First, some history, courtesy of Kotaku’s Chris Kohler. In the 80’s, Nintendo licensed out its IP to Hudson Soft, in order to get Nintendo games on early, Japanese PCs. While most of these games have been available to check out via emulators for years, one game in particular remained trapped in the physical world for just as long: Donkey Kong 3: Daigyakushuu. It is better known as Donkey Kong 3: The Great Counterattack when roughly translated.
Late last year, a listing on Yahoo Auctions was found for a Sharp X1 diskette for the Donkey Kong 3: The Great Counterattack . Some fans got together, pooled their money, and snagged the rare title to the tune of about $415. They were then able to “dump” the game, or extract the data from the diskette, and create a game image playable via emulation.
The thing about these old PC “ports,” is that they often were super different from the originals, due to PCs at the time not being up to the task of running the games as they were. So instead of an accurate conversion of the original Donkey Kong 3 , Hudson Soft made a simpler version that’s so aesthetically different the company dropped the subtitle and almost presented it as a sequel. Rather than Donkey Kong and Stanley battling it out in several greenhouse-like stages, Donkey Kong floats on a pair of balloons as he and Stanley go at it across… time and space?
Source: Kotaku