Eat your spinach and save the planet — Bally’s 1994 Popeye Saves the Earth is a wildly colorful, mechanically busy machine designed by Barry Oursler and the inimitable Python Anghelo, whose fingerprints are all over its eccentric art and ambitious feature set. With an upper-playfield maze, multiball formats ranging from two all the way up to six balls, and a confirmed run of 4,217, it’s a swing-for-the-fences mid-’90s Bally that crams an almost overwhelming amount of game into one cabinet.
The strategy rewards a player who plans around the spinach. Collecting spinach doubles a lit shot, and a second spinach targets the left ramp, which is hugely valuable during multiball when that ramp pays the jackpot. The cleanest line is to light lock from the skill shot and shoot straight into Bluto’s mouth — three shots and multiball begins — then shoot the left ramp for jackpots and Bluto’s mouth to relight, rinse and repeat. The skill-shot setup matters: on a three-ball game, go after the spinach cans, and a ball locked in Bluto’s mouth grants another skill shot, stacking you up for big points. Completing the upper-playfield maze awards a fat fifty million for the player with the accuracy to navigate it, and the animal jackpots offer another lucrative path.
Popeye Saves the Earth is pure Anghelo exuberance — dense, loud, and bursting with ideas, a machine that asks you to manage spinach, mazes, and a stack of multiballs all at once. It’s a rewarding deep cut for the player willing to learn its many systems. Build your spinach, feed Bluto, and ramp your way to a jackpot. I yam what I yam, and this machine is a blast.