Popeye

"Is this a joke? I thought the Atari 2600 port was bad enough, but the Intellivision port is just as awful! Two sprites are used to color Popeye, and two more for Brutus (and the Brutus sprites are double-width, making him even uglier), leaving four sprites for everything else -- the tokens of affection; the Sea Hags; and the bottles -- so everything flickers like nobody's business. Two sound channels are used for the title screen music, which is pretty decent, but that is about the only compliment I can give at all.
"One sound channel is used to play the BGM throughout each level -- specifically the first level BGM, which is played for all the levels. When Popeye eats the spinach, the familiar Popeye theme is played once again with only one sound channel. While Popeye is invincible, Brutus makes hardly an attempt to run away. Also, when Popeye drops or jumps on the seesaw (on the second level) the sound effect made does not closely resemble the springy sound made in the arcade game. Speaking of the seesaw, did I mention that Wimpy and Swee-pea do not make a cameo appearance this time? Not that it matters too much; considering how poorly Olive Oyl (and everything else for that matter) is drawn, Wimpy probably would have resembled the Space Hawk amoeba, and I can't even picture Swee-pea! The punching bag and bucket on the first level are drawn entirely with background cards, the punching bag takes too long to drop the bucket, and it doesn't retract -- very, very awkward! I don't even want to mention how unresponsive the controller is. All too often Popeye will die because he wouldn't run up or down the stairs in time. Punching is a pain as well.
"All I have to say is this: why did Parker Brothers even release this game? It's not worth playing at all. The programmers should have just scrapped it and re-written it from scratch -- it's that bad! Don't collect this game for any reason, unless you are a completist collector; enough said." Rating: 1/5 -- Mike Hayes

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