Popeye

So a pretty interesting thing that I learned not to long ago, is that our dear and beloved Popeye and Mario could have turned out all too differently.

For starters, Popeye would have become even more of an iconic figure and still prominent to this very day. And Mario, he would not have ever come to pass the light of the tele screen.

You see what happened way back when (1981) was, after the war and Japan and America came to be on friendlier terms, with America having had a helping hand in rebuilding a lot of Japan and all, some Japanese game makers took this strange idea over to America to try to obtain rights and license for the use of the characters from Popeye in their video game. Well this idea didn't go over so well and rights were not immediately obtained.
So who else should Miyamoto use in his game but some original characters. And thus Jumpman  as well Donkey Kong, were invented. Ok I think we all know that Jumpman just may or may not be the most original name ever. I mean honestly, I think my brother came up with better names for our dog when he was 6. So later this carpenter underwent some layoffs and rehiring, under an akin specific skill set, and ended up finding a new job as a plumber. He was also was gifted with a name change. A name we have all grown to know and love and is known throughout any gaming household. Mario.
Donkey Kong was of course born from the then popular culture reference of King Kong, the 1976 film, and everyone's new found love for apes with Jane Goodall and Planet of the Apes. Ok, those two references were neither new found and hardly contemporary, but they did likely do a lot in fueling the monkey-centric culture enthusiasts as well as science and evolution research. The reason for his very being was largely due to the Japanese video game industry trying to break into the American market. Which, with this very game, Donkey Kong, they succeeded. You can imagine the makers of Popeye kicking themselves now.
With no royalties to pay for the use of the popular characters, Nintendo ended up making much more money they they very likely expected. And on top of that, they even had people pay them royalties as the use of their characters, as they began to become the faces of consumer products and commercialism. Needless to say, where the success followed, so did more games, becoming a much bigger name and franchise than Popeye ever did.

But imagine, if the license had been acquired, and the project went through, we may be very well cheering on a very different protagonist when playing the weekly bout in Super Smash Brothers.

Later, after their first major success, Nintendo did acquire Popeye rights. But the damage was done, they were a success with Jumpman and Donkey Kong to the point where they started having a release every year or every couple of years. They did, however, end up make a Popeye game the year following the Donkey Kong release, but that franchise had its days numbered. It came out with a solitary video game, and a sequel a year later that was mostly for educational purposes(teaching English to Japanese people).