Popeye, Donkey Kong and What Might Have Been

It’s hard to overstate the importance and significance of Mario, the humble plumber turned adventurer who conquered the world in multiple iterations. Mario isn't just arguably the most famous and important video game character in the history of the medium: he’s one of the most famous icons in the world. 

Mario doesn't just represent Nintendo; he embodies video games as a whole. Mario was the star of the first movie based on a video game—1993’s disastrous Super Mario Brothers—as well as the lead in the first video game movie to gross over a BILLION dollars, this year’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie. 

If Mario’s story began and ended with his role as the hero of Donkey Kong he'd still be huge. But that wasn’t the end: it was just the beginning. 

Mario got his own showcase with 1985’s Super Mario Brothers, which was followed by the even bigger Super Mario Brothers 2. Super Mario Brothers 3 was a critical and commercial smash, selling something in the area of twenty million copies. 

Super Mario Kart and Donkey Kong expanded Mario’s sprawling video game universe while this year’s smash hit film adaptation made him a force in the world of cinema as well as video games. 

Mario has done pretty damn well for himself. So it’s crazy to think that in its original iteration the game that would become Donkey Kong originally did not feature Mario, a Princess or even Donkey Kong, for that matter. 

Instead it would have starred characters that were already world famous and had recently been the stars of a hit movie directed by one of New Hollywood’s most subversive figures. 

What would become Donkey Kong was originally conceived as a Popeye video game. Popeye would of course fill the role that Mario ended up playing, Olive Oyl would have been the game’s Princess Peach and Popeye’s beefy arch-nemesis Bluto (or possibly Brutus, a lookalike created to get around rights issues) would have been its Donkey Kong.

Nintendo couldn’t get the licensing for Popeye however. So instead of focussing on the world of Popeye it created characters who would become more famous than Popeye and the rest of his supporting cast. 

For me, this is one of pop culture’s great “What ifs." What would the evolution of video games look like if Popeye was the protagonist of Nintendo’s wildly influential smash rather than Mario? Would it have been successful? Would it be as good? Would it have taken off the way that Donkey Kong did or would it be dismissed as just another piece of licensed product? 

Would Popeye have become more important and popular as a video game character than he was as a superstar of the comic strip and film world? 

Would a Popeye-centric video game lead to games like Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 2, Super Mario Brothers 3, Super Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country? Would Popeye become Nintendo’s mascot instead of everyone’s favorite cartoonishly Italian plumber?

Some people say that this Popeye game is better than Donkey Kong. These people are insane and wrong.

I honestly have no idea. It’s pretty easy to imagine Donkey Kong with Popeye, Olive Oyl and Bluto in the roles eventually played by Mario, Princess Peach and Donkey Kong. They’re pretty analogous. Bluto may be a human being but he has the vibe and the energy of an angry giant gorilla who kidnaps beautiful women and hurls barrels. 

The Popeye people realized the error of their ways and had Nintendo make a video game and arcade game based on the funny-talking Spinach eater. 1982’s Popeye unsurprisingly looks a lot like Donkey Kong but had a fraction of the impact. 

When Popeye became a video game character he was just another hero in a medium full of them rather than one of the most important characters in video game history, as he might have been if Nintendo wasn’t forced to abandon their original vision for a Popeye video game and invent new characters who proved somewhat popular, to put it mildly. 

Pre-order The Fractured Mirror, my next book, a massive, 600 page exploration of the long and distinguished history of American movies about the film industry at https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Check out The Joy of Trash: Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop and get a free, signed "Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring book for free! Just 18.75, shipping and taxes included! Or, for just 25 dollars, you can get a hardcover “Joy of Positivity 3: Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” edition signed (by Felipe and myself) and numbered (to 50) copy with a hand-written recommendation from me within its pages. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind collectible!

I’ve also written multiple versions of my many books about “Weird Al” Yankovic that you can buy here:  https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop 

Or you can buy The Joy of Trash from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Trash-Nathan-Definitive-Everything/dp/B09NR9NTB4/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= but why would you want to do that? 

Check out my new Substack at https://nathanrabin.substack.com/

And we would love it if you would pledge to the site’s Patreon as well. https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace