In my eyes, Mega Man 3 is where the series finally got into gear, and the formula that Mega Man 3 perfected would pave the way for the remaining 4 NES Mega Man games to be some of the best platformer games on the system. This is a bit of a departure for me, since it’s the first review I am writing of a game I really enjoyed rather than one I disliked, so we’ll see how I do. This game perfected the core gameplay loop of the boss order, has good stages, and has the best visuals the series had ever seen at that point in time. It even had more content than the prior two games, as well as many quality of life improvements and touches of polish that make it one of the best in the series.

Full review continues here: https://queenemilyscorner.wordpress.com/2024/04/20/mega-man-3-the-first-great-mega-man-game/

Alright, so starting off with general gameplay changes; pretty much just an improvement on all fronts? The added now-iconic slide changes SO MUCH you can do with the game and makes everything so much unbelievably smoother than Megaman 2 (an already incredibly smooth game to play).

So, I'll be doing the same thing I did in my Megaman 2 Review and go through my experiences stage by stage.
Magnet Man Stage: Not a terrible start, and normally I don't mind the kaizo blocks popping on and out but having to deal with the magnetizing block was actually just kind of awful. As for Magnet Man himself, pretty fun fight; I do think his magnetizing attack lasts a tad too long sometimes, but it adds tension so it's whatevz.
Hard Man Stage: Not too memorable but I do like how some enemies are designed around the slide mechanic, like the Hammer Joes and the monkey enemies that jump around like they're on cocaine. Hard Man himself wasn't a bad fight either.
Top Man Stage: I dunno how this stage relates to Top Man besides the final section before the final boss. Still, pretty fun design and the cat bosses were cute. Top Man himself was kind of a pushover though.
Shadow Man Stage: Now THIS was a fun stage, I love how they play around with the enemies that take away the visibility and the long platforming sections; it's a ton of fun honestly. As for Shadow Man himself, he's fine. I think Top Spin kind of forces you to just get in his face so there's almost no point in learning his attack patterns.

Oh yeah, and I should probably mention Proto Man. Pretty fun fight as long as the ground is either completely flat or shaped like a... |---| stage. I don't know how to describe it. Again, completely love how you're supposed to slide under him when he jumps. The slide is so fucking cool.

Spark Man Stage: Not a terribly memorable stage, but I did like the weird stage hazards on the ceiling and floor that shock you and the conveyor belt platforms.
Snake Man Stage: Awesome stage theme, awesome stage visuals until you go outside for some reason? Not much else to say as at this point. Snake Man himself is decent enough as a boss.
Gemini Man Stage: Super strange visuals but I dig them, I like digging through the bubbles and sliding past. As for Gemini Man, I'm not sure his fight was very fun but at least he went down semi-easy.
Needle Man Stage: Not very memorable sadly. Needle Man is at least fun to fight though.

The Doc Robot fights are pretty similar to how I felt about the original bosses in Megaman 2 with a couple of exceptions.
Heat Doc Robot: Actually much more of a pain. I dunno why he's a lot harder here than in Megaman 2. I think he doesn't do his heat dash very often which is why?
Flash Doc Robot: The arena is AWFUL and I really don't know how you're meant to avoid not running into him. I had to use like 2 E Tanks on this guy alone.
And of course, Air Man came back to haunt me. I HATE AIRMAN SO MUCH

The Proto Man final fight was really cool, if short. I wish he got a healthbar though.

Well, that's that. Onto the Wily Stages.
Stage 1: The stage itself isn't too memorable, but the turtle boss is actually really fun. I was surprised by how I was enjoying myself after slogging through the Doc Robot fights.
Stage 2: Again, not much to say on this one. It's a short ride with Rush Jet. That said, you do get to fight Yellow Devil! I kind of gave up on Megaman 1, so it was nice that I still get to fight him, even if it's not the iconic fight where you have to memorize his pattern.
Stage 3: The darkness enemy comes back! Very fun. I was surprised at how fluid the platforms moved in the final section, definitely a memorable stage just for that alone. At first I was dreading the fight, but then I vaguely remembered something about how the Copy Robot didn't have any I-Frames and that you could supposedly make your Buster Shots do Top Spin damage if you're using Rush Coil swap in the middle of shooting. To my surprise, I actually pulled it off first try and the boss exploded in like 3 seconds. I don't feel bad about it because it seemed like an awful fight anyway.
Stage 4: Boss rematches, good ol' Megaman.
Stage 5: Wily Machine No. 3... is really mediocre?? I spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do until I tried Hard Knuckle and then it became just a really tedious waiting game.
Stage 6: I simply Rush Jet to the top right, popped a couple Hard Knuckles, finished the boss with Top Spin. I'm not sure what the boss is supposed to do, but I'm sure it's a fun boss if you do it legit.

Colorblindness Rating: A-
Again, you can confuse some abilities by the color of the armor if you forget the acronyms, but thankfully you have weapon icons that give you a pretty good indicator as to what they do.
This is a ginormous nitpick honestly, but I think it's still important to think about these things.

would you believe me if i told you Capcom iterated on the ideas of Mega Man again?

I'm honestly not sure if I prefer this or Mega Man 2, as they each succeed in different areas


What Mega Man 3 does better:
Rush is more interesting than the Item abilities simply by virtue of being a character
Sliding is a good addition to Mega Man's moveset that allows for interesting stage design, though it has some moments of controlling kinda oddly (nothing too bad)
This game actually has a few interesting story elements, though it's still an NES platformer
I actually enjoyed replaying the tweaked versions of the stages for a little extra content


What Mega Man 3 does just a little bit worse at:
Music is a bit less memorable than 2, though still some of the best on the NES
Stage themeing is overall weaker
Robot Master Abilities were less interesting, nothing was nearly as broken as Metal Blade (for better or worse)
I enjoyed the difficulty of Mega Man 2, and found this one more difficult, though it wasn't nearly as full of cruel designed as Mega Man


Issues I have with the series that this game does not address:
These hitboxes are so jank
Slowdown and sprite flickering if too many entities are being rendered
Still no proper save system (doesn't really matter unless you're playing on an actual NES)
Has anyone ever had fun with the appearing block sections?

Mega Man still clearly has room to grown, and I eagerly anticipate what Capcom does with this series, especially with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System on the Horizon

I enjoyed Mega Man 3 up to the Doc-Robot stages where it felt like the game took a turn for the worse. The robot master stages of this game are great, and finding out the optimal boss order by myself felt rewarding. None of the robot master fights felt like BS, at least with the correct weapon in my arsenal.
Too bad I can't say the same for the Doc-Robot fights. Bosses with unavoidable patterns are the bane of my existance, and the Air Man fight is a prime example of this. Dying and having to go back to the start of the stage for trying to experiment with the optimal weapon to use, merely because the tornadoes decided to form an unavoidable wall did not feel great at all.
The final boss was a disappointment as well. It was just bad.
This was however the first NES Mega Man game I've finished without the use of save states, and I consider that to be a great personal achievement, so yay!

The third entry is a series of improvements and a few steps backward. While the innovations the game brings do wholeheartedly make the series better, at some point there is some head-scratching game design that felt like a regression to the formula they have established.

To go over the improvements, the simple addition of a slide mechanic feels great to control and makes traversing each level feel more dynamic. I felt I had more options when dealing with enemies making running past them a viable option that doesn't result in me getting hurt. For the first half of the game, I'd say the levels have been some of my favorite of the game so far. The same goes for the robot masters where each fight felt very hectic but had a somewhat clear pattern. I wish some of these fights were not just trivialized by other weapons and were manageable with the mega-buster. Gemi-Man is a great example of a fight I like where figuring out the rhythm of the attack patterns is very satisfying but is harmed by the fact you can destroy him with a specific weapon. The final addition I enjoyed was transforming the special weapons into the adorable robot-dog companion Rush. He still pretty much serves the same purpose as the special weapons but I'd rather look at a cute dog than a random gadget.

Onto the missteps, I said I only enjoyed half of these levels because the other half felt like a test of patience with trial and error being the main method to get through them. I did not mind the added difficulty of the revisited stages, outside of instant death spikes, but the Doc-Robot fights were not that fun. The idea is interesting with you revisiting Mega Man 2 fights but with little knowledge as to what type of boss was coming and what their weakness is I ended up dying a lot in these sections. Finally the reliance on using Rush in the Wily stages is not necessarily a bad thing but similarly to parts of the last game as soon as you run out of energy for Rush you might as well get a game over.

I still enjoyed my time with this entry and was overall less frustrated with this entry when compared to the first one. Experimentation did lead the series off better in the long run but I was a little sad to see them slightly miss the mark.

Mega Man 3 was the third Mega Man game I had on Wii Virtual Console as a kid, so it's another one I'm relatively familiar with, but like Mega Man 1, it's a game I had forgotten a reasonable bit about beyond which boss's weapon is good against whom. It took me around an hour and a half to beat the Japanese version of the game.

This game's story throws a bit of a twist into it. Dr. Wily claims to have learned his lesson and mended his ways, and he's going to work with Dr. Light again to build Gamma, a BIG robot who will ensure that there's world peace for all. All that needs to happen first is that Mega Man needs to defeat eight robot masters led by the mysterious Break Man and get the energy they have so that Gamma can be completed. Of course Break Man turns out to be Proto Man, and Dr. Wily runs off with Gamma once Mega Man has completed his quest, but it adds a bit of flavor and sets the action up just fine, as the other games also do.

The stage design is again fine tuned just a bit more to once again be excellent, and part of that is due to Mega Man's new ability: dashing. Holding down and pressing A allows you to zoom along the floor for a brief time, and it gives you a much higher ability to dodge enemy attacks and stage traps than you did before. While the first eight robot master stages are quite good, where the game takes a bit of a dive is in the four stages that follow. At that point, Doc Robot (a poor translation of "Dokurobotto", with "Dokuro" meaning "Skull", referring to his skull-shaped head) hijacks four of the stages and makes them harder than before. A lot of them being harder involves just adding a bunch more spikes and traps that makes them far more difficult to get through. It makes a game that is otherwise really tightly designed feel far more unfair, and it's a real shame. You do once again have unlockable platforming aids in the form of Mega Man's new doggy sidekick Rush, but that doesn't save the game's platforming from the uneven quality of the first eight from the latter four (though Wily's stages that follow are better, albeit a bit short).

Where this game really starts to shine for me is in the robot master and boss fights. The addition of the dash means that you have a lot more mobility to get under and around bosses when they jump, and the boss fights overall get a lot more technical. They're not all perfect, with some like Top Man being far too easy and Spark Man feeling a bit too mobile still, but fights like Magnet Man and Snake Man are great, challenging fun. This game even manages to have quite good Wily fortress fights, with the Yellow Devil MKII being a particular highlight. The only really sour part here is once again with Doc Robot, who appears twice in each of his four stages toting a particular weapon from a Mega Man 2 boss. It's more than just an homage though, as Doc Robot is harder versions of those, largely owing to his larger size compared to most of those bosses, but here Mega Man 2's somewhat rough boss design rears its ugly head. Doc Robot's tough stages and overly tough boss designs push the formerly manageable Mega Man 2 robot masters into pretty rough slogs quite often requiring using E-tanks to heal through. It isn't a deal breaker, but it's again a pretty unfortunate mark on a game that's otherwise much more polished than that.

The presentation, however, is once again excellent. The graphics are a bit better detailed once again, and the boss designs are as well done and iconic as ever. The music too is excellent, as like Mega Man 2 you have a ton of really banging main stage themes. I wouldn't say there are quite as many really good tunes in this game as there are in Mega Man 2, but there are still a lot I really love, like Magnet Man's and Snake Man's.


Verdict: Highly Recommended. Again, not my favorite in the series, but one I do ultimately like better than Mega Man 2. Warts and all, I think Mega Man 3 does manage to stand above its predecessor, particularly in how much better its boss fights are and how good its platforming sections manage to be. Both are definitely worth playing, but I think Mega Man 3 manages to be just thaaaaat much better in my book, and it's definitely an NES action game that still stands the test of time.