Resident Evil 3 gets a chibi makeover in this Popeye NES hack

‘Cause Jill can’t stands no more

Does the gameplay of 1983’s Popeye on the NES appeal to you, but you just can’t get behind the beloved golden age license attached to it? What’s wrong with you? Where did you leave your soul? If that’s the case, the Resident Evil 3: Chibi Edition might be for you.

Created by a super-team of modders, Protopixel and Crying Onion, Resident Evil 3: Chibi Edition gives the NES arcade port a full Resident Evil make-over. Players now control Jill Valentine as they avoid the persistent Nemesis T-Type. Leon “SoccerJock” Kennedy fills in for Olive Oyl to offer assitance, and Carlos Oliveira takes over as Swee’Pea. Check it out in this video via Hack Games Longplay.

The best part of this recasting is when Jill consumes a red herb and gains the strength to clobber Nemesis. I mean, what if that was the plot of Resident Evil 3 instead? Jill should have just kept dosing herself with genetic and viral cocktails until she was a bigger monster than Nemesis and just beat the crap out of him. Gosh, I’d play that.

Beyond the characters getting a make-over, the backgrounds have had their palettes tweaked to look more like Raccoon City. The music, on the other hand, is still the same music, which feels hilariously out of place.

Popeye was already a great NES port of a terrific arcade game. While the modders obviously made Resident Evil 3: Chibi Edition for fun, it feels terrifically executed and great to experience. Even if you don’t intend to play it, the video in this article features a full playthrough so you can experience the whole thing.