I don’t know that I’m going to have much more room for series duplicates and sequels in the rest of this countdown.
And yet, here we are anyway.
I mean, sure, we’re still going to have to see some covered ground as we go along, because I just have too much fondness for particular games to leave them off. And if we can acknowledge that sometimes sequels can exceed the original work (as we have done), we can likewise acknowledge that sometimes they don’t *quite* get there … yet they have a great deal of value just the same.
Even more than that, if I’m honest with myself (and you), I can also allow that on occasion, my own choice for elevation in this list is more of a coin flip than a definitive proclamation. In other words, the relative quality between two choices for inclusion from a particular property might be essentially equal.
So, let us state for the record that even though it feels a shame to lean into a specific series often during a countdown of this sort (since it will inevitably result in the exclusion of other series), it is also not entirely without merit. Truly, sometimes, the games in question simply just deserve to be here.
For me at least, the real litmus test, above and beyond personal attachment, historical importance, or even quality, is going to be how distinctive an experience you might get from game to game within a particular series.
I can wince a little at all of the Mario games we have on this list so far, but only for appearance’s sake, because when you peer a little closer, you’ll see a unique experience from one game to the next.
To elaborate, Mario 1 was the original promise of continued fun and excitement. Mario 2 was the colorful oddball sequel that innovated. Mario 3 was excellence personified. Mario World was even more excellence personified. Mario 64 was a groundbreaker. And so on, and so on.
It’s the same with Castlevania. “Dracula’s Curse” is perhaps the best possible example of old-school “NES-hard” platforming, “Rondo of Blood” was the transitional game, introducing more dynamic branching levels and upping the visuals and sound, and “Symphony of the Night” was the natural end point for that evolution, going for more explorer-based action.
With all of that considered, you can probably pretty safely guess why we’re now going to talk a little about Mega Man 3. Sure, I have a personal attachment to it. But it’s also a titan among 8-bit platformers giving it a historical relevance, and it’s roughly as good as the game we already covered – Mega Man 2.
But ALSO, it’s here because it’s distinct enough from Mega Man 2 to merit inclusion on its own.
Mega Man 3 at a glance:
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1990
Platform: NES
GamePro’s third-greatest 8-bit video game of all time
I mentioned in my “Castlevania: Rondo of Blood” review how most Mega Man games can kind of resemble one another, and that’s basically true. But with that established as a caveat, I can still break the Mega Man series down into four fairly easy-to-identify subsections:
- Original gangsta super tough and basic, ala Mega Man 1,2, 9, & 10.
- Slightly less tough, our main character has a slide move to enhance evasion, and the quest is elongated with more going on in the end game, ala Mega Man 3-6.
- Mega Man X.
- Modern Mega Man which is somehow even more cutesy and kind of weird/cringe.
Pre-slide and post-slide is an important designation, methinks, as it established a pretty noteworthy shift (downward) in challenge within the gameplay itself, and it coincided with an uptick in presented story and a longer quest overall.
Mega Man X continued those trends and added more exploration to the proceedings, rebranding the whole thing in the process, though we’ll get to Mega Man X in this countdown at some point, I can promise you that.
And as for category four? Basically anything from the 16-bit era onward you can include here, and you can throw a ton of bizarre spinoff stuff into category four too (Mega Man Legends, Mega Man Battle Network, etc.), as it all sort of blends together for me. I lump all of that together ultimately because I think the polish begins to outweigh the basic gameplay, and I find this antithetical to the whole point of the series (but I digress). Plus, it leans way more heavily into the cuteness, to the point that I get a little creeped out (again, I digress).
So with that all out of the way … let’s get down to business.
Mega Man 3, in contrast to Mega Man 2, is a damn great example of Mega Man that is more epic in scope, slightly more complex in its controls, but also less claw-your-face-off difficult.
It’s a really, really good game.
Like the other games in the mainline series, Mega Man 3 allows the gamer to take on each of the primary levels in any order that they wish. Each stage is laid out with a visage of that stage’s boss front and center (e.g. “Gemini Man!”), and then the theme of the stage ends up matching each boss (i.e. Magnet Man’s stage has a bunch of magnets and magnet-themed enemies, and so forth and so on for every other stage/boss.).
Each boss, once defeated, surrenders his ability to Mega Man, meaning you can then utilize his weaponry on other stages and other bosses.
Additionally, each boss is weak to a certain kind of weapon (or weapons), so there’s a rock-paper-scissors effect going on in Mega Man that is really sort of brilliant.
“Should I take on this stage first even though I don’t have a special weapon to take on the boss?”
“I wonder who is weak against the Snake Shot?”
“Is there an alternate weapon that will work against this Needle Man fellow?”
Repetition in play (or looking up the answers) provides a map of sorts of advisable routes through the game, such that you don’t find yourself in a series of impossible boss battles.
This is essentially the secret sauce of Mega Man: There’s a puzzle-solving aspect to learning how to navigate the game successfully.
On top of that, the series is known for rockin’ up-tempo soundtracks, cartoonish sprites with anime-style designs among the characters, and good platforming action.
Mega Man 3 excels in all three areas, with a soundtrack that certainly rules, the same colorful, cool look as previous games, and solid level design.
Said level design takes advantage of Mega Man’s main new ability this time around, a slide move that allows him to cover ground more quickly while also ducking under certain attacks. This sounds like a small thing, but it allows your character to avoid attacks in tight areas and comes in especially handy when rando antagonist Proto Man shows up and challenges your character to a fight (this keeps happening, so the slide is most assuredly a welcome addition).
On that note, Mega Man 3 also provides more of a story than previous entries, explaining (ultimately) why this random guy keeps attacking you and giving you more background on where your character came from.
It also introduced Rush, Mega Man’s co-pilot companion dog, as well as the notion that stages would occur between the main robot master stages and the final Dr. Wily castle stages (those levels featured an additional set of surprises I won’t spoil on the off chance anyone reading this hasn’t played yet). The additional levels – in this case reworked stages you’d previously conquered – lengthen the quest and make it feel a little larger in scope.
Later games would continue this trend. So, why pick this one over the other NES Mega Man sequels (4-6) that did the same stuff? Well, two main reasons, really.
- It came first. Innovation matters.
- That dang charged buster shot that came along later on slows things down.
If we wanted to create a fifth category of Mega Man games, it would include the charged buster shot.
To better explain, starting with Mega Man 4, the main character’s primary weapon, a basic shot attack, gained the ability to deal more damage if you held the shoot button down for longer. Hold it for a couple of seconds, and Mega Man would start to glow and then launch a much more powerful blast that could wipe out foes at a much greater rate.
Sounds good so far.
The problem with this dynamic, and why the games after the mechanic was introduced all felt slower, is that the games were programmed around the charged shot. Enemies were more tank-like, taking more damage to destroy. They were generally spaced across levels a little more sparingly to remain fair, but they took more blasts to clear.
So, the games became all about charging the shot up, utilizing it, charging again, shooting again, charging again, shooting, and maybe now the other guy is dead and you can move forward.
Gone is the “run and gun” nature of some of the earlier titles, only to be replaced with “charge and shoot and maybe inch forward.”
This is less exciting/enjoyable to me.
Mega Man 3 had no such problem, predating the charged mega buster, and it instead felt more frenetic and freeing as a result.
I first played the game after receiving it for Christmas in 1990. I had loved Mega Man 2, a game I had played at friends’ houses and via the magical method known as the “video store rental,” and it was one of my absolute favorites. It was part of the reason I wanted an NES so badly in the first place!
But I didn’t own it, and when faced that fall with the prospect of getting a game I already loved or the new hotness, I elected to go for the new hotness in Mega Man 3.
It did enough differently as a sequel without going totally off the reservation that I came to love it as well.
That’s a tough needle to thread for a sequel. And I credit Mega Man 3 for doing it.
I mean, 13-year-olds aren’t exactly easy to keep happy. As a parent, I can attest to this. And yet Mega Man 3 managed to make me very happy (while also still not exceeding Mega Man 2, admittedly).
Hey, it’s something, right? You entertained a moody teenager.
That’s a pretty good recommendation in my book.
So what makes it worth playing today?
The general consensus among old-heads is that Mega Man 2 & 3 are the best games in the original series, and while a case can be made for the others, I don’t think the consensus – at least in this case – is wrong.
The first game is a work in progress, full of jank, and lacking in the length or refinement of the subsequent games (indeed, it only included six robot masters instead of the standard eight). Everything from Mega Man 4 onward is way too reliant on the charged buster shot, grinding the proceedings down to a snail’s pace.*
* There are, of course, exceptions. Mega Man 9, released for the Wii’s virtual console, PSN and the Xbox Live Arcade in 2008 (and its follow-up Mega Man 10) represented a return to the series’ roots at the expense of some advancements. Mega Man 9 retrofitted the blue bomber into his Mega Man 2 self – no slide ability, no charged shot – and went with the old NES graphics, certainly an odd choice when by that point he had already been presented in higher fidelity several times already. I guess I get it though, because most people liked the older games best. Anyway, Mega Man 9 is a good game, and I like it a fair bit, but we’re not going to talk about how a game dripping in nostalgia bait meant to capitalize on retro gaming impulses is now nearly two decades old itself. Nope. Not going to talk about that AT ALL. (insert cringing Michael Scott gif)
What the first few games do best is lean into the spirit of true run-and-guns like “Contra,” allowing the player to move about the screen more quickly and freely.
What’s a run-and-gun without the run?
To my way of thinking, Mega Man 2 provides a near perfect platforming experience. The critiques – and we can debate the merit of said critiques – tend to center on a slight clunkiness in how the blue bomber handles, a significant challenge in the proceedings that can be difficult to overcome, and a lack of balancing when it comes to the weaponry (one can spam the Metal Blade to wipe out nearly everything that moves … including the majority of the bosses).
The third game in the series addresses all of those complaints. Mega Man is a smidge more precise in his movements, leading to fewer accidental falls into death pits, but he also has his aforementioned slide move now, giving him the ability to flee and evade attacks. Mega Man 3, although challenging at certain points (especially during some of the later stages), absolutely rains 1-ups and E-tanks (these recharge your life meter) upon you, giving you every opportunity to weather your mistakes.* And the weaponry this time around IS more balanced, with no super weapon causing you to ignore everything else. Pretty much everything here provides some measure of value, and nothing overwhelms. Yes, the Top Spin is glitchy and hard to use, but it provides insane value against a couple of bosses. Yes, the Shadow Blade is versatile and handy during level traversal, but it’s not overpowered to the point of rendering all other options moot.
* There are also some WILD cheats in this game which bear noting since they were certainly a part of the experience at the time. The most well-known on the original cart version was that holding right on the direction pad on a second controller enabled you to survive falling into pits. Mega Man would jump straight out like he was a character in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” vaulting way higher than he would normally, basically the height of the screen. He could do this super jump at any time actually, not just after falling into pits, and this was entirely too useful an ability to ignore, so shout out to my brother for holding right on the controller for me back in the day! (I know that some enterprising folks would also balance something heavy like a dictionary on the right input to achieve the same effect, and I salute you … that was difficult to get the balancing exactly right.)
And let’s not understate the storytelling advances going on here. Yes, they are a little cheesy on the face of it – “Who is this mysterious PROTO MAN?!?!” – but this was still, at its core, storytelling. The earlier games had little in the way of cut scenes or explanation for what was going on. Mega Man 3 had the good sense to try to graft more of a story onto the proceedings. I appreciate it for that.
There’s more of a hint of recycling here than there was in the previous game, and this hint would become downright pungent in later entries.
“Oh look, another weapon that breaks through walls.”
“Oh look, another weapon that rolls along the ground.”
“Hard Man? Really? What the fuck is that? Are we already out of ideas for bosses here?”
But despite all that, Mega Man 3 does enough new to make it a distinctive experience, and it does enough well to be considered one of the best old-school platformers you’ll find anywhere.
That makes it a retro gaming essential.
Dave’s Score: 9/10
Check out the whole Retro Gaming Essentials list here!
How to play
- Original hardware (NES)
- Mega Man: The Wily Wars (Genesis, Genesis Mini)
- Mega Man Anniversary Collection (PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox)
- Jakks Pacific Plug n play
- Android and iPhone
- Virtual console (Wii, 3DS)
- PlayStation Network (PS3, PSP)
- Super Retro Cade
- Mega Man Legacy Collection (3DS, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch)