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First off, don't panic if you don't remember Popeye 1 - there wasn't one. Secondly, it doesn't matter anyway - if you remember Donkey Kong, you'll know everything you need to know about Popeye 2. Set in four levels of vertically-scrolling platforms, you guide our incoherent hero shinning up ladders and drainpipes, along rickety tree branches and across perilously large gaps in a quest to free Olive Oyl from 'Brutus' (wasn't he called Bluto in the cartoons? Shome mishtake shurely?) while things fall on you out of the sky, and barrels roll ever-earthwards, sending the bold sailor man flying at the slightest contact.

Okay, so Popeye 2 isn't going to win any awards for services to intellectual advancement. In fact, to be honest, it isn't going to win any awards full stop, unless someone invents one for 'Cutest Platform Game Featuring A Deformed Pipe-Smoking Spinach Eater'. Still, this is a sweet little game, with something of the natural addictive qualities of Rainbow Islands or Nebulus. It looks bright and cartoony, and the characters move better than sprites their size usually do, giving things a smooth, pleasant feel. The four levels (which, incidentally, all do have a different atmosphere to them, unlike many games which feel like the same thing with different graphics) are all pretty big, and while the game seems easy, it's deceptively quick to swipe all your lives and dump you back at the start. Being so simple, of course, you can't quite believe it, so you have another go...

Truth to tell, it does get repetitive fairly quickly, but for a quick burst of undemanding platform fun now and again, or something for the kids, this is a very fair deal at eight quid.

Jolly and characterful '90s version of Donkey Kong. Not big, not clever, but quite hard, you'll have some good fun with this before the repetitiveness gets to you.