Uma sequência bem não-ortodoxa, para dizer o mínimo. O que por si só não é ruim! Transformar Donkey Kong num shmup pode não ser lá muito intuitivo, mas se bem feito, não haveria problemas!

Fica a questão, então: o resultado é bem feito? Eu diria que quase. A ideia é legal, o visual condizente coma a franquia e época e tudo bem charmosinho. Entretanto, o game tem a falha crítica de ter um ritmo/curva de dificuldade muito mal balanceada que rapidamente o torna num arcade bem estressante. Se esforçar para dominar um jogo e morrer diversas vezes vem com o território, mas deixar o jogador sem nem perspectiva de como diabos poderia ter sobrevivido não. Depois de meros 15 minutinhos já fiquei fadigado com o game, o que nunca é um bom sinal para um arcade.

Another case of an arcade game sequel being an extreme departure from previous entries, but unlike with Dig Dug where you could still see a lot of similarities if you just squinted a bit, the only thing this has in common with previous titles are that it's a video game and that there's a giant ape. This is more akin to a fixed shooter like Space Invaders than the platforming gauntlets you'd expect, and while on its own this would be absolutely no problem at all, given the way so many of these arcade series ended up changing things up to make it feel worth getting a grip on a whole new game to sink your coins into, what really becomes a problem is that the game itself also really sucks. The biggest problem I have is the strong imbalance between how readily you can handle what's thrown at you depending on whether you have one specific powerup, but neither state providing anything even resembling a middle ground.

Either you pathetically fire away with your basic sprayer which deals with everything at such a slow pace that it's almost impossible to both consistently keep shooting Donkey Kong while also keeping the swarms of enemies at bay, or you get the powerup and are able to spam away and beat stages in 5 - 10 seconds without moving from your starting location. In either case it just doesn't feel at all engaging to mess around with and it feels like it lacks this underlying sense of concrete strategy that can be learned with enough practice, always feeling a bit stupid to deal with at even the best of times. The stage progression is also rather unfortunate in the way that it focuses more heavily on adding new enemy types rather than focusing more heavily on potential level layouts to explore. This is mainly a problem because even the basic waves of enemies feel pretty intense and erratic to deal with, with the stages themselves being extremely simple and almost unchanging.

By adding new stage layouts that are subtly different in a number of ways, it could recontextualise even these basic enemies and craft a far less repetitive experience compared to focusing on introducing new enemies that functionally feel basically the same anyway, all of them being erratic flying menaces that you can never quite get the pattern down for. This would also lead to a far smoother difficulty curve where the player could have a bit more breathing room compared to the mountainous spikes that occur whenever you start a new stage. Overall I kinda like what the idea was here, turning every level into a pseudo-boss fight while also defending against hordes of other enemies, creating a neat balancing act where attention has to be paid to both elements to succeed. Unfortunately though, as is, it's an absolute pain to get anything done in it and is either far too unforgiving and chaotic, or too braindead and easy to really feel like you're accomplishing anything.

The game's either too hard or too easy with no inbetween, and it revolves around how weak Stanley's main bugsprayer is vs how strong the Super Sprayer is. In addition, if you beat a previous level with the Super Spray active, it won't appear in the next level until you die. There's also a bug where the super spray you have carries over into the next stage so you can clear it in seconds.

Who is Stanley and why does Donkey Kong want to ruin his day so badly anyways? Why do the bugs hate him so much that they will destroy his corpse the moment he dies?

A real weird one. It's not only weird in concept (a gardener having to protect his flowers from Donkey Kong by spraying DDT on his monkey face), but also in execution. It's not a platformer but a classic single-screen shmup like Galaxian. There's not even a jump button, you need to use up for that.
I remember the NES version being a walk in the park, but the arcade original can get quite hectic even with the two main "strategies": blasting DK as quick as possible, or abusing the power spray. The way the power spray works is another oddity. Your main weapon is complete crap, but the power spray is strong as hell and can make you beat the level extremely fast. So to balance that, you can get it only once every life.

Two other things:
- this is the only game with Stanley as the main character
- if you lose, you get eaten alive by insects, not leaving a single bone. What the fuck Miyamoto? Nightmarish stuff.
I hope those two "fun facts" are not related.

If it wasn't for the presence of the big ape himself, along with the title of the game, you can barely tell that this is a Donkey Kong game. It is so vastly different compared to the last two games in terms of plot (or lack thereof), gameplay and characters. Although, that isn't all that bad, as the graphics are fine, the music is fine, and I don't really hate the characters in the game. The gameplay is where things go south, as it is very repetitive, which you could say about the last two games as well, but at least they had varied level design, while this one barely changes anything in between them. Not to mention, it is piss easy, as if you get going immediately upon the stage starting, you will easily spray Donkey Kong up to the top in 2-3 seconds. Not even joking. Overall, while I wouldn't say this is a bad game, it's not really that memorable either. And be honest, who even remembers who the he'll Stanley the Bugman is?

Game #14