Genre: Arcade

Publisher: Nintendo

Total time played: 15 minutes

Short review: Stanley the Gardner must stop Donkey Kong from terrorizing his greenhouse over 3 “exciting” levels.

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Interesting links related to Donkey Kong 3

• NES Manual
• Mike and Bootsy Play Donkey Kong 3
• Soundtrack

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That Was Fast

After spending 20 months trying to beat Battletoads I was able to knock out Donkey Kong 3 in under 20 minutes! The game is short and to the point and only has 3 distinct levels. In typical old video game that used to be an arcade game fashion the goal is to get the high score and reach the highest round possible. But, with so many NES games left to beat I ain’t got time for all that mess.

How Many Donkey Kong Games Do We Need?

The first 30 NES games were called “Black Box” games because they all featured similar art styles on the game box, game cartridge and all had similar title screens. Of those 30 black box games 4 of them were in the Donkey Kong franchise. Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3 and Donkey Kong Jr. Math. That means that 13% of the black box games are Donkey Kong games.

On top of that a few years later the NES got Donkey Kong Classics which was a combination cartridge that featured both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr.

All of the games are different enough but all are short and to the point.

How To Play

There isn’t much to learn here. Instead of featuring Mario this game features Stanley who is a Gardner and Donkey Kong is ravaging his greenhouse. Stanley is armed with some sort of pesticide spray that he uses to try to push DK up the vines he is climbing down. On the title screen you can choose either game A or B. A is easy, B is difficult…they should have just called them that. All I could tell was B game required more hits to knock DK where he needed to go.

Up jumps up a level

Down jumps down a level

A and B shoot the pesticide spray

To beat a level you must spray DK up to the top of the vines which causes a thing to fall on his head and the stage ends. Or, you can kill all the flies, bees, worms that appear.

Is That Really All There Is To It?

Of course not, there is so much more.

Firstly, sometimes on the vine where DK is there is a power up that makes your spray go farther and seems to be more powerful. If you push DK up to where that spray is it will fall down and you can pick it up.

Also, there are flowers along the bottom of the screen, if the flying bugs pick up the flowers and take them back to their nest at the top of the stage you lose points. If all the flowers are taken you lose a life, this never happened to me.

Ok, now you know everything there is to know, so, I guess there really wasn’t that much more.

What do the levels look like?

I’m glad you asked.

The above image is both level 1 and level 3. Notice the 5 red plants at the bottom you are protecting as well as the R-canister at the top of the vine, that is the power up I mentioned earlier. In the image it looks like DK might have a little gas, but, really that is you spraying pesticide on his butt.

This is level 3. Those horizontal green vines below DK are where the worms slither across. If you spray a worm he stops in his tracks and blocks you from shooting DK for a bit.

This is it, the final level of the game. What makes it hard is that the platform is missing right under DK which means you have to jump up to the top along the sides. I’m joking, it doesn’t make it that much harder.

Where’s The Challenge?

If this was the only game I had I would have played it a lot. It is very quick to play through but there is some challenge if you are going for a high score or to see what round you can get to. As the 3 levels cycle over and over more bugs appear on screen and DK is a bit faster and takes longer to push up to the top of the vine. This feels like a game that would have been fun to pass around with friends in the mid 1980’s. But in 2024 it seems kind of disappointing that you can see everything the game has to offer in under 5 minutes.

Final Thoughts

Donkey Kong 3 is fun for a few minutes. It is a simple game to pick up and play but unless you are really into Donkey Kong or maxing out the score in video games I’d say 15-20 minutes will be more than enough to get your fill. The biggest frustration in the game were the flies that split into 4 projectiles when you killed them. Other than them it was a pretty straightforward play through. I am sure I could have gotten much farther with a few more attempts. I set a goal for myself to get to 100,000 points. I ended up getting 149,000 and made it to round 13.

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