By late March 1981, Nintendo was also pursuing a license to make a game based on the Popeye comic strip, tentatively titled Popeye’s Beer Barrel Attack Game. In this iteration of the game, the player, as Popeye, would attempt to rescue Olive Oyl from Bluto in a similar manner to the final game, with the first level being completed by having the player use a jack to bend the top girder upwards, causing the barrels to roll back towards Bluto. After experiencing difficulty portraying the Popeye characters within the limits of the game hardware, Nintendo elected to replace Bluto with a newly created gorilla character before ultimately deciding to make the rest of the game’s cast original. Miyamoto came up with many characters and plot concepts, but he settled on a love triangle between a gorilla, a carpenter with a large hammer, and a girlfriend, mirroring the original rivalry between Bluto and Popeye for Olive Oyl. The ape that had originally replaced Bluto would evolve into the titular Donkey Kong, which Miyamoto said was “nothing too evil or repulsive.” He would be the pet of the main character, “a funny, hang-loose kind of guy.”
Funny this about this, if they had stuck with the Popeye IP this game would likely be forgotten now. Instead they created two of the most indelible characters in videogame history.
Super Mushrooms were originally believed to have been inspired by the cake that Alice eats in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that makes her grow after having been shrunk by a potion. However, Shigeru Miyamoto later corrected himself, saying that this was a misunderstanding; the mushrooms were actually inspired by the concept of mushrooms being associated with magical worlds in general, like the wonderland of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the Mushroom Kingdom.
TIL
Funny this about this, if they had stuck with the Popeye IP this game would likely be forgotten now. Instead they created two of the most indelible characters in videogame history.
Funny enough, they did!
nintendo’s popeye
I had this on the NES back in the day. It was fun!
Did you know there’s a 3d open world remake of that game? It’s apparently awful.
The end result is also vaguely similar to King Kong with the woman on the skyscraper, which I assume is the source of the Donkey Kong name.
One of those “something new every day” moments right here
Ok, but when did the shrooms come in?
1985
Interesting, I was wondering why they chose Amanita muscaria rather than one of the psilocybin shrooms. Maybe bc Amanita is prettier?
It’s more than likely just what looked best with the color palette they used.
Donkey Kong is into petplay confirmed.