496 Words About: Popeye Rush for Spinach
Here’s what happened.
I bought a copy of Popeye Rush for Spinach off eBay, because I unironically love Popeye, and once it arrived I plugged it into my Gameboy Advance SP and started playing. It was a damn right confusing moment when I discovered that Rush for Spinach was in fact a racing videogame.
I never thought Popeye would ever be in a racing game, and yet here we are.
The shock that this game wasn’t a platformer the way the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES) Popeye [LINK***] game passed quickly because as soon as the game began I learned that Popeye, Olive Oil, Bluto/Brutus, and Wimbly weren’t racing in cars. They were in a leg-race. Popeye Rush for Spinach has the characters of this franchise running, jumping, skateboarding, and only occasionally driving small vehicles for short stretches of time. These vehicular runs are brief, and once they’re finished Popeye will resume running on foot.
I was bumfuzzled.
I’m not unfamiliar with foot races in videogames; I’ve played Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood, Revelations, and Odyssey for pete’s sake. Super Mario Sunshine has a recurring character who challenges Mario to races across Delfino Island, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a foot-race side quest. This is to make it clear, I didn’t mind that this videogame was about racing on foot instead of in cars.
I just wish the game had been good.
Popeye Rush for Spinach is not a great game, and I abandoned it pretty quickly. This was mostly because of graphical issues (the game hurts my eyes), but reflecting on it I recognise how non-vehicle racing has become so standard in videogames, while racing on foot has been reserved for side-quests. There have been examples of track-racing videogames in the past, but most of those were in the period of early console systems. After the NES, and definitely after Super Mario Kart videogame designers began to keep racing within the genre of driving simulators.
Thinking about this, it makes sense.
Driving cars involves managing far more systems, particularly acceleration and control over the vehicle itself. If I’m driving a 2014 Honda Fit or a Hot Rod with machine guns, each of these cars is going to require more action from the player. Running simulators have, typically, just required players to hold down an action button, or pressing it in quick succession. And of course, commercial realities being what they are, players are more likely to purchase a game where they can control a Formula 1 racing car, because that sounds like a lot of fun.I honestly can’t think of any videogame where the entirety of the game is about running on foot until I played Rush for Spinach.
Despite its weaknesses, I see value in what it was trying to do, and I believe a game based around racing on foot could be a tremendous amount of fun. It would just require the right designer, and much, much better framerates.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
8.25.2025
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