Rare copy of Donkey Kong 3: The Great Counterattack surfaces

Have you ever heard of Donkey Kong 3: The Great Counterattack? It might sound like a ROM hack, but it's actually an officially-licensed Nintendo title. Hudson Soft released the game for a number of home computers, including the Sharp X1. Now all these years later, a legit copy of the Sharp X1 has surfaced.

As you might expect Donkey Kong 3: The Great Counterattack has some major differences from the version of Donkey Kong 3 we all know of. This version puts Stanley on a single flat platform at the bottom of the screen, where he has to fight off Donkey Kong, who is floating downwards via a pair of parachutes. There are 20 stages in all to tackle.

The whole reason we get to talk about this game now is due to a Yahoo! Auction selling a confirmed copy of the game. A group of software preservationists bid on the auction and won, and now they've dumped the game online for all to enjoy. That's not something Nintendo is usually okay with, but in this very random instance, I don't think they'll make too much of fuss about it.