Collector Resurrects What May Be The Rarest Nintendo Game Of All
Think about the rarest Nintendo game. No, it’s not “Earthbound” — that cart isn’t rare, you just can’t find it. What about the World Championships gold cartridge? Nope, there are 27 of them, not rare enough. There’s actually a game that’s so rare that all copies were thought to be destroyed. There is a game from Nintendo that is so rare, this is seriously the first time I’ve heard about it at all. And when you consider the sheer volume of Nintendo-related material I’ve read and all the knowledge I’ve absorbed over the decades as a diehard fan, THAT is impressive.
Say hello to Sky Skipper, discovered by UK collector Alex Crowley. This arcade game was originally going to be released by Nintendo in 1981, the same year as Donkey Kong, but after a limited test run in Japan, the company decided not to officially roll it out and converted its arcade cabinets into Popeye machines. The PCB boards that contained the Popeye ROM were also converted from Sky Skipper boards. Nintendo’s never mentioned the game because, as far as they’re concerned, it doesn’t exist.
In order to peel back the layers and uncover Sky Skipper, the Popeye board had to be reverse engineered over a process of three months — quite the massive undertaking without any schematics. Originally thought to be lost forever, Sky Skipper has now been recovered — twice. Crowley owns two Popeye PCB boards that have been converted into Sky Skipper, and he plays one in this video (it’s long, and for the impatient, he does not actually start playing the game until the 15 minute mark).
In Sky Skipper, you play a character called “Mr. You” and the backstory, according to the attract mode, is as follows:
WONDER KINGDOM IS CONQUERED BY GORILLAS.
DROP BOMBS ON GORILLAS AND KNOCK THEM DOWN!
TOUCH AND RESCUE ALL KING’S FAMILY BY PLANE.
SEE YOU AGAIN AT AIRPORT.
Nintendo had a thing about giant apes in 1981. More in the video.