Donkey Kong 3

Donkey Kong 3

Year Of Release: 1983

Studio: Nintendo

Description

Here we have the last of the original Donkey Kong games to be released ( well if you do not count Donkey Kong Math, but who does?) this is a very interesting entry in the series in that it is just so far different from the two incredibly popular games that came before it. The game introduced a new character called Stanley who is a bug exterminator and apart from Donkey Kong 3 was only seen in an episode of the animated series Saturday Supercade and as a collectable in Super Smash Bros Melee and Super Smash Bros Brawl. Apart from this his character never caught on.

One of the most interesting things about Donkey Kong 3 is the logo. This game introduced the “classic” Donkey Kong Logo that is still being used to this day. The main difference was that original the writing was green instead of the red that we have on modern games. The story of the game sees you as we mentioned before playing as Stanley who in a greenhouse needs to stop Donkey Kong and a whole bunch of nasty insects from destroying the flowers. As you can see the game could not have anything less to do with the other two Donkey Kong games.

As well as having a radically different story the game play style of Donkey Kong 3 is also very different. You see Donkey Kong 3 is not a platform game. If you have to put it into a category then it would be that of a shooter. As a matter of fact the game has more resemblance to the 1980, Nintendo release, Space Firebird than it does the two previous Donkey Kong games. Donkey Kong hangs on two vines and slowly descends to the bottom, he occasionally will throw things to get in your way, but using your bug spray you need to spray him so that he moves all the way up to the top thus completing the level. As well as this you need to kill bugs that are also trying to destroy the flowers that are at the bottom of the screen. There are three different levels and once you beat them all you play through them again. Truth be told this is not a bad game at all, but it certainly does not feel like a game from the Donkey Kong series. Some people speculate that in development this was originally not a Donkey Kong game, but Donkey Kong was added as the villain to boost sales. Of course this has never been proven, but given just how different from both a game play and a story point of view the game is, it really is not that hard to believe.

Current High Score: 8,772,700 by George Riley

Related Titles

The release of Donkey Kong 3 in Japan is very interesting as it was released in the arcades and for the Nintendo Famicom (Japanese NES) at near enough the same time. This was not really a common practice back in the early 80’s.

Before Donkey Kong 3 would be released in the West. Nintendo allowed, Hudson Soft to port the game for two home computers in 1984. The NEX PC-8801 and the Fujitsu FM-7.

In 1986 Donkey Kong 3 would be released for the NES, but unlike the other two games in the series there was no version for the Atari or other systems. By 1986, Nintendo was really getting a stranglehold on the home console market in the West. So Nintendo would not allow their properties to appear on other consoles. If you wanted to play Nintendo made games then you needed a Nintendo system.