In 1982, Nintendo — then of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior fame, and not much else in the U.S. — released an arcade game based on Popeye, the beloved classic American cartoon character. Popeye was a smash in the arcades, and was ported to most of the home game consoles and computers of its day.

Unfortunately, that was just about the last we heard of it.

You guys. I’m worried about Popeye.

A shame, because it’s such a great game. No classic arcade’s Nintendo row is complete without a Popeye machine. The higher-res graphics are as close to a cartoon as they could get before laserdisc games came out, the gameplay is as fun and full of that Nintendo charm as its contemporaries DK, DK Junior, and Mario Bros, the sound effects and music are unforgettable, and the cabinet is beautiful with its vintage cartoon artwork.

I remember when it came out in ’82, and while I don’t recall any of the Pocket Change arcades in town having it, I do remember seeing it at an airport game room (WTF I was doing at an airport game room when I was 8 I have no recollection of, but okay), and playing it at Shakey’s Pizza. I read some handy tips and tricks for the game in an issue of Video Games Player magazine, and saw the ads for the Parker Brothers home version in all the game mags at the time — those cool PB ads that showed screenshots of every version of the game they were advertising, so you could compare and choose which platform you wanted it for (or lament the fact that you only had a VCS or Commodore VIC-20 and had to settle for the crappiest version). (See my post Nintendo’s Early Licensing Days for more.)

Nintendo themselves ported it to the Famicom and NES as one of the console’s launch titles — which, despite some inconsistencies with the arcade original, predictably turned out to be just about the best home version at the time.

After that, however, the arcade version of Popeye seems to have been sunk. Why? Occam’s Razor tells us it’s probably rights issues, so let’s look at the timeline.

Now, any game historian will tell you all about how Nintendo originally intended to create a Popeye video game years earlier, but couldn’t secure the rights to the property, so their original Popeye game become Donkey Kong instead.

It wasn’t long after that that King Features granted Nintendo the Popeye license after all, but the first thing they made with it wasn’t another arcade game — it was the Popeye Game & Watch in 1981.

Soon after, of course, the Popeye arcade game — a multilevel climbing game, but much different from Donkey Kong — was released and instantly beloved.

The Famicom port was released in Japan in 1983 alongside the console itself (as well as Popeye no Eigo Asobi, an English-teaching game, in late ’83), and the NES version wasn’t released in the US and EU until 1986. So Nintendo had the rights to Popeye at least until then.

Other companies had also released Popeye games: as early as 1985 there was at least one PC game not released by Nintendo; starting in 1990, the company Sigma released a few Popeye games for the Game Boy; and in 1992, Technos did a couple Popeye titles for Super Famicom and Game Gear. Another PC game in ’97 was released, called Hunt for the Woolly Mammoth.

But in 2005, it seems that Namco had secured the Popeye license, and knocked out Popeye: Rush for Spinach for the Game Boy Advance (spinach being one of the last things on Earth I would rush for, personally).

Now, so far, none of these games bear any resemblance to, or have anything whatsoever to do with, Nintendo’s original Popeye; I’m only mentioning them in an attempt to trace the Popeye license with regard to video games. However, with Namco landing the rights at this point in the timeline, the next move is the most relevant to our study.

In 2007, Namco released a mobile Popeye game that was a remake/update of the Nintendo classic. While the graphics are pretty nice, the sound is godawful. And let’s face it, mobile gaming on flip-phones in 2007 was a bit of a miserable experience.

After that, no Popeye games showed up for almost 15 years — until 2021. A company called Sabec Limited — who had previously released such banger Switch titles such as Calculator (yes, it’s a calculator), Xylophone (yep, it’s a Xylophone), and Piano (yeah, it’s — oh you get the f*cking point) — somehow wound up with the rights to crap out a Popeye game, and that’s exactly what they did. Professing it to be a modern reimagining of the arcade classic, this absolute stinkburger of a game did have Popeye running around collecting hearts and letters that were dropped by Olive Oyl while avoiding Bluto and the Sea Hag. The other thing it had was PS1-quality graphics and a synthesized rendition of the Popeye theme that looped incessantly throughout the entire experience. Witness the horror below at your own risk (the fact that someone took one for the team and did a full playthrough for YouTube is worthy of a 21-gun salute, because I’m sure his spirit is entitrely dead after that).

Mercifully, the 2021 Popeye game has been delisted from the Switch shop and is no longer available.

All that to say, that is where Popeye has been left off. Speculation abounds that the development of the on-again-off-again Popeye CGI movie, previously attached to Sony and Genndy Tartakovski but currently (from what I’ve heard) moving ahead with Warner Brothers and Craig McCracken, may be one reason that rights to other Popeye media are currently difficult to navigate.

But where I’m headed with all this backstory is here: Thanks to the Arcade Archives series by Hamster, we’ve had some previously-unimaginable game releases on the Nintendo Switch: namely, all of Nintendo’s original arcade versions of Donkey Kong, DK Junior, DK3, Mario Bros, Punch-Out!!, and Super Punch-Out!!. Even the exceedingly rare Sky Skipper can be added to your library — officially! Popeye would, of course, fit right in with that lineage and be a more than welcome addition to the library; alas, it remains MIA.

So at this point, my question is, who would have to re-negotiate the rights with King Features Syndicate so that the original arcade game could be re-released? Would it be Hamster, or Nintendo? How big of a mess would it be, and how possible is it that a deal could eventually be struck? Is there even any interest on Nintendo’s part to pursue it?

I posed exactly these questions in a message to Nintendo of America, and here’s what they said:

…

…actually, they never replied. Whatever happened to their CS department answering all our dumb questions? Man, the Nintendo Power days were the shit.

Anyways, like I said, I’m worried that this stone-cold classic might be lost forever in an official capacity. Yeah, I’m aware of emulation; that’s not the point. Hopefully something works out and Popeye will return to its rightful place alongside the rest of Nintendo’s storied arcade history. I mean, Cuphead made 1930s animation cool in the eyes of gamers — a remake of Popeye in that style works be an absolute no-brainer.

But honestly, I’d be happy to see an Arcade Archives release of the original.

You know. Just to make sure Popeye is okay.