Gon’ E-Choo!

Gon’ E-Choo, with characters based on some web comic, is a tribute to the 1982 Nintendo arcade classic Popeye. And by tribute, I mean the type of tribute that usually ends with a star-struck fan appearing in front of a judge and being told not to come within 1,000 yards of their idol. I’ve played a lot of tribute games since starting IGC, and Gon’ E-Choo is by far the closest to the original without resorting directly to plagiarism that I’ve seen. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, if I knew nothing about this game or  Nintendo coin-op history and someone told me that Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda had created an unreleased sequel to Popeye with the same core gameplay mechanics, only they lost the Popeye license so they had to use original characters, I would completely buy this as an authentic lost game. That could very well be the highest praise I’ve ever given a game.

No, shut up haters. I’m pretty sure they can’t sue over this. Why would they if they could? It gives relevance to a game that has had literally no relevance for twenty-three years now. If anything, Nintendo should license THIS and release it as a first-party game. Especially since it doesn’t seem likely they’ll pay the licensing fee to put Popeye on Virtual Console anytime soon.

Don’t mistake that for me saying Gon’ E-Choo is an astonishing, must play game. It’s not. Your enjoyment of it will be fully dependent on how nostalgic you are for those early 80s Nintendo games. The graphics and play control are spot-on, with only the sound effects coming very close but not-quite right at the whole mimicry thing. I’m a child of the PlayStation era that only knows Popeye through MAME. I liked it enough, but I wouldn’t exactly pay Virtual Console prices to own it if it ever got released on those platforms. Mechanically, Gon’ E-Choo plays out pretty much exactly like Popeye. Instead of hearts or music notes falling from the sky, paper airplanes do. Instead of being chased by Bluto, you’re being chased by a crocodile. Instead of the seahag throwing whatever at you, little electric sparks (or possibly bees, I couldn’t tell) come out of the sides. Instead of a can of spinach, it‘s a can of soda. The stages are laid out different so as not to totally rip off Popeye, but otherwise, this is so close to the original that it’s creepy. I mean, impressive, don’t get me wrong, but creepy.

This whole virtual interface thing only served to annoy me. Eventually it will include Oculus Rift support, which I’ll never be able to use. One of the keys to avoiding seizures if you have epilepsy is having proper distance from the screen, and Oculus Rift is essentially like strapping a monitor to your eyeballs.

There’s only three stages as far as I can tell, which start to repeat after you beat them. There’s a cabinet that you can look at, which is also sort of Nintendo coinopish, but not quite. There’s also online leaderboards, which is the only thing that offers replay value. My biggest complaint is that Gon’ E-Choo is so married to being a tribute that it didn’t bother to improve the biggest problems of those early 80s Nintendo games, IE having tighter play control and more stages. So what’s here is just alright for me. I can’t really complain too much, because I was not this game’s target audience. But, credit where it’s due, because it achieved what it aimed for, and it did so without burning its name into Miyamoto’s lawn. At least I hope it didn’t.

Gon’ E-Choo! was developed by Marc Ellis
Point of Sale: Steam

$1.69 (normally $1.99) have a father still bitching four years later that no indie dev has remade the 1978 Atari “classic” Fire Truck in the making of this review. Daddy, I played it. I don’t think it holds up as well as you probably think it will. Let it go.

Gon’ E-Choo! is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.