Clearly I fail at retrogaming, because I’d never heard of (or I’d forgotten about) Popeye no Eigo Asobi (Popeye’s English Play), the first in Nintendo’s edutainment series for the Famicom. I came across the title while doing some eBay searching. The game involves alphabetically spelling English words written in katakana (update: and translating Japanese words as well).

Its followup, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, was released in the US as the first game in the “Education Series,” which raises an interesting question. Since all the early NES games were pretty much direct copies of early Famicom games (some of them were Famicom games with pin adapters in the cases), what did Nintendo of America have planned for the rest of the series? Were they going to do something with this?

tags / popeye no eiga asobi / jc / popeye / famicom / edutainment