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.

In a similar vein to how Mega Man 2 had caught me by surprise on how competent it was on my revisit, I had forgotten just how unpolished this game was.

If I was rating only the 8 first stages, and ONLY their level design, this would probably be a 7 or an 8, but that would require one to ignore just how baffling the hitboxes are, how the game sometimes eats your inputs, the massive amount of lag this game has even for NES standards, the lack of actual patterns on certain bosses, and the absolute nonsensically designed second half of the game that genuinely is on the running for some of the worst this franchise can provide.

If this game HAD the time to be developed it could've been great, there's clearly a lot of potential here and a lot of passion by the development team, but as you can clearly see by the stage select visual glitch that has never been fixed in any version of this game, it seems that Capcom didn't and doesn't care, after all, we still have people to this day arguing if this hot mess of a game (that unironically can be compared to Sonic 06 at times) is the best Mega Man up there with Mega Man 2.

Classic Mega Man at its finest. It’s got that dog in it.

If Mega Man 2 improved on its predecessor by adding fun levels for the player to jump around in, Mega Man 3 improves on its predecessor by adding more things to do in new fun levels. The most noteworthy of these mechanical additions is Mega Man’s doggy friend Rush letting you jump and fly and occasionally swim. He’s a good boy.

That being said, I don’t want attention taken away from the slide, which I consider to be a huge step forward for Mega Man’s toolkit. Press down and jump and you briefly zip forward at half your height. It’s a little awkward to pull off but it’s satisfying and (with the right amount of skill) can be used for quick evasions and (with even more skill) extended jump distance.

The Robot Masters have fun designs, their stages have great music, you get to fight the bosses from MM2 again via the morbid Doc Robot (some kind of translation of its original name, Dokurobotto K-176), you get a ton of levels to play, Mega Man 3 has just about all you could ask of a Mega Man game. Except a charged shot, but I’m not docking points for that, they hadn’t thought of it yet at the time.

Mega Man 3 is on hardware that can struggle to allow for in-depth storytelling, and it was made in a time where the tricks to do that storytelling on that hardware hadn’t been discovered yet. As such, the Proto Man plotline, a fan favorite story beat, is left entirely to the ending, where the player is also left to infer a lot of the meat of this story. I’m a certified Mega Man Freak, so after hours of poring over manuals and comics, I can appreciate the story of Mega Man 3, but it would be nice to be able to just turn the game on and get the full experience. But that’s a discussion for old games as a whole, and not just Mega Man 3.

Something that bothers me is that the times that Proto Man is a mini boss, he is just regular ol Proto Man. But when we have our final showdown, he’s wearing his full mask with the Sniper Joe eye as Break Man. Those looks should have been switched around so that the player could assume they’ve been fighting an elite sniper joe. Then, we get the twist that he’s a guy like Mega Mn, and then at the end Dr. Light reveals he’s Mega Man’s long lost brother.

I’ve beaten Mega Man 3 about four or five times. It’s length and trickiness detract from its replayability, but I think it also adds to the substantialness of the experience. I recommend it to any video game enjoyer. It’s the best NES Mega Man game. No empty calories.

This is a pipe dream and a half but I fully welcome a Powered Up-style remake, just to get some cutscenes and dialogue to give us the angst and drama that this game deserves.

Oh! Vast improvements over 1 and 2. The slide is finally here!
The stages are better, most of the weapons are usable (some are not!), the enemy variety is good as well.
The bosses are way more interesting to fight (loved the fight with snake man and gemini man) than the other two and the willy castle alongside the robot masters from 1 and 2 are great additions that complement well the game.
So far, I enjoyed it way more than 1 and 2.
On to 4!

Rush was the missing piece all along. The items from Mega Man 2 were all good and well, the magnet beam in Mega Man 1 was a neat starting point, but what non-boss, traversal based items needed all along was a bit of personality, something to make you want to see them beam down and hang out with you. Mega Man needed his Mega Man's Best Friend. Rush fills that slot brilliantly, is a good boy, isn't actually named after the band, and is emblematic of the sort of conclusions reached in Mega Man's earliest days, the very end points that make this the best Mega Man to date, and possibly the best Mega Man game of all time.

I've gotten a bit hung up on comparing the initial three games of the series in my previous reviews, and I think ultimately that was done with the wrong motivation. I was trying to work out which one is better, when instead what you should get from comparing the three is a sense of iteration and polish unmatched in any trilogy of games outside of maybe the first three Metroids, and that took three whole systems in comparison. Everything has levelled up game to game, and now we're here with excellent movement, challenging bosses, a greater sense of story, tight-ass level design, better weaponry, and a lovable dog. You couldn't get to this point without the first two games, and as I'm fairly sure I'm going to learn soon enough, you can't go past this point without additions or subtractions that negatively affect the experience.

Something I really appreciate is how challenging getting on the robot master loops can feel. Beating Snake Man with a buster isn't academically hard, I know I just have to occupy the middle pillar and jump over him when he approaches, but in action it's an exercise in timing and pixel-perfect jumps. In earlier games it definitely felt more like any loops required one lame duck master to get on, and that just isn't the case here.

Weapons all feel frequently useful outside of boss battles, especially with the Hammer Joes, who are a fantastic change from the Sniper Joe, especially as you can actually get a feel for their timing. Shadow Man's shuriken is less OP than the Metal Blade, which encourages more experimentation, and the Hard Knuckle's delayed attack leads to some fun scenarios all the way to Wily, where you just kind of chuckle and shake your head for jumping a smidge too early. And boy howdy, that final moment with Top Man's power. Unbeatable.

Proto Man's little theme is great, as is the continuing thread of his appearances and fights throughout the story. The world of Mega Man feels bigger because of it, and I'm glad for it.

Oh, and the slide. The slide is largely a novelty, but there was a moment where it finally clicked for being as brilliant as it is, and that's against the new Yellow Devil. The Yellow Devil sucks in Mega Man 1. It often feels undodgeable when it spawns in brick by brick. Here it's actively fun, because the slide means you get to make DECISIONS. Do you focus on jumps, do you slide under the head height ones, risking a need for split second timing on the next one? It's a small touch but it makes for a way more fun time. I love the slide because of bits like that, and less when it's just a way to pretend a 1-up is harder to get.

Oh, the negatives. I had way too many E-tanks and lives by the end. I don't think Mega Man 3 is easy, but it was making it feel too safe to have these options in the pocket. Sometimes you have to fake insecurity by not feeding the player goodies non-stop.

But that's it. My only criticism. I even like the Doc Robot stuff. Five stars, great game, best in series maybe.

Yk as much as I think that some of the things this game did are great (Mainly proto man, some of the music and the slide as a movement option), it's just not as interesting as the second one. None of the weapons really spoke to me, so I just ended up using the shuriken the most, which is just the megaman 2 metal man weapon but... worse. It was either that or the buster, as they were the only ones that actually helped me.
Rush is... ok I guess? it's a cool dog with some functions, but they were already in old games in some way or the other, so is it really new? not really
So yeah
OH also the boss fights were sooooo boring (sorry not sorry) and there were way too many of them for my liking, I actually had to play this game in more than one sitting cuz I was kinda disconnecting mentally

Tl:DR, It's fine ig