NES Popeye

[StanJr]

So I picked Popeye for the AA High Score Club this week, and somebody said that they loved the NES version. Is it any good? How much is it like the arcade? Wimpy?

 

I keep seeing the NES version at flea markets and such, but I never get it, should I?

[keilbaca]

Its pretty much exactly the same but with the usual arcade perfect kind of graphics the NES has.

[Bratwurst]

I wouldn't say arcade perfect but about as close you're gonna get for a console port. I love the game personally, one of the first arcade games I got to try.

[Dones]

It misses some sounds and animations but it's pretty close (like NES Dokey Kong_. It's curious why Nintendo didn't do better considering the NES had the resources to do it.

[Bratwurst]

It's curious why Nintendo didn't do better considering the NES had the resources to do it.

 

At the time when Popeye was written originally for the Famicom ROM chips were more costly and program space was at a premium. It being a relatively new platform as well, nobody could have known every nuance or optimizing trick to crank out something like Kirby's Adventure on the spot.

 

Come 1985 with the Nintendo's debut, it was more cost effective to simply repackage the game rather than tweak it. The cost of ROM chips hadn't dropped down to any degree either by then.

 

Sometime later on Nintendo released a Classics series in Germany and among them the arcade port of Mario Bros. is updated with larger graphics, cutscenes/stage intros, better character control etc. This difference results in a 24k rom as opposed to the 16k original one.

[Classic Pac]

I loved playing Popeye in the arcade and Popeye NES is exactly the same. Both are quite fun to play.

[Dones]

I played Parker Brother's atari version to death.

 

@Bratwurst: Nice post man, thanks for the info. So Germany got lucky eh? I still like to collect these early 1st gen Nintendo games. They seem to go higher than usual on Ebay. Then again, everything on Ebay does.

[StanJr]

wow, its good, but hard as balls. I ran out and got it today ($10), and I have to say, its really good, but MAN is it hard. I finally got past the third screen and once the Seahag gets involved it is over. Yipe. LOADS of fun, though, I'll be playing it all night! Way harder than the VCS version, which I still love.

 

Is Wimpy in the game, I forget what he does, something with hamburgers, as I recall.

 

Thanks for all the advice guys.

[JB]

It's curious why Nintendo didn't do better considering the NES had the resources to do it.

 

At the time when Popeye was written originally for the Famicom ROM chips were more costly and program space was at a premium.

More importantly, Nintendo hadn't introduced any bank-switching hardware yet. The NES had a fairly cramped ROM address space for what was being put on it, and it was being pushed to the limit.

 

 

It being a relatively new platform as well, nobody could have known every nuance or optimizing trick to crank out something like Kirby's Adventure on the spot.

Even if they'd known every trick, without a mapper, there wasn't space for pr'ly 90% of the game.

 

Come 1985 with the Nintendo's debut, it was more cost effective to simply repackage the game rather than tweak it. The cost of ROM chips hadn't dropped down to any degree either by then.

They used Super Mario as a pack-in, and it was roughly twice as large as Popeye. It was affordable enough to make a larger version, if they could bundle something twice as large with every deck they sold.

 

But it WAS cheaper to repackage than to tweak.

 

 

 

Besides, wasn't a lot of the ROM cost more or less made up by Nintendo? I seem to recall that they used that as an excuse for really small cart runs when a game was new to create an artificial demand.

[Bratwurst]

Besides, wasn't a lot of the ROM cost more or less made up by Nintendo? I seem to recall that they used that as an excuse for really small cart runs when a game was new to create an artificial demand.

 

That sort of practice didn't come until later in the marketing lifespan of the NES, in 85/ 86 Nintendo was more concerned with getting as much product into as many households as possible, in 87 and then on they had the clout to get away with 'ROM chip shortages' and whatnot. So far as I know Popeye never saw a reissue beyond it's first year.

 

They used Super Mario as a pack-in, and it was roughly twice as large as Popeye. It was affordable enough to make a larger version, if they could bundle something twice as large with every deck they sold.

 

Remember that for the NES launch in 85 Nintendo basically re-used old Japanese stock for their games, boards and chips. It stands to reason that Popeye remained 16K because the cost of retooling the PROM production line was unattractive compared to keeping it as-is (or using left over stock).

 

Whereas Super Mario Bros. was developed much later in Japan for the Famicom and was already originally a 32K progam.

 

Look at the avenue Nintendo pursued when it introduced the Famicom disk system in Japan and left it as a potential option for the US market. They were looking for a cheap alternative to the cartridge format.

[JB]

Besides, wasn't a lot of the ROM cost more or less made up by Nintendo? I seem to recall that they used that as an excuse for really small cart runs when a game was new to create an artificial demand.

 

That sort of practice didn't come until later in the marketing lifespan of the NES, in 85/ 86 Nintendo was more concerned with getting as much product into as many households as possible, in 87 and then on they had the clout to get away with 'ROM chip shortages' and whatnot. So far as I know Popeye never saw a reissue beyond it's first year.

Okay. Being about 6 at the time, I don't remember much of it first-hand. And the second- and third-hand accoutns tend to muddy things a bit.

 

 

They used Super Mario as a pack-in, and it was roughly twice as large as Popeye. It was affordable enough to make a larger version, if they could bundle something twice as large with every deck they sold.

 

Remember that for the NES launch in 85 Nintendo basically re-used old Japanese stock for their games, boards and chips. It stands to reason that Popeye remained 16K because the cost of retooling the PROM production line was unattractive compared to keeping it as-is (or using left over stock).

 

Whereas Super Mario Bros. was developed much later in Japan for the Famicom and was already originally a 32K progam.

Indeed.

I'm just saying, it was price of recoding/repackaging, not price of ROM, keeping Popeye from updates.

 

*looks up Super Mario release dates*

Looks like it was chosen for pack-in status because it was Nintendo's newest and shiniest game, actually.

Ironic, given how long it stayed the pack-in...

 

Look at the avenue Nintendo pursued when it introduced the Famicom disk system in Japan and left it as a potential option for the US market. They were looking for a cheap alternative to the cartridge format.

Shame that one got spoiled before we got our hands on it.

Being able to get games for just a few $ would've been nice.

...

Hey, we never did get the Nintendo Power stuff either. And those were kept runnning... I feel cheated now.

[JB]

Errr...

As another example of that whole cost of recoding thing... Donkey Kong Classics. They COULD have gone back and made a "perfect" port of Donkey Kong. We all know they had ROM to spare at that point. But it was easier to stick the same old port in, and alter the code just enough to work with the mapper used(which could've been no alteration, if the mapper was designed right...).

[Jess Ragan]

I didn't care for it. Most of Nintendo's coin-op conversions looked very much like the arcade originals but were missing key elements from the arcade games, like the cement factory in Donkey Kong or the intermissions in Mario Bros. Popeye not only suffers from these inaccuracies, but the graphics have been greatly downgraded in the conversion to the NES.

 

I guess there was no way to avoid it... the arcade version of Popeye used a very high resolution, like many of Midway's comical action games from the early 1980's, and the NES just couldn't handle that level of detail. Still, the graphics in Popeye are poor even by NES standards, and the game itself was never really as good as Nintendo's other early arcade releases. Personally, I'd give the game a thumbs down.

 

JR

[Dones]

I think it's okay considering it was a first gen release. These early arcade ports are fun to collect too.

 

For me the most glaring omission was the big Popeye logo that showed him blowing his smoke pipe at the same time the "too-too!" sound came on.

[Tempest]

There was actually another Popeye game released only in Japan. It's an educational game (the companion of Donkey Kong Jr. Math) that tought Japanese kids English. Very odd stuff...

 

Tempest

[Atari-Jess]

The NES version (on a multi cart no less!) was my first experiences

with Popeye, and Ive been recently playing it on my 2600, with warm feelings.

 

I still have the comic books with the comparisons of popeye 'cross systems

[Bratwurst]

..it was price of recoding/repackaging, not price of ROM..

 

These two go hand in hand.

 

Consider ROM production like the production of a compact disc- a master is made and copies are cranked out from that master 'mold'. Getting the master made in the ROM's case is very, very expensive at first, at which point producing the chips becomes a negligible per-unit cost (but done in bulk).

 

This is just an example, because I imagine the actual figures were higher-

 

Say for a 16K chip you're looking at a 5,000$ initial set up, then 2 cents per chip you make. For a 32K chip, it'd be 10,000$ and 5 cents per chip. This would ultimately transfer to the base cost of the cartridge to the retailer then to the consumer.

[StanJr]

One thing I notice missing, at least in my hazy memory, is that the seahag would peek out from behind barrels on the different levels (screen 1 I think) and lob bottles or something at you. I don't recall her standing atop Olive's house and doing that???? Is my memory right?

[Jasoco]

It's too bad Donkey Kong didn't come out a little later, maybe then they could have afforded to put the last level in it. Then maybe we'd have an NES Classic DK worth buying.

 

I played a little Popeye NES a while ago. It was really fun. Too bad they won't make THAT an NES Classic.

[moycon]

A couple screenshots.

One showing StanJrs fav...WIMPY!!

The other..Smoky Popeye

[chrisbid]

i find it odd that Donkey Kong Jr could have all four screens, but the original DK could only have 3. Werent they released at nearly the same time in japan?

 

though the NES versions of both of those games are pretty good, it just annoys me that after all of these years, nintendo has never given the arcade original a perfect port on any platform. i heard about DK on DK64, but i have yet to see how close it matches the original. (i want the story animations, the proper metallic sound fx, and all four stages)

[Tempest]

One thing that has always bothered me about the arcade version of Popeye was that the character sprites were very high res, while the backgrounds were very lo res. Almost like you have two completely different hardware systems doing the graphics. At least on the home versions everything was lo res and matched. Anyone have an explaination for this?

 

Tempest

[Jasoco]

One thing that has always bothered me about the arcade version of Popeye was that the character sprites were very high res, while the backgrounds were very lo res.  Almost like you have two completely different hardware systems doing the graphics.  At least on the home versions everything was lo res and matched.  Anyone have an explaination for this?  

 

Tempest

I was literally about to ask the same thing. I think other arcade games from the time did that, didn't they? It looks weird as heck.

[Flojomojo]

I remember the Parker Brothers multi-system comparison well. Missing from those is the not-yet-released wonderful Nintendo NES port discussed here, and the positively fecal Videopac (Euro Odyssey 2) version not released in the US:

 

(photos shamelessly linked from Phosphor Dot Fossils, apologies if I'm pissing off the site owner of http://www.thelogbook.com/odyssey/)

 

[Tempest]

The O2 Popeye is about as good as could be expected from the system. It's a bit odd, but not bad.

 

Tempest