Saturday, February 25, 2023

Arcade Shoot 'em Up Review: Donkey Kong 3


Donkey Kong 3 ditches Mario and platforming and pits Donkey Kong, and bugs, against Stanley the Bugman.

As with most games of the era, Donkey Kong 3 has a simple plot. Donkey Kong takes over a greenhouse. Stanley uses his bug spray to chase Donkey Kong away and to keep the bugs from ruining the flowers.

It plays like a static shooter. Stanley can run across the floor and jump up and down the platforms at will. Donkey Kong inches down the vines he is on, and Stanley needs to keep spraying him to chase him out of the greenhouse. Making this task harder is multiple bugs that get in the way of his spraying as well as try to steal his flowers. So, Stanley has to spray the bugs that try to take his plants and spray past the bugs crawling on the platforms to shoo Donkey Kong away. Stanley will lose a life if the bugs take all of his flowers. More lives can be earned by reaching 50,000 points.

Once Donkey Kong is chased away in one level and he returns again in the next. There are three levels that repeat with each progressive level getting harder than the last. 

Donkey Kong 3 is acceptable as a concept, but fans didn't take to the game, and it's easy to see why. It is weird that Nintendo followed up two popular arcade platformers with an arcade shooter. Stanley the Bugman was relegated to history, other than in a Game & Watch game, a Hudson Soft shooter, and minor appearances in the Super Smash Bros. games. Like other games in the Donkey Kong series, Donkey Kong 3 has been ported to many platforms. If you want to try it, the arcade version remains the best and, since it was finally released by Hamster for the Nintendo Switch in 2019, is the version to play.

Final Verdict:
3 out of 5
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