Donkey Kong 3 (1986)
Developed by: Nintendo R&D1
Published by: Nintendo
Released in: JP (1984), NA (1986), EU (1987)
You’d be hard pressed to find any arcade-trawling gamester in the early 80’s who didn’t love the hell out of Donkey Kong. Originally released in 1981, it quickly became one of the most popular arcade games of all time, with the titular ape appearing in a media blitz spanning cartoons and comics, with a King Kong-sized mountain of merchandising behind it to boot. It was every gorilla fan’s dream.
The game’s success wasn’t unwarranted. Though it’s easy to forget in today’s overwhelming gaming landscape, Donkey Kong revolutionized video games as we knew them in the 80’s. Nintendo was blazing the trail for the platformer genre with multiple “boards” to work your way through, introducing the world to characters that would go on to become staples in pop culture history, as well as a competitive scene that remains active and fascinating this day. If you have any love in your heart for retro gaming and you’ve never seen the documentary King of Kong, you should close out this blog post and track it down right this second.
But I digress. People went bananas for Donkey Kong. With that kind of wild success, Nintendo would have been foolish to not make a sequel.
So they did! The following year, Donkey Kong Junior. swung its way into arcades worldwide. Playing as the son of Kong, lil’ Junior had to navigate levels to rescue his papa from Mario, who gave up being a carpenter to become someone who keeps monkeys in cages and whips them. Whatever that career path is. Irregardless of Mario constantly dodging the cops thanks to his newfound criminal status, Donkey Kong Junior was held in high regard, mixing up the Donkey Kong formula just enough to give established fans and newcomers alike something new and addicting to sink their quarters into.
Nintendo was making cash hand over fist thanks to this growing family of simians, and had no intentions of slowing their roll. Soon to follow was the iconic Mario Bros. arcade game, which further cemented Mario as a video game icon. As a side note, Mario Bros. was actually a spinoff of the Donkey Kong franchise instead of the other way around at that time. This game hosted another Mario career change, switching from professional monkey whipper to his more permanent job as a plumber on the straight and narrow. Just goes to show that anyone can change.
The highly anticipated third installment of the Donkey Kong trilogy followed hot on the Mario brothers’ heels that very same year. Could the third title in the franchise prove to be bigger, faster, and stronger, too?
Survey says “no.” Of the two major Nintendo arcade releases in ’83, Mario Bros. went on to become the more fondly remembered by a Sicilian mile. It was also around this time, in July of that same year, that Nintendo decided to switch gears and start playing the field of the home console markets with their first console, the Japanese Famicom. Donkey Kong, as well as Donkey Kong Jr. were both available for purchase in cartridge form on the Famicom’s launch day… but where in the world was the Famicom rendition of the exciting new DK3?
Donkey Kong 3 wasn’t the third, fourth, or fifth release for the Famicom… but the sixteenth game on the system, coming out a full year after the console’s original release date. Perhaps Nintendo took their time with their home conversion to give the arcade rendition a chance to rake in some change, but I’m a bit skeptical on that front. In any case, Donkey Kong 3 ended up being a launch title for the NES in other regions as one of the original “black box” titles.
To be fair, Donkey Kong 3 is good fun. Even though I “beat” it extremely quickly (one loop took me about 5 minutes to finish), I stuck around to complete 12 stages worth of this game, just because it was easy and rewarding to fall into that trance-like state that’s required to not suck at arcade games.
What’s Donkey Kong 3 all about, then? Rather than Mario or Donkey Kong, the player takes on the role of a stout little dude named Stanley. What, you don’t know Stanley? Mario’s cousin who works as a fumigator? It’s Stanley, dude! I know you remember him from pre-calc class. He puked in Stacey’s shoes at her sweet sixteen house party? That Stanley!
Okay, so Stanley might not be the most adored Nintendo character of them all. Other than a cameo as a trophy in Smash Bros. Melee, his existence has been all but wiped from the annals of The Big N’s history. This was early days for Nintendo; whereas nowadays they would slap Mario’s face on a game like this for the sake of brand recognition with reckless abandon, the 80s were a time when they were experimenting with a lot of bizarre things that broke the molds of their previous successes. Which makes it all the more strange that DK3 regressed into being a shooter, of all things.
At this stage in the arcade scene, shooters were a dime a dozen. With the unprecedented successes of games like Space Invaders, Defender, and Galaga, it was seen as a fast track to a smash-hit cabinet, even if it wasn’t terribly original or exciting. To give credit where credit is due, DK3 gives a unique reskin to the concept; rather than pitting Stanley and Kong against each other in space, the game takes place in a greenhouse (though that’s hard to parse in the NES version, which lacks the greenhouse background due to limited cartridge space). In place of a laser-blasting space ship is… a can of bug spray that you need to blow up Donkey Kong’s ass to chase him off. Hmmm. Don’t like that.
Donkey Kong himself isn’t much of a threat in this game. Before the start of each stage, he punches a few beehives scattered around the place and watches as the bugs do his bidding to take out Stanley. The bees are the true villains of the game, as they limply chase the player around the single-screen stage… but it takes no strategy to out-maneuver the bugs and quickly polish off a level. On rare occasions, if the moon is full and the stars are in just the right alignment, Donkey Kong might take time of his busy schedule of doing absolutely fucking nothing to throw a coconut at the player, but in the 12 rounds I played, this only happened to me twice.
That’s one of the many small grievances of this game; Donkey Kong feels irrelevant in his own game. If they had swapped out DK for something like a queen bee character, or a giant beetle or some shit, it may have been remembered a bit more fondly as a strange original IP from Nintendo’s early days. But as it stands, Donkey Kong 3 is a strange mish-mash of pre-existing game ideas and aesthetics that doesn’t mesh together harmoniously. It’s a serviceable arcade game that’s fun for a ten minute spurt, but I doubt its one I’ll be revisiting now that I’ve finished it.
Unless you’re coco-nuts for Donkey Kong or are looking to beat a game in less than ten minutes, I wouldn’t exactly recommend Donkey Kong 3. Play one of the other two games instead. Or watch King of Kong, maybe. I don’t know, how you spend your free time isn’t any of my monkey business.
Initial Interest Rating: 7/10
Final rating:
NESJunk 