John Cutter designed the game as a kind of board game.[2] The Three Stooges must rescue an old woman's orphanage by earning money in minigames based on various Three Stooges films. These include cracker-eating contests (based on the Stooges short Dutiful But Dumb) and boxing matches (based on the short Punch Drunks).[3] Players select minigames by timing a button press as a hand randomly points to various symbols representing in-game events, including non-interactive events that can raise or lower the Stooges' cash total. Each event takes up one in-game day; players have 30 in-game days to earn as much money as possible.[4]
The hand gradually speeds up from one day to the next, but can be slowed down by landing on a space that allows Moe to pummel Larry and Curly. The player must avoid mousetrap spaces, which injure the fingers on the hand; landing on four such spaces immediately ends the game, regardless of the number of days completed.
Several different game endings are possible, depending on the amount of money the player has earned. These range from the banker foreclosing on the orphanage due to the Stooges' inability to collect enough money to pay the rent, to the orphanage being saved and renovated and the Stooges marrying the owner's three daughters.[4]
The game included a fair amount of humor – the game itself loads initially as Defender of the Crown (another Cinemaware title) with a splash screen and music. The game version of the Stooges walk onto the screen, the music screeches to a halt, a Larry soundbite exclaims "Hey, this looks like a kid's game!", Moe replies "You idiots!", and follows up with a smacking noise and Curly yelling, "OH!". The NES port, made by Activision, used a slightly edited version of the Ghostbusters title screen instead, in order to promote Ghostbusters II, and included an extra soundbite of Curly saying "Hey, fellas! We're in the wrong game!". The 2002 port by Crawfish Interactive kept the Defender of the Crown opening, only this time having Moe yell "You idiots! We're in the wrong game!", then having the Stooges walk along a country road with billboards advertising Crawfish, as well as the now-defunct Cinemaware and the then-upcoming game Wings.