The Three Stooges (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Activision's 1989 license-based action game for the NES, The Three Stooges.

In this video, I finish the game with over $20K for the best ending. I included the other three endings at 38:54.

The Three Stooges is a console port of Cinemaware's 1987 "interactive movie" for the Amiga. This version, released in October of 1989, was the second of three Cinemaware games to be brought to the NES by Beam. It came out a month after Defender of the Crown (   • Defender of the Crown (NES) Playthrough  ), and eight months ahead of The Rocket Ranger (   • Rocket Ranger (NES) Playthrough  ).

A local orphanage has fallen behind on its mortgage payments, and the bank is threatening to foreclose on the property if the owners (a woman with three beautiful daughters) doesn't bring the account current within thirty days. Larry, Curly, and Moe have stepped in to offer their assistance, and of course, hijinx ensue.

Like most of Cinemaware's earlier games, The Three Stooges is a collection of minigames glued together by a unifying theme. Playing out like a board game, you have thirty turns - one for each day - to raise the money you need to save ladies, the children, and their hovel.

There are four minigames in all, each based on a famous scene from the show:

1. Curly enters an eating contest. He has to grab all the crackers floating in his bowl of soup before the oysters can snag them.

2. A doctor needs medical supplies. The stooges have to race through a hospital corridor and pick up all the supplies that people drop along the way.

3. Curly has a boxing match, and he needs music to focus. Larry's violin breaks, so he has to dash to the store to grab a radio.

4. The Hoiti Toiti club needs waiters. The trio has to fling pies at the guests while ducking incoming fire.

Beyond the minigames, the board is full of spaces that can help or hinder your progress, and winning the game largely depends on luck. No matter how good you are at the odd jobs, a couple bad turns can easily result in a game over.

The game does a good job of channeling the show's humor. The presentation has taken a lot of dings in the porting process, but the digitized graphics and voice clips are impressive given the NES's limitations. The problem with The Three Stooges is that the underlying game plays second fiddle to the graphics and sound, and the NES simply isn't equipped to match the level of spectacle that sold the original Amiga game.

(That being said, the NES version is preferable to the PlayStation's. That sounds insane, I know, but the PS1 game is a ridiculously poor port of the GBA's already watered-down port of the Amiga original.    • The Three Stooges (PS1) Playthrough - Nint...  )

The Three Stooges' flashiness is fun for a few rounds, but after the wow factor fades, there's little reason to come back to it.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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