Donkey Kong 3

I recently read in another blog a review about Donkey Kong 3. The author inferred that DK3 was Nintendo's biggest embarrassment until the Virtual Boy.

The argument for this remark was that DK3 departed from the platform gaming style of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong JR. Although this is true, its difficult to fathom that a departure from a particular gaming design equates to an embarassment.

DK3 reinvented the existing space shooting genre that evolved from Space Invaders, Galaxian, Phoenix, Moon Cresta, Gorf, Galaga... the list goes on and on. Nintendo replaced the boring spaceship with Stanley the Bug Man- he still shoots up by the way, except with bug spray instead of boring lasers or missles. The enemy ships are now bees worms and other insects. The enemies in Galaga had tractor beams which would capture your ship. DK3 had a similar novelty but they were flowers captured by the enemy bees which could be rescued if shot down before taken to the hive. While all this nonsense was going on you were essentially fighting one intense boss battle with Donkey Kong in an attempt to force him to climb the vines.

Improving your weapon also mostly non-existent in the space games. Galaga allowed you to double your fire power and that was about it. DK3 allows you to shake loose a super sprayer that allows you to kill more faster.

DK3 also had music that fit the game perfectly. A pseudo "Flight of the Bumblebee", buzzing siren when a bee took off with a flower.


Donkey Kong would toss coconuts down on you if you ignored him which was also a challenge that the space games didn't have.