Donkey Kong 3

So today we'll talk about Donkey Kong 3 and it's little family of ports and characters.

We begin with Greenhouse.



Released in late 1982, Greenhouse features a fumigator protecting his flowers from swarms of insects.



It's a fun little game for what it is.



Some ten months later, Donkey Kong 3 was released in arcades with a similar premise, a fumigator, now named Stanley, must fend off insects from destroying his flowers. But this time, the bees and bugs are egged on by Donkey Kong, whom Stanley must also fend off.



Stanley, for whatever reason, never really caught on. Poor guy. He's got a decent design, and interesting things could be done with his bug sprayer with proper application.



Stanley would get another game outing before his early retirement in the form of the Game & Watch release of Donkey Kong 3.



It changes up the gameplay a bit, being one of the two player G&W games, has Stanley and Donkey Kong playing a game of reverse tug-of-war, trying to push bees towards each other.



Stanley, like many others, also featured an outing in the Saturday Supercade, though he only got a single episode as a costar to Mario.



Stanley gets a nice updated model as a trophy in Super Smash Bros. Melee, though unlike Pit he did not receive a new title or a drastic make-over.



Game & Watch Gallery 4 featured, like it did for many other games, an updated version of the Game & Watch outing of DK3, but opted to replace Stanley and Bees with Mario and Boos. I'm not terribly thrilled that they didn't keep Stanley, but hey, what can you do?



Super Mario Sunshine's Pianta Village features at it entrance a bamboo-like structure supporting two beehives evocative of the greenhouses of Donkey Kong 3. It's a bit of a reach, but Sunshine features enough other throwbacks to early Donkey Kong and Mario titles that it's not too big of a stretch.



Just this year, our own Tropical Freeze featured Stanley's Greenhouse in the backdrop of Juicy Jungle, one of the game's many islands. It even has his bug sprayer laying on a crate!



Donkey Kong 3 was also featured in NES Remix as one of the games that gets changed up and special challenges.

Maybe someday Stanley will return to the spotlight and get a re-appearance alongside Pauline and Foreman Spike.