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.

An improvement over the first one which was to be expected but it was interesting to see how much the developers improved in only a year. The game felt overall more forgiving than the first entry with more forgiving platforming and enemies and bosses that don’t all hit like trucks. On a first run through a level, you will still likely die, which I am not fond of, but the improvement in the level design made redoing sections far less tedious. The iconic soundtrack was great for getting me pumped up for each stage and the sprite work is stellar with the team using every pixel at their disposal to create some awesome-looking designs, my favorite being the Guts-Tank. My major gripe with the game is its reliance on certain weapon types which can lead to situations where I run out of energy for that weapon and I might as well waste all of my lives so I can get that energy back. Case in point the final boss which is only weak to one weapon type which you can not replenish in between attempts. Not a hard boss by any means but that resource management is a bit unnecessary.

There’s not much else to say as this game and the ones to come all follow a similar set up albeit with minor alterations. This title would set the groundwork for what the series will truly become and still holds up all right.

This is a title that originally served as a question for me, that question being if I wanted to dedicate time to going back and beating classic video games. Since my review reads "completed" you can probably guess what the answer was. This thought was conjured because this was my second attempt at playing the original Mega Man with the first attempt being marred by immense frustration and gawking at the old game design. My second attempt at the game started no better but it surprised me with how it forced me to take time with it and master its difficulty.

The first title in this series is built on the game design of old where making the game exceedingly difficult and time-consuming was the way to extend play time. It took me a while to align myself with this type of design, which resulted in a decently long playthrough as I memorized each level and all the tricks they threw at me. The Rock-Paper-Scissors nature of the stages is genuinely a neat way to have the levels relate to one another but I resulted in just looking up the intended order. This was a result of each of the levels being a little unfair on the first run-through. A lot of my first attempts resulted in my death due to poor signposting of enemy patterns and traps. Going in with the mindset that you will have to play the levels multiple times over does improve the experience but it does not fully redeem how unfair the game design can be at times. It is obvious through the design that this was Inafune and his team's first title like this.

Though I have grown comfortable with save states, it was interesting to go back to a title that does not hold back in making you do sections over and over again. It was kind of fun to constantly go through the first Wily stage to get a chance to fight the Yellow Devil. Having to go through a gauntlet every time to fight the hardest boss in the game was stressful but ultimately very rewarding. This sort of loop would usually not work on me but for some, I had a lot of fun slowly mastering the stages. It also helps that so much of the game soundtrack remains catchy to this day.

As an opener to a classic video game franchise, the first Mega Man is rough and I can easily see most people dropping it. I had my fun with it but I also had my fair share of frustrations with it leaving my experience a bit mixed. I am curious to see how this formula of Mega Man game evolves from here as I go through all the classic titles.