Popper
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  At least that is what has been written.  Personally, when a game like Popper imitates a great game like Q*Bert and completely ruins it, I find it hard to consider this flattery.  Imagine the concept of Q*Bert, but with dull characters, buggy controls and just a lame game.  If you can imagine that, you are probably imagining Popper.  In concept, is is a Q*Bert clone.  You are jumping on a bunch of platforms to turn them a single color.  There are creatures and objects moving around this pyramid like playfield and avoiding creatures.  All you can do is jump and throw something that looks a bit like a boomerang or a white wrench.  I do not know what good this throwing object is, because even if I hit something, it just went through them.  Oh well, at least there seems to be an infinite supply.  Another power you supposedly have is the ability to jump on top of someone.  But good luck doing it.  I tried in vain and could not jump on anyone.  But then I couldn't clear one board either.

While Q*Bert had great controls and it was easy to move the supreme noser around after getting a hang of the controls.  But with this game, good luck.  The platforms are moving and I am guessing that is why I tend to jump the wrong way.  But even when things look to be going well, I will do a jump and my character moves in a different direction or goes two blocks instead of one.  This can be very annoying, especially when my character (I am guessing he is a rabbit, but not completely sure, it could be a dog or some other animal) tends to jump into the water and die.  Maybe he is a lemming.  And the worse is you are jumping for a block and miss it all together.  I do not know how he does this, but it has happen often.  I see the block and I jump at it, but for reasons that defy logic, I miss and plunge to my death. 

Graphically, the game just does not look good.  It looks more like a homebrew game for the Commodore 64 or Atari 8-Bit than a real arcade game.  Not exactly one of its strong points.  Then there are the villains.  You have a bird that looks like a parrot and some creature that may be an armless lion or a clone of the Lorax.  Not sure what it is.  There is also something that falls down that looks like a cheap radio.  How I miss Coiley and Ugg and Wrong Way.

In closing, the game is weak.  The source of inspiration is good, but the final product is bad.  Shoddy controls, lame graphics and weak characters is more than this game can overcome.  Stick with Q*Bert as that is a sure hit.

This is just a review of the arcade machine.  If you are looking for the actual arcade machine, you may want to check out ebay.  Click below to see if you can find this game.