whenever possible, that really is, lovely. That's a nice way to be. But also sitting at a table, holding a knife and fork with a plate in front of you with a napkin. Yeah.

Just in case a burger goes by or someone gives you a burger. He's like a human cat, isn't he, Wimpy? Well, he has a classic iconic catchphrase which I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. Yeah. He would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. He's a beautiful man.

He's the best. He's like the jogger. He's like the jogger. of the, of Popeye universe, you know, all he cares about is burgers, and I respect that. I think that Jay Wynton Wimpy and Jughead would get on really well, actually. Yeah, would they, would there be a clash? Because I don't know about Archie, right?

I just don't know about it. I don't know, maybe there would be a clash, because maybe each of them would think that the other was trying to eat their burgers. Well, they wouldn't be wrong. Hmm. And the reason I said, I don't know Archie, Jughead, he's a burger man, is he?

He's like a Wimpy. Yeah, he loves burgers, yeah. Well, then there's a problem. Yeah. And that's what leads to the Great Riverdale Jughead slash Wimpy Burger Wars. Yeah, the Great Riverdale, not really very many burgers left time.

Yeah. Oh, dear. Yeah. The chocolate shop goes out of business because there's just no more burgers. This is what happened when Wimpy was younger and then he sailed out to Sweethaven and that's where he is now.

Yeah. Yeah. So that game, normal platform game, You go up at the top of the level That's Bluto's up there He's got, or maybe he's being Brutus this week I can't remember He's got Olive with him

And you punch him and it's really funny The way you fight in Popeye 2 Is that I can't remember If you have to like Z and X like in Track and Field and stuff like that Or whether you just press one button Or hold it down I can't remember what the button is

But I just remember that it's like If you ever done this joke as a child I definitely have you and a friend stand next to each, stand in front of each other, go, let's fight. And the way you fight is just by, like, having your fists up and just moving them back and forth, like little steam train pistons, biff, biff, biff, biff, that is what Popeye does in this game. And he goes, bif, piff, in this. First on one of the goons and then on Pluto, and he biffs him until he goes away. And all of this time, someone is chucking

spinach cans. And as he gets, and he goes, dilly-d-de-de-de-de-d-and now he biffs. I mean, if Bluto had a health bar, it would be going down faster once you had a diddly deep to D-Dee, presumably, but I don't know. You do see there's a Popeye's arm at the bottom of the screen all the time, and depending on whether it's big or little means you can punch things, you know, or be hurt by things. So that's that game, then there's another couple of levels of that, the different levels. And then there's Popeye 3. Oh, God, yeah. Now, I never played Popeye 3, and you've already correctly identified why.

It is sports adjacent. Pop-I-3 is a wrestling game. It's called wrestle-crazy. Yeah. Popeye 3, wrestle-crazy. Where Popeye fights, wrestles loads of space aliens, including the actual Xanomorph from Alien. Yeah, I think he's the first one. Certainly in the video I watched today, he's the first one.

I don't know if he always is. And the Lost in Space Robot, he's in there as well. Yeah. And they all, but you get a screen up at the start of each round that's like, the commentator, like, ah, I'm coming from the planet. because it's here is the biggest, baddest. There's a little bit of spiel

for each character. And then you biff some and buff some. And then what is that roughsome? It's really, I mean 1992 is late for a Spectrum release, right?

That's a pretty late release for the Spectrum. The consoles are in full swing by this point. Everyone's got a Megadrive and everyone's going, Spectrum, P-U. Yeah, P-Ding. Your Sinclair are not happy. No, no.

They managed to hold on until 93, though. They did, yeah. As did I. The thing is, a lot of the specky games that were coming out then were actually some of the best ones because they knew how to do it by that time. They'd really figured out how to make that machine sing. And it felt comfortable now.

Like early spectrum games are like, ooh, they're really weird, and that's part of the appeal. Oh, what's going on there? Everything was eerie. Everything was spooky in the main spectrum. era. By 1992, they all just look like quite cool, little cartooning games. One of my favourite specky games, genuinely, is the bangers and mash game based on the monkeys. Really?

Yeah. And that was 92, and it really just plays beautifully. It's just like a little almost console-ish platformer. It's pretty good. Jumping around, throwing, like, fruit of people and stuff. It's a lot of fun. It's still very playable. Who needs Donkey Kong country, eh? Yeah, exactly. It's a spectrum's answer to Donkut. Kong Country a few years earlier than it was even announced. Well, that's the note, exactly. Donkey Kong Country, I think you find, was the SNF's answer.

To bangers and maize. To bangers and mash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good old Chess and Dave. Bangers a mash. Bangers a mash. The chimps are ribs there ain't no doubt. Bangers a mesh.

I ain't a kid and you them to keep monkey in about they do. But bangers a mash. All they want to do is have some fun. They never mean to do no way. Oh, but you can guarantee They'll upset the apple call no exitedly As your bangers clangers come about quite frequently I would like to, before we move on to non-specky things

I want to talk about Don Priestley a tiny bit And specifically my experience with Don Priestley, the programmer Because I never had Popeye when I was a kid But you know what I did have? I had Trappdoor And Trapp door based on the Claymatione series starring, I want to say

Willie Rushden? Yes, I want to say Willie Rushden, shall we? Willey Rushden? With the most, the best theme song ever, Traptor. Can't wait to hear that folded into the episode. I hope so. I really hope so. Now, Traptor, having, I didn't have Popeye,

so obviously I wasn't cognizant of this at the time, but it seems a little bit like an evolution of Popeye, because while it still uses the whole sort of 3D in and out the screen sort of action. It's now on what is very clearly delineated to be a 3D space. You move up and down the screen to move into the screen or further away as you expect.

But everything's very, very clear, like you're moving in front of and behind things like when you've got the trapdoor open, you can walk behind the trapdoor, you can walk in front at the trapdoor, you can walk to the side of the trapdoor to close it. The general premise of trapdoor, if you're not familiar with it, because you probably aren't, is this character Burke is this blue creature who lives in Thrull to this thing called The Thing Upstairs

and he is generally the thing upstairs will usually just shout at him to get him some food. You never see the thing upstairs and Burke will you often open this to the trap door and something nasty

will come out of it and he'll be warned off by his friend who's a skull named Boney and the Boney that will just be like I don't think you should open the trap door Burke and Burke will just be like piss off bony or something and they'll open it and a big bat

will come out and then they'll get into crazy antics with this bat. The other character is this little spider called drut, doesn't really matter, but the game Imagine it's just completely brilliant. Yes, it's very good. The game is a very interesting and free-form thing where

at the beginning you essentially be allowed to amble around the trapdoor world which is a castle and its grounds and there are only a few screens I'd say probably about 10, maybe 12 but they make maximum use out of it because every screen

has several interesting things in it which will become useful in some in ways that require actual thought. For example the thing upstairs will demand that you get him a can of worms is the first thing you have to get and that one's quite easy because we need to do is find a can

find some worms pick up the worms, drop them into the can and once you've enough of them send it up the lift. Yeah, send it up the lift to the thing upstairs. We'll then say, yum, yum, that was nice. Then he'll ask you something else, like a bug crush soda or something. And these are coming down in big speech balloons, aren't they? Yes, they do, yeah.

They appear on the screen, but there's a little bit of time between each one. You have a bit of time to ambble around. So if you know what you're doing, you can start pre-prepping the next task, because you have a time limit on each task, obviously. It's not like super tight, but it's tight enough. So, like, as an example of puzzle, when you need to make crushed something, what you need to do.

And the game does not spoon-feed you this. You have to figure this out, which as a kid I was able to do because it is kid-friendly puzzling. You place the item next to the trapdoor, walk over to the trapdoor lever and open it. And when it opens, the lid of the trapdoor crushes it when it comes down.

And then you close it again before something horrible comes out of the trapdoor. But then you've created your new item. You've created this thing. Then you also got items that require you. I think it's crushed eyeballs, actually. You need to... I think so.

And you have to get them out of a bird or something, don't you? No, it's like a plant that grows them. Oh, that's right. But you have to figure... There's an egg thing you have to do with the bird. Yeah. It's... Yeah, the egg one is lighter, but it's very...

It's very... It's both finicky, but in the way that makes it fun. You know what I mean? Like, it's like a juggling game. You have to juggle all these elements. Like, with the worms and the can of worms, you get... If you're clever, you can get loads of worms out of the trap door.

But if you open the trap door, you're at risk of a... big bat coming out of the trapdoor or something horrible coming out of the trapdoor and making your life much harder. It's very clear. Don Priestley, right. Given how the Popeye game, clearly nobody from Popeye was supervising him or making him do a particular thing, because he didn't in those days.

Don Priestley watched Traptor. Like, this is not made by a guy who's just doing his job. Like, he knows Trappdoor in and out, and he has made the Traptor game, and he's got it right. It's great. I mean, I'm not going to go on it too much We have quite a few more Popeye games to cover And I'd like to keep this episode as expedient Unlike my usual efforts

But Well, I love the long episodes But I thought it might be nice for the listeners If we got them something a bit breezy It might Um There was also through the Traptor Also made by Dong Priestley

Now this isn't as good Because they've gone for the kind of traditional platformer Thing But it's still got the giant sprites and the very inventive gameplay because you were, in this game, hence the title you are in the trapdoor, I forget why you go in the trapdoor.

There must be a good reason. But you end up trapped in there with Drutt, who's a little spider I mentioned earlier. And in this game, you can actually switch at any time between Burke and Drut to solve puzzles. Now, Burke is obviously massive and slow moving, but he also has hands. So he's able to do things.

But Drut is just this little leggy thing. You can jump pretty high, so he can dislodge things from high places and get to areas that Burke can't get to. And it's just a really difficult game. But having gone and looked at videos of it, like, as an adult, I see now that where I thought it was insanely difficult, it was actually just requiring a bit of patience or skills I didn't quite have at the time. So while very difficult, it's actually not as horrible as I thought it was. I don't think it lives up to the creativity of the first game. really

but it definitely deserves at least a try because there is some there is a interesting synergy between the two playable characters there which is proto lost Vikings I would call it honestly and it's very cool I mean I'm not too familiar

with the rest of the games that Don Priesty went on to make he didn't make that many more he made a game about the British monarchy called and I forget the name of it Flunky Flunky that's it

When you walk around I think Flunky is Don at his most spitting image and at his most satirical cartoonist. You are a butler or something who is being given tasks to do in Buckingham Palace. And it's the actual royal family caricatured and you have to get stuff or do a thing for each of them or whatever. And so basically the trapdoor except royal royal trapdoor. Yeah. And like if at all except well the main difference is that whatever you do, there are royal guards trying to shoot you with big guns. and kill you.

Interesting. So we have to avoid them. I think, again, there's a little bit of, like, what level of 3D are you on? You can dodge the bullet that way, things like that. But it could be wrong, because I never played this one. No. But it is, well, writer Dan Whitehead,

whose specky nation books, I could have done this podcast without, but chose not to, and instead, you know, had a little read of the relevant bits before we began. Yeah. Very good books. I love his Specky Nation books.

He sort of describes it as, you know, the tasks are so thankless that you wonder if it's part of the satire that here is a man representing a nation that will do anything for this family and gets nothing from them in return. That's interesting. That is interesting, actually, and quite likely, in fact. That's the vibe you get from Don Priestley Games. This is a cartoonist with things to say and little cheeky jokes to make. And to wrap this fellow up, this excellent Don Priestley, I want to say Malcolm loses his clock is the final game that he did. Is it Malcolm? It feels like it's not Malcolm. Gregory, excuse me, not Malcolm. Who's Malcolm? What am I on about?

No, no one called Malcolm. No, nobody. There's nobody called Malcolm. It's weird that we think of it as a name. It is weird. Gregory loses his clock as kind of apex of the style by which I mean it is the most cartoonish game that he made. Like the facial expressions are just like outstanding.

Yeah. The graphics are outstanding. It looks astonishing. Yeah. It's amazing. Not only if you got the complete lack of color clash and the full color everything, but the game actually moves quite a lot faster and smoother. Ah, that's something I ought to have mentioned about Popeye.

If you try and play it now or even just watch a video, you're going to go, oh no, this is too slow. Because the giant sprites kind of necessitated everything running very, very slowly. Luckily, we have emulators now, so speed you're specky up, and everything will be fine. Yeah. But yeah, with Gregory, it looks like it's all running at a completely normal speed. This is a game in which the premise here is, Gregory is just a bloke or a little boy, difficult to tell which, he's in his pajamas, and he goes to sleep. And the most fascinating intro sequence happens where a ghost steals his clock, but you don't see the ghost.

Instead, Don, master of graphics, makes it so that all of the elements that make up the background ripple as this ghost passes by them. And it gets to... It's like he corrupts the... What he presumably does is he just tells all of the sprites to display the wrong edges, like the left side, the right side of the stuff. I don't know what it is. But this ghost ripples the background, gets your clock, takes it away. And then the whole room starts to just deconstruct. struck around you and disappear

element by element until it's just his head that's left. Gregory's head is all that's left. This then spins round and round and round, drops down, lands on his body, and now you're in a dream world, and you're dissolving puzzles to find the pieces of the clock so that you

can wake up and not be late for work slash school slash whatever it is. It's... It's so British. Yeah. It looks dead. I only heard about it today. I've never heard of this game before. It's staggering looking, like, for a spectrum game. It might be the best-looking spectrum game I've seen, honestly.

Yeah, probably. It's absolutely astonishing. And it is a very interesting... It is a cross between Propye and through the trapdoor, because I think it retains the 2D plane. Yeah. This one. But everything just runs so beautifully,

and the sense of exploration from Popeye is back. Yeah. Yeah. And it's well worth checking out. Though it's not going to seem impressive unless you're familiar with the spectrum. Well, that's the... They are, though, come on. They're retronauts.

They know this stuff. Yeah, they love the spectrum. You get it. You get old stuff being fine. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. And the thing is, this guy, so I expected, when I was looking this up, because I've always had high regard for this guy, and I've known that he did other games I didn't play. I didn't play the Benny Hill game.

No, he was not, his interview with him where he gets asked about that, and he becomes quite gruff. He says, no, I don't want to talk about that. Oh, what, the Benny Hill game? Yeah. He says it was a crash It was a crash interview Where he said yeah He wants his games not to be like that

Basically that was not He doesn't consider that to be a good game Fair enough, okay It was one of his first ones of that sort I think It was one of his first big sprite games Wasn't it? Yeah But the interesting thing when I looked him up today

Was that he did loads of games That didn't use his signature style at all Games that you'd never recognise as his That are like just like you know, menus and lists and things. Yeah. That's fascinating to me because he just, you know, from seeing his big spright games, you'd never imagine he would have any interest in doing games that aren't like that

because it's such a, it's such an otter style. You can tell what is his. I'm watching now, as I speak to you, I'm watching now a video of Through the Trapdoor and I saw a bit where, and I'm not that familiar with the Trapdoor game either. I just happened not to have it. But a bit where he fell down. through a whole screen and he landed with what has to be like a five to ten frame elaborate animation of the guy like falling flat on his face and pushing himself back up again he has multiple falling poses as well as he the further he falls the more he gets kind of arched downwards and his hands flail and it's just this guy is really brilliant brilliant yeah it's really brilliant yeah it's really brilliant creepy crawley I mean things that stick on your skin foreign beef with tentacles that want to pull you in Spurmy whirms, slugs that snows that lost there is a glue

They'll wait down there forever Till they get their hands on you You're a fool if you dare Stay away from the tractor Because there's something down there And it's not nice So we're talking about Popeye, not Don Priestley, though obviously there is a reason to talk about Don Priestley,

which is he's excellent. Popeye is also excellent, so I'm going to also talk about the other Popeye games that exist. Let's do that. So we're not going to go into the detail that we did on the Spectrum Popeye because that was, I consider the main event. Oh, by the way, since this is like the Spectrum Popeye podcast I'm making, I've thought of another thing to say about it,

but I'm going to say it at the end as a little extra bonus. Remind me of that. An Easter egg. I'm excited about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the other Popeye games at this time during these specky years were Popeye 1 and 2 for the Game Boy. Now, Popeye 1 for the Game Boy, they're by Sigma Enterprises, is a 1990, remarkably prehistoric-se-seeming maze game. Yeah.

Now, the thing about this game is, what you do is you're walking around a maze, sort of a la Pac-Man, though it's not really like that. You have to find olive oil and sort of collect olive oil, air quotes. Then you have to find Sweepie, and that's the exit. But the whole time you've got obviously Bluto running around, releasing his critters, like crocodiles and things, into the maze. You can get spinach, which makes you super fast. But when I got the spinach, I then decided to go and try and beat up Bluto, because he runs away from you and you have it.

But when you walk into him, you just die. Oh. So they missed one of the most fundamental things with Popeye there, I think. And about the classic maze game. Pick up the item. Exactly. Yeah. Get the baddie.

Although this is, having seen it myself, this doesn't really resemble Pac-Man. If anything, it looks like a Horace game. It looks so old. That's actually true. Yeah. It doesn't feel more like a specky game. You're right. But the thing that gets me about it is ultimately, and I know this is going to sound silly,

because I know that's what it is, but you really are just walking around in a maze. Like, there's really not much more to it than that Because Pluto is not hard to avoid Like, at all There is like nothing that's stopping you from getting away from him There are always multiple routes to get away from him Sometimes Wimpy comes along and drops a hamburger Which blocks your path

But that is almost never going to be a problem That wouldn't be a concern to me If there was a hamburger blocking my path I know exactly what I would do about that Yeah, I know I'd resolve that problem as well Yeah But we'll leave that one for the listeners to figure out They are clever, aren't they?

However, they're very clever. I mean, you have to be a highest standard to listen to virtual arts, don't you? Okay, Popeye 2, made by Sigma Enterprises. Now, this was a pleasant surprise, because I tried this today, and when I've seen videos of it before, it looks terrible.

Like, it's a really ugly game for Game Boy, but in the sense, not that it's super simple, because I like that, but in the sense that doesn't have much in the way of environmental, like, anything. That's it. Popeye himself looks perfectly good, But the background, the way I described it is like,

imagine if Mario Land 2 didn't have the graphical update that Mario Land 2 had and it was just like a bigger, like a more zoomed-in Mario Land 1 sort of look. Yeah, but even Mario Land 1 has some sense of something. And I love Mario Land, but when I actually played Popeye 2, regardless of its visuals, which I think are bad, and the music, which, and I'm not joking, it made me feel sick. I don't know how they managed it. There was some kind of discordant note in there

that was triggering my sickness gland or something. It was awful. If I had to play this game again, I'd have to turn the music off. The actual level design is fine. Like, the gameplay is fine. There are plenty of, like, actual hidden bits and bobs and secrets and rewards for actually playing it well. It's quite enjoyable, honestly, for me,

as a simple little platform in the same vein as something like the Sunsoft Batman game. It's not as good as that, but it has that same vibe where it's just all very minimal. And that's what works for the Game Boy, I think, minimalism. So, yeah, I kind of liked it. It wasn't amazing. It wasn't good looking or good sounding,

but what matters, the gameplay was there. Walking along using a Popeye's strength to bust holes in walls and things. It was cool. And what's worth mentioning is that Popeye's got a great big arm on him. Yeah, massive arm. Huge arm that's like as tall as he is. And I think it gets even bigger.

depending on how much stuff you've got. The size of it, mate. You should see the size of his arm, vast, stinking. Yeah, like way bigger than Papa, you know, even, like, we know Popeye's got a big arm, and that's the thing about Popeye. Yeah. But this is ridiculous. I mean, he would topple, wouldn't he?

Yeah. Like, the size of that arm, mate. Yeah, he's absurd. It looks silly in the game, but that's, you like that because it's part of the fun. Yeah, yeah. It was fine. I thought it was pretty good. And as well as that, I mean,

This was a game that came out in 91 in Japan, but didn't get published in the West till like 93, 94, 94 for Europe, I think. Oh, this was what I was going to ask, because the videos I saw about this said it was a Japan exclusive, but of course they were American. So I wonder if it came out here or what? The internet says it came out in the US, but not till like 93. However, who knows? Because game history is completely decided by Wikipedia, essentially, which can be made up by anyone. Just make it up. but then there wasn't another Popeye game that I'm aware of

until the game gears Popeye Beach Volleyball which is exactly as good as it sounds to be honest This one looks quite sweet Well it's probably an okay if you want to play a game of beach volleyball But who on the planet wants to do that Well exactly it's a sports game Yeah well I mean Look I'm going to just lay out the line here

Okay this is a quite masculine thing to say And I apologize The only game of beach volleyball that anyone would play, I think, would be one of those dead or alive sex volleyball games. Oh, dear. Yeah, and so they could lower their shades and turn to their friends and say, now that's what I call bump mapping. Yeah.

And then when they looked at them blankly, he could then continue and say, I'm referring to the breasts. Yeah, but they get it wrong. They get a bit confused, and they just turn around and lower their sunglasses and go, boobs. Sorry, no, I had a whole line.

They just, they're like Duckman. just like going, breasts. Yeah. So, thankfully, the Popeye beach volleyball game does not contain breasts. Oh. I know, it's a shame

because that's what I was here for. I was booting up on my game gear. I had it resting on my left leg and I was wiping my hands to get the going. Here we go. Here we go. That's the only, breasts is the only thing that I ever fire up a Popeye thing for.

And there's never been any yet, but I'm waiting still. And one day I'm hoping it'll happen. Yeah, one day you'll get that sexy pop. game that you crave. Yeah, I know it, when it happens, I know it's going to be epic. Mm-hmm. So Popeye Beach Volleyball, give that one a bit of a miss, I would say.

It seems like a fairly okay-ish thing. It makes me one, I mean, of all the characters, I mean, the best thing about Popeye Beach Volleyball is the pub trivia that it even exists, really, isn't it? Like, which popular characters start in a Beach Volleyball game? Yeah. It was Popeye. But then you could also say Clanoa, couldn't you? Clanoa Beach Volleyballball, which is also a thing.

Really? I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking. Why is anyone interested in making any beach volleyball games? Uh, bubs. Bubs. Is there a bubbsy one? Bubsy Beach Volleyball, God or Whitey.

It should be. Don't give them any ideas. There should be a beach volleyball game. Now that there's this many, they're obliged to make them for all the rest of the characters there are, and all the rest of the franchises there are. I think the little sprites look quite nice in this, though. They do look cute. It's not bad looking for a Game Gear game.

No, it's actually for a Game Gear game. It's very good looking. And since I'll be covering this eventually in my Game Gear Directory project, so looking forward to that, have another excuse to play this banger. Brilliant, can't wait. But interestingly enough, released on exactly the same day, August the 12th, 1994, what they called Popeye Day, I guess, was Poppy Ijuvarum Majo Seag Nomaki. I don't know if I pronounce any of that right, and I apologize of sight. You pronounced Seahag right.

So I pronounce Popeye correct. Popier, Popier. I'd like to hear how they say Popeye. Yes. Japanese. I bet that's interesting. But yes, this is a Super Nintendo game where you... Now, here's the thing that interests me about this game.

I knew... This has actually got a fan translation. Oh, yeah. Which is what I tried it with. Because this is Japanese only, isn't it? Yeah. So I downloaded this fan translation. Rest assured listeners, yes.

I'm going to say it again. I deleted it within 24 hours. Of course. As is the legal obligation. Now, interestingly enough, it's a single-player board game where you roll the dice and move around on a map and wherever you land on the map, either some event's going to happen or you're going to be thrown into a 2D-side-scrolling platform game level.

Oh. And I'm going to be completely frank with you. I played this for quite a long time, but I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do. I didn't know how to actually finish the level, the map, and move on. so I just played a bit of the game. Now, what I played of the game, I actually rather liked.

I thought it was rather good. The performance isn't superb. The frame rate's not great, but the level design is much less perfunctory than you expected to be. There is actually effort here. They're actually proper platforming game levels, not just afterthoughts,

and some of them are long and some of them are short, and therein lies the board game aspect, sort of luck of it, I suppose. But you can also run into Pluto, who then you have to dodge him a bit, you can run to this boxer character You've got to them beat up You can get items you can use on the board

To make the hazards go away from you Or the boxer character I bet he's the one that's in the comics And in the film Yes, that's right Ox Blood Ox Heart I bet it's him Almost certainly him

Cool And amazingly enough This is very funny Whenever you go into an area You know the old school transition Where you get like an iris out Dittlittlis yeah Well they have that

but it's with the phrase, blow me down. Oh, there you go. The phrase, blow me down, irises you out. Nice. And then irises you back in again. It's incredible, to be honest. And the thing that fascinates me about this game, and this is some deep-jip lore in a way here,

there is a SNS game called the Flintstones, the treasure of the Sierra Madruck. What's that about? Who's in that? It's a side-srolling board game, where you roll a dice, and then wherever you land on the map, you end up in a platform game level.

Oh, is it one of these ones? No, no, it's not, but it raises the question of how did this happen twice? Like, was there a crossover? Did they see the treasure of the Sierra Maduro, the six out of ten Spinsons game, and did they go, we fancy a bit of that. That's what we want. It's very odd, isn't it? This happened twice.

Like, what an unusual concept to happen twice on the same system? How unusual is that? I don't know if it's got the same director or anything. I mean, this seems like the sort of thing that I should look up. In fact, I'm going to live on Retronauts. This is a sort of thing that you'd expect I would have done earlier. But no, not on this show. Developed by Technos of all people.

And you have a two-player split-screen mode for the board game as well, which does make it a little bit more palatable, I would say. doesn't appear to be any crossover here. So this thing happened twice. Oh, my God. Oh, no. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. I'm not even joking. I'm freaking out. Okay, what? Oh, Jesus. This is big. Okay. They're both cartoons.

Hold on to your genital trench. Okay. Popeye I, Juwari, Mahu, Majo, Cajagdomaki, came out on August 12th, 1994 in Japan. Okay, the Flintstones, the treasure of Sierra Madurok, came out August the 12th, 1994, in Japan. What's going on? What's going on? What's happening here? I can't explain that.

I'm sorry for the dead air listeners, but I'm actually freaking out about this. This can't be real. I don't believe that this can be real. This is amazing. This is the most mind-boggling thing that has ever happened to me. The more you say it, the more normal. it happening starts to feel like... No, it's not normal. It's not normal.

It can't be a coincidence. There can't be two games with... No, it can't be a coincidence. This is staggering. The fact that there's not enough production information about this game to discover why this has happened. I wonder if, if there's no...

Okay, if there's no crossover of production staff or the company that made it or anything, then could it be that this is exactly one development cycle since a really popular game like this came out in Japan? I don't know. I don't know, but this is actually

genuinely exciting to me. This is the kind of thing that makes me go, I must research this. There's got to be some connection. Imagine if you'd done this before the show. Before the, I know, it's crazy. It'd have been a huge... But I just didn't, it was so unlikely

that I just didn't bother doing the research. This is astonishing. Okay, listeners, I'm putting this out there for the naughties right now. If you happen to know what the hell's going on here get in touch and we'll do an update

on a future episode of the mystery and we also extend that same question out to any of our episodes if you know what the hell's

going on what the hell's going on yeah because we clearly got no clue you know Well, I don't know if we can really full of that, but I don't know if we can really

follow that, but I have to, because there is one final Popeye game to talk about, well, technically two, actually. In 2005, many years after Popeye had fallen into something of, well, he wasn't really popular anymore, I would say. He was on Popeye.

No disrespect to the character who is great, but it wasn't the Popeye cartoon running. Yeah, there wasn't a thing happening to do with Papa. Yeah. A game came out called Popeye Rush for Spinich. Is this a game by advanced one? It is. That looks quite good. Yes, it does.

However, it's not. Ah. Yeah, it's not very good. Oh, yeah. It looks, it's beautiful looking. Yeah. The sprites, this is a Namco game developed by Magic Pockets, published by Namco, I should say. Now, it looks glorious, like the sprites are these beautiful, pastily...

Mm, that's how I remember it. Gorgeous, gorgeously animated characters. Now, there's four characters. Pop-I, Olive Oil, Pluto, and Jay Wellington, Wimpy. I refuse to not say his full name, because I love it so much. Now, what it is, there's not really much like this game. It is quite unique where it's a foot race in 2D with a 2D platform. Now, what is that like?

What is the game that that is like? There is another one like this, but it's Dash and Desperados. That's it. One of my favorite games of all time. Oh. A megadrived game called Dash and Desperados, where in that one, it's two players racing against each other to get the heart of a woman. A woman?

But in this, it's a rush for spinach, clearly. I spent a quite a long time trying to figure out whether rush for spinach is a pun of some sort. I don't think so. But it's not. They just really want that spinach. But it looks beautiful. In theory, it's very fun. In practice, unfortunately, it's quite annoying.

Because there's not really much in the way of viable catch-up mechanics. So if you do fall behind, you're basically screwed and you're spending about two or three minutes running pointlessly waiting to lose. It's not horrible There's plenty of different modes In the game and such And it has got link up multiplayer But who are you ever going to meet Who has got lots of modes

Yeah but yeah But I mean like different types of races you can do So there is variety there And you can compete against like a character ghost You can compete in like a challenge mode You can do quick light races You can do times against the clock races There's plenty there

It's quite gorgeous What it has going for it is yes If you've got a game board Advance. I can imagine myself enjoying this on a game, not on an emulator, not on a PC screen, on a Game Boy Advance, in a car, oh, I'm just having

a little run along. Yeah, I can imagine having fun, but... I mean, it has moments where it comes together and it is quite fun, like, where you can... Because you can get, like, vehicles and stuff when you're running around, you can, like, suddenly jump on a skateboard or something. And you can grind rails as Popeye's become kind of cool. He's just grinding Popeye, yeah.

But my favourite one is you can get a Pogo and the Pogostick not only propels you really quickly forward, but it also is funny. So it actually feels quite Popeye-ish, unlike getting on a skateboard, which is not very Popeye-ish. No. It's a bit Popeye and sun-ish. If you, yeah, that's true.

If you run, and if you're close by one of the opponents, you can press the B button to grab them and throw them behind you, which is quite funny. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, but the games doesn't come together. Is there link cable multiplayer? Yes. I see that, that might.

might be good. Good luck finding other person who owns this game. You will. Oh yeah, that's true. You have to both have the cartridge in those days, isn't it? There wasn't exactly a rush for Popeye Rush for Spinich, I would say. Though, of course, nowadays, in the world of emulators, that's not going to be a problem as long as you remember to delete the runs. Try for hours. Yeah. I love how the reception for this game

on Wikipedia is literally just, Popai Rush for Spinich, receive negative reviews. Oh, wow. Whoever wrote that, probably whoever's game came out on the same day. knowing that they couldn't compete with Popeye rush to spinach. Yeah, 2005 for America, that won, 2006 for the EU. We had to wait even longer for the rush for spinach. So it was sort of a delay for spinach, I guess. No rush for spinach.

No rush for spinach. Yeah, very good. Now, I'd like to say that was the final Popeye game because that would spare us the pain of the actual most recent Popeye game. Yeah. Which is Popeye on the Switch, which is, well, it was a meme for about five, minutes this game because it is so legendarily crap. It's like

they made it as it's like they had the license and they were like, oh crap, this is expiring. Yeah, well like, did we find out what it is? Because there's obviously a reason. It's obviously something other than people wanting to make a game. It almost feels like

money laundering, doesn't it? It actually does. That is actually, yeah, it actually does seem like money laundering. That's something I had not considered. But, yes, it's, oh, God, it's absolutely terrible. It's, and weirdly enough, it says it's a modernised adaptation of the arcade game, but it's not. No, what they mean by that is that, like, technically, whatever's going on at a particular time is from the arcade game. So, olive oil throws hearts, you collect them, there's no jump.

Bluto's there, and you can't hurt him unless you have spinach, etc. But it's all done on like what seems like default assets that came with the engine. No, it is. They found what it is. It's an asset pack that you can... Oh, God. It costs about 20 quid on whatever the engine is shop front.

Yeah, that is exactly what it is. The levels are... That is actually what it is. Yeah, the levels are already made and not by these people. Like, it's just an environment you can buy. And the Popeye model, that's also some... That's an asset you can buy from somewhere. and yeah, that is what it is.

They literally just went on the little online shop, found the bits, and technically made a game out of them. That's horrible. That's really embarrassing. So what you're doing is you're running around. It is a 3D game. You're running around this little town or whatever it is, and the hearts that are drifting down, and they're slow again.

But because it's in 3D, what it thinks it is, is that you're going around finding the hearts in the 3D environment. Like, oh, here's one, oh, here's one. and gathering them up. But because they also have to drift down because that made sense in the arcade game because you can collect them on the way down, olive oil is like up in a tower and she throws them

and you just have to wait for like ages for them to come down really slowly from the distance. Jesus. And Bluto's there. It's just kind of sad, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And then there's a boat level because there was a boat level on the arcade version

and she's saying, so in the arcade game, It wasn't hearts on the boat level It was the letters from the word help That fell down out of her speech balloon Well in this game They've gone, okay, we'll do that But you have to gather the letters to make a phrase

And the phrases are really weird stuff It's like, it's not this But it's like, you know, I've fallen and I can't get up It's the equivalent of that It's just like phrases you may have heard But not in Popeye Like just phrases you may have heard That's horrible

I'd rather have a ball of cocoa pot Yeah, that's one I just said Coco Pups Oh, little Cocoa Puppies Oh, there they are Hello Coco Pups, little dashings Oh my god I love them so much Now, something I'd like to say about Popeye, before we get to your final Popeye anecdote.

Oh, yeah. I sometimes think, thinking about Treasure of the Sierra Madurok, the Snows' game, it makes me think about the idea of a Megadry of Popeye game, and wouldn't that have been brilliant? I mean, yeah, of course it would. A big chunk, like, think about the, have you played the Flintstens game on the Mega Drive? It's really great. No, I haven't actually. Well, a game exactly like that, but with Popeye would just be the most lovely thing.

in the world. Yeah, it would. A lovely, big, cartoony, chunky game where you punch the shit out of Pluto and, ah, it makes me so sad, because Popeye deserves better. It does. Unlike many of these perennial characters

from the past, he's actually funny, I think. Yeah. And it's still funny and can be amusing because violence is hilarious, and everyone knows that. Yeah, when, yes, if you're allowed to do Popeye properly, there are two things about Popeye that are really... Properly properly.

Popple. There are two things about Popeye that are really funny. One, he basically doesn't have a facial expression. Because of the way his face is always drawn, he gets to just always have the same facial expression. And that is really funny, because it means that when he's really angry about something or confused about something, he has the same face and he's just stood there with that face. And then, thing two, he will punch. That's how he solves problems. He punches things. And it's really, really funny.

And I've got, controversially, this is why I, sorry everybody, didn't like the preview clip of the Gendi Tartikovsky, Popeye. Do you remember they brought out a lavishly fishing eye up? Where Popeye's getting, he's not punched anyone. Well, he was just a normal cartoon character on a boat. And everyone was like, oh, this is brilliant. And it was, like, as a piece of animation, it was brilliant. but as a Popeye thing? No, thanks, it's nothing.

Wasn't it just basically Eugene the Jeep tricking people into punching each other instead of Popeye? It was like... Oliver was like crawling around like a tiny little noodle. Yeah, I think so. And like, Popeye was going like,

hey, I'm Popeye, I don't quite talk like this. And he was just very, it was very, very bendy and fluid. It looked fantastic. And I will watch a load of cartoons done like that. But Popeye, it wasn't. interesting I wasn't into it

sorry sorry not to apologize to me say to the world yeah I'm gonna have to really and I'll apologize to Gendi you know he put a lot of work into it I mean I just think Popeye is something that is

sadly quite unlikely to be done properly that's the thing properly again exactly yeah it runs completely counter to everything that is currently thought of as acceptable in cartoons it's a shame in a strange way

because it's very down to earth but also the only joke is violence and that's really good Well it's like the old Tom and Jerry's where I went back to some of the old Tom and Jerry and this is a very well-won observation but I watch some of the old Fred Crimby Tom and Jerry's, aka the best ones

and I don't think Fred Crimby actually worked on them so I feel bad associating with him but the one with the canary, the bird, do you remember that one? You have a little bird in the cage. Oh! There's a bit where The bird is going home

Jerry has rescued the bird And the bird is flying back to its cage And Tom pops up from behind the couch With his mouth open, yeah The bird just flies into it Now Jerry freaks out Run Now I'm going to just say this as an unbroken thing

He runs out with a hammer A full-sized hammer Opens Tom's mouth Which is just teeth now And just smashes his teeth with the hammer Just smashes them The sound of like 16 pains of

of glass being thrown to the ground plays. All of Tom's teeth fall out except one which Jerry then kicks out with his foot. And it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I think they also layer the sound of a gunshot over the hammer impact to make it even more violent. And I actually, I'd seen this since I was a kid. And for some reason, seeing it again recently, it just broke me. It just absolutely killed me how funny it was. Because as a kid, you don't realize just how violent it actually.

is. I'm not saying it as a moral thing as a bad thing. Now, getting rid of the racist stuff from Tom and Jerry Carter is like, yes, good. Get rid of that. Or at least have a disclaimer if you're releasing it on Blu-Rail or something.

Getting rid of the violence, no. No, don't get rid of the violence. Nobody's going to... That is what it is. Nobody's going to see a Popeye. And that's why you can't really do Popeye anymore. Yeah. That's all he yams.

Yeah. By the way, if anyone out there is a game-making person and they want to remake the Don Priestly Popeye, don't do it without talking to me first about all the very good ideas I've had about how to do that. Yes, that's good.

They're very good. Right, I'm not even kidding. My version of the game remake that I have in my head, you'll cry at the end. Is it because in your version you fully show the coitus between Popeye and olive oil?

Oh, you've spoiled it now. Yes. Sorry, sorry, sorry. And so we come full circle to discussion of Popeye's sex. Dave, what was this final thing you wanted to say about this specter of Popeye before we wrap up this exciting podcast? Now that I think about it, I feel as if perhaps I've already said this on this podcast before. And that goes for any amount of what I may have talked about on this episode, actually, to be honest. But Popeye was one of two or three games that we had a playground version of.

me and my friends on the infant's playground at school came up with a way to play this. And it involved walking around the playground and finding leaves and those were, because I guess it was autumn, and those were hearts, so you pick up leaves, and then you bring them back to Mandy, and you deposit them at Mandy by standing in front of each other and waving your arms around and making kissy noises. And now, I will, and I must point out to Mandy's absolute credit, she objected to this and didn't want to. But when we explained that we weren't going to be doing any kissing, it was just waving

of arms, then she was fine with it. And the game proceeded. It was very good. You know, one thing I'd like to say to finalise this is I'm looking at this Pop-I-Switch thing, right? Yeah. They've made a banner for it, like an image, like for the eye. on and such.

You have to, do it. And the image is of Popeye standing there with his pipe in his mouth. There is smoke or emanating from his pipe as he blows into it. Of course. And there's a little speech bubble coming up, a thought bubble coming off his head. And in the thought bubble there's some spinach. And I'm just like, that's it. You've encapsulated

every aspect of the character right there. They've got it all. Yeah. He thinks about spinach. He has a pipe. Yeah. He's very single-minded man. He only thinks about two things. And he's there. He's goyle, his oil olive oil. Yeah. Yeah. And his spinach. If they made

Popeye now, they would have to do it, as it was done originally, as an entertainment for adults. And I just think that for whatever reason, probably to do with the all-new Popeye show, he is thought of as a children's property now, so it wouldn't be done. Well, how about this idea to round us off? Popeye, 2023, Hulu series, by Seth McFarlane. Oh, yeah. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Popeye says ass. S, S, S, S, S, S.

And that's a beautiful joke to bring us to the finale of this podcast. Thank you very much for listening. And, Dave, let's remind all of our fine listeners where they can locate you and your work in the future. Every two weeks, you can hear me on Sonic, the Comic, the podcast. Look that up. You'll find it, or you can go straight to shtctp.zone. And I'm Demon Tomato, Dave, on Twitter. YouTube and here and hither and yon.

And if you're a fan of the retronauts, which I hope that you are because you're here, you did you know that for, oh God, it's in British pounds. You're going to have to accept the fact that this is in British pounds listeners. For a mere three pounds a month, you can get early access to every single weekly Monday episode of the show a week early, seven days early.

How insane is that? And the links in the tweets work as well, because they go for an early. lead for patrons, here's the link, and you click it and I can't have this. Well, you will be able to. You'll be able to have it, yeah. Oh, but actually I found it in dollars now. Five dollars a month, which is a much better tier. You can also get exclusive episodes. There'll be

two exclusive episodes per month, two whole full episodes per month, as well as benefits on the Discord. And you'll also get Diamond Fights excellent this week in retro mini podcast plus columns, and also the new this month on Retronauts community podcasts

that Diamond and myself have done where we talk about the things that have been discussed in said Discord, we talk about comments and we reply to comments and emails and such we've had

and general retro news for that month. It's a very interesting new venture that I hope that you'll enjoy. And I guess that's our excellent Popeye episode. Dave,

do you think this has gone rather well this Popeye episode, would you say? Yeah. Great! With that a leading as I'm supposed to say something, Popeye, either.

No, but, I mean, you could have. I was just looking for a sincerely held opinion, though. Oh, okay, yeah. Do you think Popeye holds any sincerely held opinions? Uh, that he, him, what he im? Do you think that Popeye would be a left wing or right wing? Oh, my God. Well, he's left wing.

He's from, like, Depression era. Ah, yes, he's socialist, staunch socialist. The comics were actually quite political in that way. Oh, really? But he would say, like, oh, blow me down and stuff. That's what he would say about stuff. He'd go, blow me. Someone in the politics would do something.

He'd go, oh, blow me down. You know? You know what? In the Seth Macfiling version, he wouldn't say the down part. No, he wouldn't, or he, because it'd be more mature. I'm going to end this now. Thank you very much for listening, and the retronauts. The fine retronauts will be back very, very soon.

God, I'm so bad at ending podcasts. Watch the Popeye movie. It's actually quite good. It's great. The And so much. And so, and I'm

going to be a lot of a bit of the... I'ma-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hae. Thank you.