Donkey Kong 3

Stanley the exterminator sprays Donkey Kong upward in a shoot 'em up.

Donkey Kong 3 is a 1983 shoot 'em up arcade game developed and published by Nintendo. It is the third installment in the Donkey Kong series, following Donkey Kong Jr., and stars an exterminator named Stanley instead of Mario. Its commercial failure in the United States was later cited as contributing to a period of reduced activity for the series until the release of Donkey Kong (1994) and Donkey Kong Country.

Quick Facts

Developer

Nintendo R&D1

Publisher

Nintendo

Director

Shigeru Miyamoto

Producer

Gunpei Yokoi

Composer

Hirokazu Tanaka

Series

Donkey Kong

Platforms

Arcade
NES
Game & Watch
Nintendo e-Reader

Genre

Shoot 'em up

Facts from the source article.

Reception

Donkey Kong 3 was moderately successful in Japan, where Game Machine listed it as the fourth most successful table arcade unit of November 1983, but it was a commercial failure in North America. Contemporary reviews were generally positive: Gene Lewin of Play Meter rated it 8 out of 10, and Computer and Video Games called its fast action and superior sound effects a sure hit. Retrospectively, reception has been divisive, with criticism aimed at its stylistic departure and the absence of Mario. IGN gave the Virtual Console version a 6.0 out of 10, calling it repetitive. In 2015, Nathan Birch of Uproxx ranked it twentieth among thirty NES black box titles, describing it as fun enough but simple and not terribly challenging.

Legacy

The Saturday Supercade episode "Greenhouse Gorilla" brought the Donkey Kong game into its cartoon segment, where Mario and Pauline helped Stanley the Bugman. A VS. series Game & Watch version changed the gameplay: one player controls Stanley while a computer or second player controls Donkey Kong, using spray cans to push bees toward the opponent; each player can only hold three units of spraying liquid. Game & Watch Gallery 4 on Game Boy Advance included a similar version, but with Mario instead of Stanley and a Boo and Fireball replacing the bees.

The NES version of Donkey Kong 3 appeared on the Virtual Console for Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, plus the Nintendo Classics service. In 2019, Hamster Corporation released the arcade original through its Arcade Archives series for the Nintendo Switch. George Riley holds the current world record with 3,538,000 points, set in 2011. Hudson Soft created a semi-sequel in 1984 for Japanese personal computers like the NEC PC-8801, NEC PC-6601, and Sharp X1, titled Donkey Kong 3: The Great Counterattack; an FM-7 version was planned but never released.

This game features 20 outdoor backgrounds, including a bridge, Planet Saturn, a desert, a pyramid, and a highway, and Stanley can only move left and right without jumping. For years, it was unavailable outside Japan. In December 2017, a copy of the Sharp X1 version was purchased via Yahoo! Auctions, and it became playable through emulation two months later. The PC-8801 version was later discovered in January 2019.