It's rather sad that we now live in a world where the rubber hose animation style had a resurgence thanks to games like Cuphead & Bendy yet actual classic Popeye gets this half baked treatment.

Fun Fact: This lovely piece of entertainment comes from the great minds behind “Calculator for Nintendo Switch”. So, yeah.

fun fact: the maps all come from a free unity asset pack! also, after getting far enough into the game, the ship levels just spew random quotes unrelated to popeye at you, such as “its okay to be a glow stick”

The gameplay depth of an Atari 2600 game. The graphics of the PS1. The anti aliasing of the PS3. Amazing

Honestly this game could have been a solid 10/10 if everytime you uppercut Bluto he screams like Goofy and gives the ol' "Yaaaaa Hoi Hoi!"

This feels like a game that the developers threw together a prototype in a month, forgot about it for another month, then found it again and published it.

Me looking at the thunbnail : Oh cool, a Popeye video game ? That can be great, like something like Cuphead with the cute animation and fun gameplay, that could be... Me looking at the title : ... oh.... Me looking at the video : .... ooooooh... noooooo... why.... ?

We almost got a film by the legendary animator Genndy Tartakovsky. Instead we now have this. Yay.

Interesting Popeye fact. The author orginally had Popeye eating garlic for his strength and not spinach. It was changed to spinach when it went into commercialization due to garlic not being seen as palatable and appealing to the audience. That was more interesting than the game and you get it for free!

The 1982 arcade Popeye has a more pleasant aesthetic than this Edit: wait. The "Olive throws hearts or whatever, Popeye collects them, Bluto's in the way" thing is _exactly the same,_ and you're telling me there's only 3 maps that repeat forever? Is this a re-imagining of that very same arcade game?

This seems to be a 3-D adaption of the Nintendo arcade game from the early 80's. This would explain it only being 3 levels, having to pick up hearts, and avoid Bluto.

From what I understand, the developers make a bunch of shovelware games for the switch. They're the ones that put out "apps". I think on the eShop they are selling a calculator app for like $10. For those wondering how they got the Popeye license, apparently it's in public domain now.

You KNOW Jim is Pissed when they don’t even put a Chungus in the character name

This could have been not only a tribute to Popeye, but also to simple n' sweet classic arcade gameplay if it had been done right. But what we got was baby's first Unity tutorial project with a Popeye skin.

“Congratulations Popeye, you have defied genre classification because you’re not…fucking…anything.” Haha, that was great. Wiping the laughter tears from my eyes.

Oh, there's definitely a genre here. I imagine Steam users would tag it as "Memes" and "Psychological Horror", maybe even "Sexual Content" if they feel a bit wild.

3:07 “Life is finite, and I’ve spent some of it on Popeye!” 😂

"You defy genre classification because you're not fucking anything!" Lost it.

For those wondering about the Bluto/Brutus name change, for a long time it was erroneously believed that Bluto was created for the original Fleischer studios cartoon and was therefore owned by Paramount. He actually first appeared in the Popeye comic strip (then called "Thimble Theater") owned by King Features Syndicate. When King ended their partnership with Paramount they replaced Bluto with the legally distinct character of Brutus because they literally forgot that they owned the original character. Pretty much since the 80's this mistake has been realized and they've just called him Bluto in most iterations since then. As this ""game"" seems to be a direct recreation of the 1982 arcade game which also calls him Brutus, I can only assume that they intentionally kept the incorrect name in order to be faithful to the source material. Either that or they just didn't know the first thing about Popeye and just took the information from the arcade game at face value.

Running away from enemies that kill you on contact while grabbing collectables, one of which allows you to remove opposition from the map for a limited amount of time is literally pacman, except this somehow has less levels and enemies. The worst part is that a 2D beat'em up that actually looks like the cartoon could be pretty neat, but they made this

Oh god... this looks like late 90's PC shovelware... The future is here...?

Genrewise, I would call this the "budget PS1 game that comes on a magazine disc".

When Popeye on the Atari 2600 has better gameplay than your modern day excuse of a video game.

I did some digging because I was curious, and it turns out that Popeye is in the public domain in Europe, but not in the United States. The studio that developed that Popeye game is in the UK and has never worked on a licensed property before. This is almost certainly going to turn into a lawsuit.

I SAW THIS ON THE SWITCH STORE. I was hoping that somebody would cover it, so I didn't think I was crazy.

We live in a age when they could have fully replicated the look of the old cartoons in video game form and this is what we get instead....

The footage looks like a 1-2 person effort from someone who just found out how to make their own stuff in Unity (as opposed to cobbling together several asset kits and calling it a day). If it was a student project and came along with a proper report detailing what the team had learned, I'd likely give it a good grade. But as an officially licensed commercial product I can't in good concience say that it's worth more time than it takes to look at this video, and it certainly does not look like it's worth paying any money for.

So the devs of this game are suing a youtuber over a bad review. Just wow...

This looks like a cheap license cash-in game from my childhood - the kind my parents would buy since they knew nothing about games. So imagine how far my jaw dropped when I heard this was made in 2021.

When you realize this is a remake of a Nintendo arcade/NES game from around the time of the original Donkey Kong, it makes this make sense but also so much worst.

Tears rolling down my cheeks while Jim sings the theme music in ever increasingly exasperated tones. 😂

That generic, rotating heart has an extreme "Download Easy 3D Platformer Starter Kit! No Coding Required!" vibe to it.

I'm Popeye the Sailor Man, I live in a caravan, There's a hole in the middle, Where I do a piddle, I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.

Remember when Popeye’s role in videos games was as an inspiration for Donkey Kong? Lame old video game nerds remember!

Watching this, it reminded me of the old arcade Popeye platform game where Olive was at the top tossing down hearts, you ran around the level avoiding Bluto/Brutus, if he caught you he would punch you off the levels into the water, and if you got spinach you would knock him off... just poorly extruded into drawn out 3D for some reason. In that game, that's all there was to it, but at least the levels weren't sprawling.

This brought back flashbacks of the Popeye game from the 80s. That was at least fun and retro enough for me to replay a few times. This looks like a remake of said game without the heart and charm.

For Popeye in particular, this really must be the darkest timeline. Meanwhile: In another universe, the original Donkey Kong would have been a Popeye game, and game history as we know it would have gone down a very VERY different path.

I'm not gonna lie, I have only seen 2 minutes of this video, but this videogame looks like an Alpha Demo PC game from early 2000s.

"Let's take a single-screen arcade level with limited movement space where Bluto is an omnipresent threat, and modernise it by turning it into a sprawling Ubisoft open-world map. Genius! Lemsips all round!"

For a brief, shining moment, I was back in the era of Steam Greenlight Jim Steph Sterling content and it made me happy. For that reason alone I cannot hate on this game.

"Oh boy, I get to sink my teeth in the Popeye franchise! I've got an epic that'll turn Popeye into the next Final Fantasy! Everyone will love it! What's our timetable? Budget?" "6 weeks and a Little Cesar's pizza" "Oh. Excuse me." *First person leaves. Gunshot heard.*

Huh, when you said it was a scam I was sure you were going to reveal that the game has some kind of hidden crypto-mining code or some shit like that, but I suppose for that to work they would have to make a game that people would want to play longer than 5 minutes.

I wish that Hamster and Nintendo could just release the arcade game, that game is great. This shit clearly copies a lot from that game just without any thought, effort or love put into it. As much as I love and respect you I must disagree about Popeye Rush for Spinach though, that game is pretty fun. Not a masterpiece, but fun.

At least we still have a proper Asterix & Obelix beat-em-up coming up in the near future. 😭

As a lover of golden age animation characters, this is deeply upsetting.

This is like they decided .... you know that old 8 bit arcade/n.e.s popeye game ? well , let's make the same game in 2021 but with terrible 3D visuals and an even worst gameplay.

1:45 “Press A to Eat Spinach” is the kind of joke you’d put into a really dumb Popeye video game parody, and here it is in the actual fucking thing!

it deserves to be loaded 5 times with marginal variants like hat colors on a "120 games cartridge"

"Life is finite, and I've spent some of it on Popeye"

Hahahaha I’d give it a 10 for those uppercuts. The sound effects made me laugh every time 😂

If there’s one good thing that came out of this Jim, is that now I have an urge to watch the old cartoons. Thank God for ya!

This video has inspired me to finish making my game because I am fully confident that whatever the finished product is, it's going to be better than this game.

Remember, the original Donkey Kong was created with the intention of being a Popeye game but Nintendo couldn't get the license. Mario only exists because Popeye is not allowed to be made into a good video game

5:17 *The dutch angle shows Stephanie's steady slide into madness which is emphasized by the noises they are making*

I can't wait to see the inevitable speedrunners of this game

Hey everybody, guess what. You know those 3 maps that the game cycles between? Turns out they were lifted from pre-made unity asset packs, specifically the POLYGON - Pirate Pack by Synty. Also, the model for Popeye himself might have been a pre-made model that was lifted from Shutterstock. _Popeye (2021)_ is literally an asset flip. Holy fuck! This is literally on the same level as a Digital Homicide game.

The punch sound effect is the best part about the game, and that's probably unintentional.

So THIS is the place where sailors hang out

Whilst I can't say for definite, the town square at 2:33 looks very similar to a map used in the Hentai vs Evil game played on here a little while back, on top of everything else could this game be an asset flip?

Looks like a basic 3D remake of the classic 2D arcade Popeye game.

Well, it's nice to know that garbage licensed games are coming back into mainstream popularity. With the SpongeBob remake last year and this game, we're gonna be back on track in the glorious era of the absurd tie-in games like with the PS2.

This looks like a 3D update to the old Coleco Vision game from the early 80s (I think there was an arcade variant too). Olive Oil throwing hearts, letters, and music notes for Popeye to catch, Popeye turning kind of sunburned (or just green) after eating spinach, it all feels a little nostalgic (though clearly not for everyone).

Imagine a side-scrolling brawler in the classic animation style of Cuphead. Bluto has kidnapped Olive Oil "Popeye! Heeeeeelp!" and you've got to battle through waves of muscle-bound sailors, giant crabs, and walking sharks. Introducing other playable characters in 4-player co-op like "Popeye Junior", "Olive Oil's 'roommate' Big Bertha", and "Little Miss Pirate King"

So the NES version was literally just a tiny graphics upgrade to the Colecovision version of Popeye. And now, some 30-40 years later, Popeye 2021 is essentially just the same game with a bigger graphics upgrade.

When JimSteph started doing the "Dededededededded-tetäh" I shivered. That's exactly how a psycho would sound like before going out and slashing people to death with a rusty fork.

I was watching a few Popeye shorts yesterday. I admired how much effort and passion went into the animation. This immediately gave me the exact opposite feeling. This has less effort than a Steam asset flip. As if that movie getting snuffed in favour of the goddamn Emoji Movie wasn't bad enough. I feel so bad for Popeye fans.

Watching you review these odd ball games is awesome!!! 🤣

"Girl adjacent" is a great way to describe one's gender. Anyway, happy to know Jim's thoughts on the attractiveness of sailors.

I look forward to this being a meme in future Jimquisitions

Did they really just do a 3d version of the 80's Popeye arcade game?

At least it didn't have any microtransactions or gacha mechanics! amirite??? hahahahaha am i? oh god is this where we are on the shittiness scale

"Say, Franklin, what does an uppercut connecting sound like?" "Uuuuuuuuhhhhh.... like someone kicking a paper back down the street?"

Once upon a time while playing through Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase, Arin Hanson talked up a bit about how the game was released in the state it was: He envisioned a scenario where the development team, despite - or perhaps because of - the IP they were developing for, decided they would make the game one of the greatest ever made. And so, after years of toil, they completed their magnum opus. Suddenly, like the curse of language thrust upon the people of mythical Babel for their hubris, a colossal buffoon - whom one could possibly imagine as the holders of the very IP - accidentally destroys all of their hard work with one catastrophic cascade of physical folly. And to the horror of these modern day Icaruses, they now realized that not only had their creation been destroyed seemingly by the gods themselves, but that they had but one day left to ship the game they no longer possessed. Forced to start anew with neither the time nor budget, they cobble the remaining scraps of code together into a barely-functioning product and with utter humiliation, ship it off to an unsuspecting public due to contractual obligations. And in my mind? That darkly comedic fable is the absolute *best* case explanation for the state that Popeye (2021) finds itself in today.

For Popeye, the day it drizzled was the most blistering rain in your life. But for England, it was Tuesday.

Just watching Popeye casually uppercut Bluto is just amazing to watch.

You know how you make a Popeye video game? Get the Cuphead people to make a side-scrolling beat-em-up.

I remember playing a game like this on Artari with the same concept. It was kinda like Donkey Kong where you gather hearts and "help me" letters while trying to avoid Bluto....Looks like a awful remake.

I recognize most of the assets from Pocket Build, a world building mobile game…

Brutus is Bluto's twin brother. OT: They could have just done a 3D conversion of the original arcade game and put it on mobiles. This was a sad cash grab and I'm surprised that it ever got a release.

i like how the loading screens are clipped from the comics so you can be reminded of something with a hint of visual charm.

This game looks like a fan project in the very early stages of development, or like a student project made in a couple of weeks. Just... without the passion or care... I have made game projects that looked/played better than this, by myself, and I dont feel confident in calling myself a proper game dev.

The character models are stellar for how Popeye characters are designed. Game itself is crap. Very unfinished. Yes Brutus is Bluto's actual name. The Vulture is cannon and so is the witch. Popeye is wierd.

This game reminds me of Popeye, the arcade game from 1982, which also had three maps. In that old game, when you reach level 4, it's the same map as level 1, but there's an additional enemy now.

So it's basically Pacman with a half-assed Popeye paintjob? You move around a level collecting stuff while being pestered by a handful of baddies, which you can uppercut into oblivion once finding a consumable.

Gotta love old “recreating the feel of arcade quality” excuse.

Why does this game look like it was made by one person? By hand. With a chisel.

The repetitive music score just nostalgically reminds me of my childhood days playing Booty on the ZX Spectrum!

I make no apologies for laughing every time Brutus gets uppercutted off the screen. That shit's fueling me today.

The insane thing is that this is the exact same gameplay loop as the Popeye game on NES; Olive throws shit from above that Popeye has to run around and collect while avoiding Bluto. The NES game also only has three levels. They literally took a game from 1983 and remade it while adding nothing except a third dimension.

My first exposure to Popeye in video game form was on the NES, where it was essentially a sprite-swapped Donkey Kong Jr. That was at least a functional game, though.

Thank you for the new ringtone. Your sarcastic rendition of the Popeye theme will be put to great use.

Oh my god! While you were talking about the music I almost throw my phone away, I can’t even imagine actually listening to that abomination 😔 I hope the others will be better

This reminds me of that American Tail game Dan Olson did a video on a few years ago...with the same level of "quality"

are we sure this isn't just an elaborate con of an asset-flip? can we get a confirmation?

Ever since Borderlands was released we've referred to this art style as having a "beautiful cell-shaded look."

I'm calling it right now: this is going to be that one entry on Jim's worst list that runs under ten seconds before they move on to the next game

Popeye deserves better especially when Cuphead brought back the style of animation from that era of cartoons.

As someone who actually likes Popeye I just want a really good Popeye game, imagine one in the style of a cup head game. Oh what we could have :(

Man, I wish I had the confidence to release a 3D remake of an almost fourty year old Nintendo game without touching core gameplay and omit features.

A Popeye game with three repetitive levels, where Olive Oyl throws hearts at you, you get chased by Brutus and vultures, and one of the levels is a ship? WOW! So, duck-all has changed, since the NES Popeye I played as a kid!