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."

TIL