When I was a young girl in elementary school, my best friend was a neighorhood boy and I would play Mega Man 3 with him on his NES. We would pass the controller back and forth and try together to figure out how to beat the robot masters. At school during recess, we would pretend we were the characters and go on imaginary adventures on the playground. We came up with an imagined "Player 2" Megaman for me to be, "MegaMac". In hindsight, we should have come up with MegaGirl, but I guess MegaMac just rolled off the tongue better. Anyways, we would run around on the school playground, jumping and pretending we were shooting robot masters and earning weapons. We would pretend to fly around on our imaginary Rush Jets or Rush Submarines. The game really left a mark on us that we loved it so much we "lived" it through our imaginary recess adventures. As time went on, his family moved and of course took him with him, and I ultimately lost contact with him. I don't know how to contact him anymore, and haven't for many years. But even now, decades later, I still think back to that childhood boy I played with when I was an elementary school girl, going on Megaman adventures limited only by our imaginations. Memories I will cherish all my life.
i did the same thign as a kid. i was friends with a boy down the street from me and he had an older brother who actually came up with stats and stuff for robot master weapons and energy levels for us and would play along as the bad guys for us to fight.
Hey Cran! Fancy running into you here! Its Kurisu! I didnt know you were into Megaman. Nice! I had a similar childhood experience but mine involved both Megaman Xtreme 1 & 2 as well as the Gameboy version of Megaman 2.
Same for me! I had a friend who lived across the street from me, and we would pretend to be Mega Man and Proto Man, fighting the bosses together. Why it took until Mega Man NINE for Proto Man to be a playable character (excluding Power Battle and Power Fighters), I'll never know... and why there was never a 2-player game option (except in the secret "Fighting Game Mode" of Mega Man 7 between Mega Man and Bass), I'll never know... but Capcom kind of missed the boat by not having Mega Man and Proto Man be the Mario and Luigi of Robot Masters!
While Megaman 3 is a rushed game like Megaman X6, it’s still a fun experience and it’s still people’s favourites. The introduction of Rush & Protoman is amazing, being able to slide is revolutionary as it adds more strategy when fighting bosses. Megaman 3 will always have a place In my heart.
I seriously hate how Mega Man 9 & 10 stripped the slide and charge shot. Made the base move set of Mega Man in those games feel. Basic (and not in a good way)
Fun fact about Rush Jet: it is even more broken than you showed. It only drains energy while you are ON the jet. This means that if you repeatedly jump, it barely drains energy while you stay on it. Basically, this lets you clear the jet sections with almost no trouble.
Proof "Bad" Box Art Mega Man is the reality. Rush gets more tired from actually carrying Mega Man's fat 50-year-old ass on top of that 200 lb. armor. Don't believe me? Read Beat's CD from MM&B. He complains about ol' Rocky Light's not-so-light weight.
I mentioned this in my own comment, but this is basically required if you play the Complete Works version on Hard since no weapon energy is present in the entire game. I don't remember if the MM Anniversary Collection has it since I passed on it hearing about how bad the ports were.
@@Zenocide the anniversary collection does. It was the version I had access to for my college years. You could also use the second controller trick to enable zombie mode.
Another trick is that if you have Shadow Blade, the menu is screwy and lets you select Rush Jet next to it even if you haven't gotten it yet. It'll start with no energy, but grab an energy pickup and now you can use Rush Jet without actually having it XD
There's a modded rom for Mega Man 3 called "Mega Man 3 Revamped", and it is absolutely awesome. It has an opening cutscene, giving us the story of Gamma being built by Light and a "reformed" Wily, and it fixes much of the glitches and slowdowns that plague the game.
@@mattb6522 it’s way more kaizo than the original, and I think that the original has better level design. It also introduces gimmicks in the most boring way possible
It's funny how the voice actor for Dr. Light in Mega Man 8 made him sound like Elmer Fudd from Looney Tunes. Like, reading that and then imagine Dr. Light saying it as if it *was* Mega Man 8 just made me think, "Did English dub voice acting really have *that* little standard before 2004?"
@@CarbonRollerCaco to me it looks Pretty cute imo. But yes, I can really notice a rushed work specially on the fortress stages. If I were to remake the game I would double the size of the first three and place Break Man after the Boss Rush. Also, I heard that the Gamma Stage is literally a test Stage.
@@laffyfluvy7351 The room right before the final battle is weird in a lot of ways; the ceiling looks a lot as if it is the end of a longer stage, and it is very strange how the room has a large life capsule lying around, since there is never any use for it. It also certainly does look as if that room was some sort of item test room, since it has all of the different types of items lying around there (except for the small life capsules and the small weapon capsules, but they are pretty much just more lame versions of the large capsules).
As a child of the 80s that eagerly anticipated the next megaman game, 3 was one of my favorites. In a modern retrospective, those mid-game levels/bosses may seem like filler, but as a kid in the 80s, it was 4 more levels to play. When you only got 2-3 new games a year, those extra levels were a big deal. Maybe it was rushed and isn't a perfect game.. But it cost $40 back in the 80s (when 40 bucks was a big deal). At the time, It wasn't just good value for money... But one of the best games available at the time.
Yeah, we are facing the same thing nowadays. Look at what was popular for a while recently: Open World Games, which was hugely popular for a while and still probably is. And a big reason was the amount of content for a certain price. It hasn't gone away.
@@thomasffrench3639The main difference between games sold today vs back then was that when you bought a cartridge game you bought a complete game as it was opposed to a game that required additional DLC, expansions skins and other end game content.
Spark Shock is nowhere near a good weapon lmao. When you stun an enemy with it, you cannot pause the game to switch to another weapon and finish the job like you could with Ice Slasher. And most of the enemies in MM3 have such a large hitbox that freezing them would be more of a detriment than anything.
Correct. It is a WORSE Ice Slasher, which is why I consider it the worst weapon in the game. It breaks the tie between other poor weapons in this game, IMO.
@@thomasffrench3639 If you found a good use for it, that's GREAT. :D I am fond of the Needle Cannon; yes, I can manually rapid fire the regular buster shot that fast, but semi-automatic fire is just more handy.
I actually liked the Doc Robots stages, it felt like some kind of NG+ Though I hated how the first checkpoint in each stage was after the first of the two bosses. It made them unnecessarily hard. I never understood that you were supposed to get that Wily and Light were working together before the final stages. And I was one of the players who were like "who the hell is Gamma?"
Yeah I thought the Doc robot stages were great. A little more challenging (but not kaizo, let's be real here) and they showed off a broken down and nighttime aesthetic of the levels.
The issue I have with Doc Robot stages are the length of the levels and Doc Robot itself. The levels goes on for far too long & the first checkpoint isn't till after you beat the first Doc Robot. And Doc Robot is an obnoxious boss. I do like he uses Mega Man 2's Robot Master as his weapons. But fighting it is more obnoxious than the ones from 2 cause you have to find weakness that you don't know till you randomly pick one and if you gets an Game Over, you have to redue to entire level all over again. Also going to the same levels as we've been there before felt unnecessary. I think later Mega Man games; 4-6 at least, implementing them way better.
@@jaretco6423 i agree with the checkpoints and the weakness finding being pretty bad. i also hate the sizing thing but i dont entirely hate the doc robots stages cause they feel more scaled to you having a full loadout of weapons. TBH i never really liked how boss weaknesses worked anyways cause a lot of them are nonsense (why i like zero going with element weaknesses cause you can figure it out due to consistency of it) but figuing out their weakness might force E tanks outta you and MM3 having so many E tanks i think thats intresting. also killing them with the buster is kinda nuts which is a weird thing with them. on the flip side i thought refighting the megaman 2 bosses as... actual threats was kinda cool cause you dont really fight them in their own game (lol metal blades) i didnt really mind the revisits either cause the levels felt a lot more punishing
Yeah, the game's plot is locked behind the instruction manual. If you didn't have that (like me), then you had no idea about elements like Wily's alleged reform and Mega Man traveling to different planets. It wasn't until much later that I knew the full story!
They thought kids' anime looked too cutesy for American advertising. And for MM1 and 2, they wanted to have a Mega _Man._ Ain't defending it, just saying. Even more hilarious is Euro Wily. He looks like he'd seen so many unspeakable horrors he'd become one himself.
@@CarbonRollerCaco I understand that, which explains the Megaman 2 boxart, but I still don't understand how a garden gnome face would look cooler than an anime one
The worst part about the game being rushed is knowing the potential of what it could’ve been if the devs had time to finish it. because no joke, I love this game even if it’s hilarious to see the top spin have more use than the spark shock
I don't think people realize how impactful the slide move actually was. Having a spam-able mobility move that lets you feel like you're getting through the content faster created a legacy that affects far more than just the Megaman franchise. Next time you're dashing, sliding, or rolling because it feels faster than just pressing forward, thank MM3.
Yeah, I can’t think of a game before Mega Man that had a dash movement. Sure you had running in Mario, but that’s different. I love that Ritcher Belmont has both the dash and slide from Symphony of the Night
Mega Man 3 is fascinating for me mostly because it has an incomplete weakness chain. If you're doing the common route of starting with Top Man, you're stuck after beating Hard Man unless you want the slight damage advantage of the Shadow Blade with Needle Man. (It only does 1 more damage than buster shots)
Shadow Blade does two to Snake and Gemini as well, so you can easily start the smaller chain wherever you want. Just be careful to hold the shot button against Gemini to make sure your shot comes out in case you get a lag frame, because Gemini will stop to shoot when you press the shot button even if lag keeps you from shooting then.
@@BagOfMagicFood Yeah, but they're neatly separated by half/OG entry. Except for World 5 (I don't like the Arabic vs. Roman numeral convention as the in-game logos all use Roman numerals anyway unlike the box art) which is all over the place and even includes the 9th guy as part of the loop but not the refights. And ofC 7 which has Burst and Slash both be equally weak to both Freeze and Turbo, the temperature extremes, to make both two half-specific loops and one full-lineup loop. Must be a cold blood (cold oil?) thing.
There was a cool trick/cheat if you will that only this Megaman game had. If you held down the Left or Right button (I forgot which but it's only one of the 2) on the 2nd controller, you were able to jump super high as if Megaman had the rush coil option built into him and on top of that you were immune to pit deaths. Also in the pit if you let go of the button and re-press you would hear the death sound effect but still be alive and there was also a random chance your health bar would go down to 0. If that happened you were actually invincible in that state with the only down side being you cannot use your primary Megabuster however the boss weapons would still work.
When I accidentally found out about that as a kid, it blew my mind. I loved playing through using that "glitch". It made a game I'd played a hundred times seem fresh again.
ive never skipped the doc robot stages. i actually really like them. playing thru harder remixes of the existing stages with all your tools at your disposal is fun. i wish the checkpoints were better and the doc robot fights themselves were a little less brutal, but i played thru it somewhat recently and enjoyed it just fine. i even got my fiancée into the series and iirc 3 was the first one she managed to beat all on her own. i was very proud of her as she had never played a Megaman game before.
My other issue is that the levels goes on for too long. Because your facing two kinds of Doc Robot in each 4 stages, the levels started too drag and combined with the inconsistent first checkpoints and the fight against Doc Robot, the levels can be exhausting and not fun. I think MM4-MM6 implemented them way better.
My favourite Mega Man game. By far the best music in the series - I used to fire up my NES and just leave it on the title screen and listen to that song. I actually enjoyed the Doc Robot stages. It would’ve been cool if they’d altered Mega Man 2 levels instead of the ones they did, though. I’m surprised you didn’t mention the lag - worst part of the game is the slowdown when too many sprites are on screen. I think that might be a symptom of the rushed development
Yup. I love the first 5 Mega Mans and a handful of the X's, but III has hands-down the best tracks, although II's intro and Wily Stage are just gnarly. lol P.S. A couple of months ago I was bored and just thought to myself "I wanna learn to play Top Man's theme on guitar. I bet it sounds sassy AF on guitar.".......and YES IT DOES!
Mega Man 3 is so unfinished that the debug key shortcuts are still left in place (you can slow down, high jump, and enable invincibility with the player 2 controller. I loved this game so much, it's my personal favorite classic Mega Man despite its shortcomings. The Doc Robot stages are probably my favorite part, if anything I wish we got remixes of the other four main Robot Master stages with similar dark and rundown theming! Now, a lot of my preference for this game is predictable nostalgic attachment; my family already had Mega Man 2 in 1990, but it was three year old _me_ who had his name on the Christmas present with Mega Man 3 in it. At some point the label tore partway off and I redrew in pencil on it from memory the designs of my favorite Robot Masters (Snake Man, Top Man, and Needle Man). The addition of the slide is probably the best permanent shakeup to the base formula of MM1 the series has ever gotten. This is _huge_ and its absence from 9 and 10 is why those two games will never be as good as 4-6 are, and arguably not even better than 3. 2 was a bigger improvement of the finer details (boosting 6 Robot Masters to 8, buffing special weapons, and overall refinement of base movement) but 3 made a _fundamental_ control change that causes Mega Man stages to be able to be built in a uniquely Mega Man way.
Wind pulling you in Magnet Mans Stage? XD pretty sure those are magnets ;) but really great review man I'm an older Megaman Fan and your videos got me busting out my old collection again.
I first played it years ago thanks to a friend of my family, while I forgot how many sequels were made for the NES at the time, I had only played MM1 up to that point, I had NO idea for months that you could slide in the game as I was so used to MM1's style and controls, so when this same family friend told me how to slide, the whole game opened up! Then I learned some neat tricks from experimenting, if you have a 2nd controller, and hold right on the d-pad on it, it breaks the game! You can't die in pits, and you can jump infinitely! Helped me beat the game easily! Sadly, tragically, this family friend died in the war in Afghanistan, I miss him so much.
Kinda funny-looking for one, regardless. But how are those NEEDLES in NEEDLE Man's stage "pistons"? Just because they're made from collapsing rods? Though in fairness I never got that Needle Man's stage was supposed to be on a ship in a harbor because it looked so abstract. I learned that from the Indie Gamer Chick. Regardless, it's about as needle-y as Top Man's greenhouse is top-y. Maybe they should trade. Hmm, top-y… did someone, when salvaging the work on Top Man, think his name referred to topiaries?
@@JsReviewsIt looks like a turbine or giant sparkplug or something. I get motors basically run on coils which are electromagnetic and that we're going to fight Magnet Man by crossing rooms with surfaces covered in electrical cabling, but I'd never seen a dedicated electromagnet look like that.
Well magnetism and electricity are inseparably and really just electro-magnetism as science found out. Who is to say it's not also wind we'll discover in like 20 years?
16:25: Oh man, I remember Ryan farming on this level on the BrainScratch Comms LP waaaaaaaaaaayyyy back in the day. XD Johnny: * screams in agony * Lewis: C'mon, Squall! You only need 5 more Death spells to be immune to 5 Death forever! *KEEP DRAWING!*
The Doc Robot segments are interesting on a conceptual level because you can tell that the team making these games wanted to extend the MM formula beyond the Robot Masters and Wily Castle. It's not something that would stay around, since the second castles of MM4-6 pretty much be the only times the Classic MM games go beyond the standard 8 Robot Masters and Wily Castle structure.
I don't mind it. But at the same time, I could care less. My biggest issue with the one in MM3 is that the levels are too long, the first checkpoint is after the first Doc Robot you defeated and Doc Robot is infurating to fight. I think MM4-MM6 implemented those segments far better. But I also don't care if there absent since it does padded the game out. I prefer shorter games over long ones.
The doc-robot stages were what made this game actually hard. Plus of course the fact there wasn't any one ace of all trades superweapon any more. I think I mostly "needled" my way through it, because it's the most spammable, and used shadowblade and the magnets when dealing with flying stuff. And then there's frickin top spin.
Top Spin helps with those monkeys in Hard Man's stage and those jumping enemies. (And the penguins in Wily Castle!) I'm not the biggest Top Spin defender but I've been trying to find uses for it on my playthroughs.
I would still say the Rush Jet is the ace of all trades superweapon even if you can't use it to blast through the bosses - but it always guarantees that if you are serious about a speedrun in Mega Man 3 - Needle Man will be one of your first picks.
Megaman 3 i would say is one of my favorites of the original Megaman series. Sure its not as iconic as Megaman 2 but it introduced a lot of cool concepts to the series such as Protoman and i love how it started expanding the story of Megaman.
I just wanna say that I LOVE the fact you're using some of the remixes from the complete works as background music! Those tracks are SO underrated, and more people should listen to them! Thank you for that!
Mega Man 3 is pretty cool just for introducing Rush and Proto Man alone. I also think the soundtrack is on par with 2 as my favorite in the 8-bit style games.
I really love your Dr. Light voice impression, and I'm glad it's intended to sound like the one from Mega Man 8. It's easily my favorite voice for Dr. Light purely because of how hilarious it is. Every time I stream the Mega Man X games for my friends and followers, I always like reading the capsule dialogue out loud in my own impression of that voice. XD
Doc Robot levels are honestly bangers, I don't know who hates them. They don't feel like they bad the run time, they feel like an escalation. Suddenly all those E-tanks don't feel like they trivialize a game balanced for less health. Rush Jet becomes a resource you're careful with because it can run out if you abuse it when you don't need it. It's honestly always been one of my favorite bits and I remember disappointment that future games didn't make us fight the throwback roster.
Didn't realise it was a rushed production, but that actually explains my favourite glitch in the game (and damned if I remember where I heard this) - if you jump down a pit and hold right on player 2's controller, you won't die. And as a bonus, you'll be able to jump like you're underwater at all times. Makes all the Rush segments play differently, since you don't don't actually need him. And on top of that, if you let you energy zero out *before* you push and hold right, you'll be immune to damage. Only spikes can kill you after that. (I started out having my brother hold it for me, but eventually, I started using one of my toes.)
This game was probably supposed to come out in December like most other MM games but the Super Famicom was coming out in November, so 3 was rushed to market in September
In my oppinion MM3 has the best soundtrack of the whole franchise. I like the tense music so much. Starting from the Title Song, over the Robot Master Selection Screen, even the Robot Master Introduction Music was different but really cool. The Boss FIght Music was intense and cool, and the Stages had memorible and intense music. I always thought it was cool, that the Doc Man stages came up. MM3 was the only came that had such a thing, and made it feel more important to get to Wileys Castle. Always thought of them as Robots who broke in to the before visited worlds and twisted them. And after that, you have to choose Break Man as a boss in the Robot Master Screen. It was like: Woooa, what's going on here. Even if the Wiley stages were not that hard, they had an End of Game Feel to it, I alwys appreciated. So MM3 did things different and I liked a lot for it. To be honest I came to play MM2 many years later, never played it in childhood. Despite a cool game I always thought of it as short and to easy. It has cool music als well, but for me the MM3 Soundtrack is the better one. I always think MM3 feels like it has more weight to it, storywise.
It is. It's localized time stopping on normal enemies. I shoot the monkey's on hardman's stage with it, and run past them. The bosses that are weak to it die in seconds. It destroys the Wily mobile's canon in 4 shots. All the weapons in MM 3 have some merit.
The boss rush was always my favorite part of NES action games. It was like a reunion with old friends and a chance to show off how far I had improved. But. Getting a boss rush against bosses from another game entirely? Easily made this my favorite rental ever, back in the day.
It's incredible that people still think that Mega Man 2 and 3 are the best in the series when the likes of 6 and 9 exist. 6 still works within the NES's hardware limitations but being one of the last 10 games released on the system meant they had more time than just about any other developer to understand the system and work within it to make something that could stand up to 2D platformers for decades to come, and 9 while a retro throwback, knocks it out of the park with music, level design, the most useful arsenal of special weapons, and fun bosses. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on those two in particular.
I partially agree. Mega Man 6 is the best of the NES Mega Man games. Unless the Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 ruined Mega Man 9 (possible), that game is like Mega Man 2 (NES): badly overhyped. Not bad games, mind you, but Mega Man *needs* his slide. Mega Man 9 honestly felt kind of "try hard" with its difficulty. I ain't a great Mega Man player, but Mega Man 11 got it right when it came to handling the different selectable difficulty levels *and* the difficulty curve within a particular difficulty level's gameplay.
I have not gotten to it yet, but all I see in Mega Man 9 is a bunch of BS deaths. I would actually argue that the NES in general has a stronger selection of platformers than almost any other system. Yes, including the SNES.
@@thomasffrench3639 Yeah, due to various reasons, I had to skip MM9 on original hardware. Finally got to play it via the Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 on Steam. It wasn't bad, but it is like the one thing the devs liked about Mega Man 3 (NES) was the difficulty of the Doc Robot Stages. XD
@@KamisamanoOtaku Man, you just made yourself an enemy of MM9 stans by calling it Doc Robot stages. I have seen the weapons of MM9, and they seem to be the best of the series, but the level design is among the weakest. I need to play the game, but those are my initial impressions.
@@thomasffrench3639 I *just* got to play Mega Man 9 for the first time about a month ago (got the Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 as a late X-Mas gift). Because of the general praise MM9 had received in the community, and how friends who warned me it could be brutal also found Mega Man 11's higher difficulties unfairly difficult, I went in thinking I'd be fine. *I was wrong.* I won't call it a bad game, but if there's a fan version that adds the slide back in - I can live without the charge shot - I hope I find it. It isn't just MM9, either; whether older or newer titles, I feel like Rock *needs* his Slide and his Rush Coil. ;) So... if the MM9 stans bother reading this, it probably won't make a difference, but now y'all have context for my preferences. XD
17:02 Castlevania Retrospective coming soon? Edit: Castlevania III padded content by having branching paths. I have no issue with that, it is a joy to go in different paths, but thought I would point that out.
@@thomasffrench3639 I saying it in case J's see this and for some reason does a Castlevania retrospective since I want a fair analysis of the game lmao.
I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you on the doc robot section. I played the game hard-core on initial release. And what that section provides; is a massive amount of frustration, with a huge feeling of reward. It wasn’t added to simply fluff the game Content. It was there to make you struggle. So that you felt a much larger reward when you finally succeeded. I struggled through each level a countless number of times. And the feeling I felt when I finally succeeded; was paramount. The password code I got, after it was all said, and done; was golden to me. We didn’t have the Internet. And I didn’t have the money for a game guide. And even if I did; simply finding an issue was hard. My parents wouldn’t take me to go searching for a magazine. Back in those days; those things were out of my reach. Grinding through MegaMan threes endgame was all I looked forward to after school. trying to beat the puzzles was all I thought about while at school. And it also was a throwback to MegaMan two. It was dopamine for kids. This is a very real and Japanese approach on things. Granted, I am American. But I still felt it. 100%.🤷♂️ I would argue that section of the game had a huge value to its active audience at the time. Some thing I feel that a current player nowadays are may find it difficult to understand from the shoes of the past.
I really like how you show some pages from the Mega Man Archie comics. Those were quite faithful to the game lore and helped clarify things that may not have clear during the NES days. Ah, I miss those comics…
I'm clearly the odd one out. I liked the "Doc Robot" bits, though I always thought it was Dark Robots. The game's easy enough that the extra challenge of the replay stages wasn't a problem, and I liked the concept of refighting bosses from the previous game - since the only two Mega Man games I originally played were 2 and 3. It was a fun call back to me.
As for the Doc Robot battles and figuring out the weaknesses of Mega Man 2 bosses to Mega Man 3 weapons... back then, we didn't have the Internet yet! Not until about three years later! Even then, the Internet was nowhere near as robust as it is now! We HAD to rely on Nintendo Power and other gaming magazines for such juicy gaming info.
Or just experiment for yourself (and if you have a little knowledge of Mega Man 2 still in your mind, try to think "What's the closest thing to his old weakness, in terms of element and/or projectile pattern?). Metal Man is METAL Man, so of course the magnet seeks his extra metallic body the way it does Hard Man's! Wood Man is weak to being cut by sawblades, and your bladed weapons now are Shadow Blade and Needle Cannon! Flash Man is weak to the drill bombs and metal blades, so again Needle Cannon for its penetrative ability resembling a Crash Bomb! Top Spin is the same element as Air Shooter, so try it on the bosses weak to that; Shadow Blade is a ninja star coated in toxic fluid, so it's the element of Bubble Lead; Search Snake rolls along the ground so it's the attack pattern of Bubble Lead. The Doc Robots all having at least two weaknesses helps.
I'm glad you mentioned the faster ladder climbing. It gets overlooked a lot when talking about the game (not terribly surprising since it is of course a small detail). It's honestly the #1 reason I was so disappointed that they decided to go with the Mega Man 2 foundation for 9 and 10. Slow ladder climbing is so frustrating when you know it can be done better.
Speaking of Doc Robots, The X games I feel can be too short at times and I wish those had some sort of Doc Robots. There’s the X Hunters in X2 and Vile Mk 2 in X3 but those are optional and not mandatory.
I remember a ROM hack that added an intro to this game, and it felt right at home. That intro theme deserves an accompaniment. Great review! Looking forward to 4 eventually
It's quite funny that back in 1990 this game released and most people who played it wouldn't have ever realised it was "unfinished" yet the creator comes out and apologises for releasing an unfinished game. Then you come to the modern day and have companies like Bethesda releasing Fallout 76, a game that you only had to play for about 5 minutes to realise how incredibly and obviously unfinished it was and Bethesda argued it wasn't, said it was meant to be like that (aside from the millions of bugs), cheaped out on the extras that people paid a lot of money for, lied about features they said they would never add only to add them within a year of launch, etc, etc. How times change.
About the Doc Robot, yes they're flawed, in that there really should have been more check points but... I feel like they've gotten a lot if negativity that they didn't necessarily have back when the game was released. It wasn't "filler" like so many people claim. Lots of games reused level assets for multiple levels back then. At least they tool the time to make the levels look all destroyed and stuff. You got to fight those giant hardhats it looked like they were building in needle man revisited. And the doc robots themselves? You be to tell me that we get to fight all the bosses from mega man 2 on TOP of this one, and we get to use all the new weapons to do it? Games back then *didn't do that*. Most of them literally couldn't due to space issues. Bringing back 8 of the most iconic bosses of all time was amazing, not lazy. It was unheard of to bring back bosses from a previous game. and yeah, it cranked up the difficulty, but we had 9 E tanks to help burn through the challenge. It was a crazy plot twist. makes me a little sad to see how people will condemn them without even giving them a shot. that's all.
I just think they could've made it more tolerable and fair in those segments cause they were pretty obnoxious m. That & the levels in MM3 goes on for too long. I think MM4-MM6 implemented those segments far better than what MM3 offers. So at least it was improved.
I agree that the idea of the Doc Robot stages are pretty cool, especially as a way to tie the entire trilogy together along with Proto Man being the beginning of the Robot Masters and a reference to all of the previous robot masters of the series. However, in practice a lot of the level design in the Doc Robot stages suck, and although they have their good parts, they sour the experience of the entire middle of the game. The rest of the game is great tho
Hot Take. I liked the Doc Robot levels... even as a kid. It was something that broke the mold of the established Mega Man end stages. Also, I get to fight against what most consider the greatest set of robot masters with NEW weapons? Yes please!
If you look at the comments, theres way more people who approve the docbots than hated them. I feel people who came in long after the fact on the internet are more vocal about them being too hard than reality.
IDK I always liked the Doc Robot stages and the MM2 boss rematches as a kid. Mega Man 2 was a game I didn't own, could only rent it once in a while so I thought it was really cool to be able to fight them again in the sequel.
I still have no idea why the Doc Robot stages are bad. I like how the game is longer and I like the concept of the remixed stages too. The only downside is the lack of a checkpoint before the first Doc Robot fight.
This was the first mega man game I ever played. It still remains my favorite of the original series to this day. *also first boxart with arm cannon. *4:50 would literally let it sit at the menu to listen....
People like to call the doc robot stages needless filler, but I felt they served the important role of actually giving you the opportunity to make good use of all of the weapons in the game - especially since, as we saw, the actual final stages were rushed and not really anything to write home about. If anything, the doc robot stages are the real final stages.
Maybe I am the odd one out here, but I liked the concept of the Skull (Doc) Robots. These Frankeinstein's monster of a boss model re-using the consciences of the baddies batch from 2, rather cruelly turning them into these monsters just to die again to you feels right out of a horror movie. But maybe I can only appreciate this since I only considered their stages "different" rather than "harder" re-runs, but it's a cool detail that CAPCOM paid attention to the story of an 8-bit series.
I highly recommend any mega man fans here to check out the archie comics that were made for the classic series. Other than the sonic crossover, they're retelling of the games stories but it has some of the best writing the series has ever seen with amazing art to along with it. I bring it up on this video specifically because I specifically remember the mega man 3 arc standing out in my head for some reason.
Despite the minimalistic title screen, Mega Man 3 did something really cool that you don't tend to see often: it starts the music right off the bat, at the copyright screen. It gives the intro a _lot_ more impact (compared to waiting for the actual title screen to start the music), and to this day I still can't articulate why.
I like the doc robot stages. In a MM game where the Wily stages were an absolute cakewalk, the doc robot stages provide the only real challenge in this game.
13:33 - So, when I was kid Mega Man 3 was the first video game I ever bought with money that I had earned myself. (We did a yard sale.) I worked very hard to get the money to buy that game. And I was not disappointment and I played it to death, writing passwords in a little spiral notebook. So anyway, when I encountered Doc Robot I was *elated*. You mean I get to fight the Mega Man 2 bosses, a $50 game, or about $120 in today's money, all within Mega Man 3?! I was so soooo happy. (I didn't own Mega Man 2. In fact I never did get a copy. I had Mega Man 3 and one day got Mega Man 1 because it was on sale for $20.) So anyway, yeah, I always have good memories of the Doc Robots. Even though they make the game longer, and they just recycle the old stages. I was more accepting of that stuff back then.
Agreed, would you just wanted the game be 4 lvls shorter? I guess if you don't like them you can password right past them if they bother you that much, but I never thought they were that hard that I couldn't handle them. I thought was cool way for us to see past robot masters return with new weaknesses.(Metalman fittingly is weak to magnet missiles heh.) Sure the coolest way to have done was have the actual robot masters fight us and get their weapons, but the game didn't have enough memory for that to happen. The docbots were a cool work around that allows this rematch to happen that made sense with in the story. Wily just making some mass produced proxy robot to mimic other masters to stall Megaman fits what was going on in the game.
I feel like calling the Doc Robot stages one of the worst parts in the series is overkill, especially when games like X6 and X7 exist. Personally, I kind of like the Doc Robot stages, even though I mainly prefer two of the stages. It's not as bad as I make it out to be now that I'm not a little kid, but the Rush Jet section in Needle Man's Doc Robot stage is probably what worry about most in a playthrough of Mega Man 3.
As for any player of megaman 3, I feel obligated to mention an awesome romhack called megaman 3 revamped! I won't take too long but overall, it makes better use of setpieces, and makes plenty of new and creative puzzles with them. And also takes advantage of more weapons (as well as improving many of those weapons) and enemies. Almost every stage has had a noticeable change in design to make it feel more impressive. While I'd say one way it falls short is improving the doc robot stages, the crowning jewel is the complete overhaul of the wily stages to make them actually feel more complete and worth the title of a "final gauntlet". According to the romhackers there's a whopping 40 new screens added to the game. I figured I'd mention this coz, I think if you have some extra time, it's worth checking out by yourself! There's also plenty of other additions i didn't mention. So I think you should!
It's nice to hear the Shadow Blade getting some positive reflection for a change. I always thought it was a cool weapon even without proper context. A robot throwing a giant shuriken? Yeah, that's cool.
@@youngkappakhan Sorry, Mega Man 3 is my favorite. Don't know what to tell you. Mega Man 2 -5 are collectively the best imo. Your criticisms are valid, I'm just explaining why I liked it.
@@youngkappakhan She even said your criticism was valid. What is your problem? I can't believe I'm seeing this kind of hostility on a Mega Man 3 comment section. For the record, I liked the Doc Robot section too. Read the rest of the comments on this video, majority like it. Go make your own neckbeard game, dude.
With this game's ending, a theory popped up that after the events of mega man 3, Dr Wily in the rest of the games is a robot. This is backed up by the fact that before mega man fights wily inside of gamma, it turns out to be a robot fake. Then in mega man 10, wily catches a fever and mega man suspects it to be the roboenza virus that causes robots to go crazy. And in mega man 11, once wily is defeated, he uses the double gear to beg for forgiveness as he's been doing. However not only was that used as a gag, but wily can be seen making his escape in this game before the credits even come up completley debunking this theory.
You know you can just jump on those Spark Man garbage cubes instead of murdering your thumb/wallet turbo-shooting them to bits, right? They won't hurt you; they're just scrap metal packed nice and smooth and you're a tough robo-boy who can't even get sick like we humans can. Go get 'em, son! :
I used to have so much fun with the second controller debug mode as a kid. I mean it was kinda tricky to use the second controller with my feet, but hey :D
"Everyone agrees that the Doc Robot stages were a mistake"? Really? Because I loved them, and I've only heard people say good things about them. They gave something in between the all-too-short Dr. Wily stages and the 8 initial stages, something for you to really use those weapons on, to collect and expend lives and e-tanks, and in short, to have MORE GAME.
It's not that the concept of it was bad. It's just the way it's design is exhausting & and annoying. The levels goes on for too long, they could've add more checkpoints rather the one being after the first Doc Robot defeat and the Last one before the 2nd Doc Robot fight and Doc Robot itself can be obnoxious. Had they make them more tolerable, than it wouldn't be an issue.
AH right yes, that's why I like Megaman 3 but love Megaman 4 significantly more. LOL Yeah, I definitely passworded past the Doc Robot stages too, oh my lord those are just way too brutal. 😂
Really? You think MM 3 too brutal? and you like MM4 more? I replayed all games when I bought MM 11, and I found MM 4 the biggest chore play thru of the NES games. It has way too many hole jumping bad guys. Some in areas with ice. I find the game far more annoying play for this reason. The weapons are largely meh. You generally get by on charged buster to often the subpar weapons.(This often the case with MM 4-6.) The docbot stages are not that tough. I beat them as a kid as I learned the weaknesses for the docbots. You have all the weapons and E tanks to get through the docbot stages. Any of the tougher parts can be rush jetted over, as if you jump it doesn't waste energy, so you can fly for insane distances. The toughest boss of the bunch is docbot quickman, but if you just let the boomerangs hit you, then you won't take the collision damage which is far worse. He dies fairly fast to gemini laser. Again you can easily have 9 E tanks cheese you way thru if you're that bad at this. (Red A-6 starts the game with with 9 E tanks.) I don't see how the docbots are any worse idea than the fake castles 4-6 do. Instead of being forced fight all bosses in a set order with your weapons needing be topped off, you instead get fight the stages in any order and don't need worry about your weapons enegry levels upon winning each stage.
Megaman4 was the game that came out the year I was born. My parents owned it, so I spent the most time with it. haha I played these games before the internet was widely available for finding passwords without knowing a friend, so like, my experiences with 3 were nooot fun. lol@@Lastjustice
I hate the WIND that blows the metal robot around on MAGNET MAN'S stage. And on the subject of the doc robot stages: Are you going to shit on the extra castles (i.e. 4 extra, harder levels) in mm4, 5 and 6?
The Doc robots stages never bothered me much. They are effectively the "1st fortress" of later games (Cossack, Protoman, and Mr. X) and considering the Wily stages in MM3 are rather lacking, I felt they were fine for post-8 robot master content. I think people's _real_ problem was the recycled aesthetics than anything, not that there were 4 stages (as becomes the norm in MM4-6) or that you fight the MM2 bosses (which was actually fun imo). I think they would get far less hate if they had unique looks and design.
It's also that the first checkpoint is always after the first Doc Robot. So if you die before getting into the first Doc Robot, you have to start the first halve of the level all over again.
It’s funny to me now, I’ve watched a lot of these retrospective play throughs and such, nobody seems to know that you can jump from the rush jet and not use any energy. No one has ever mentioned this! He’ll follow underneath you! This makes it super overpowered! One of the reasons I can only play three or six from the original series.
Stumbled upon your channel, and love the Megaman content. I've been playing these games since they came out. A couple other interesting things about this game. Megaman 2 took all your E-tanks away after a game over. In Megaman 3 the number of E-tanks you had is stored in the password, so even if you quit the game and came back, you still had your E-tanks. Games 4, 5, and 6 found a nice balance where you kept your E-tanks when got a game over, but lost them if you had to use a password. Speaking of passwords, this game's password system was way too easy to crack. I'm writing this completely from memory of when I cracked it over 20 years ago, but if I remember right: A single blue or red dot set your number of E-tanks from 0-9. The color doesn't matter, as long as only one of the 10 E-tank boxes has a dot. This took up 10 of the 36 possible boxes. Each individual Robot Master had a corresponding box, where placing a single blue dot showed that Robot Master as defeated. The only caveat was each Robot Master was paired with another Robot Master to form 4 pairs. If both the Robot Masters from the same were defeated, the two blues dots would be replaced by a single red dot. If you placed two blue dots for two Robot Masters in the same pair, it would give you an error. You had to use the red dot in other spot instead, which took out the pair. I don't remember who was paired with who anymore. So four red dots took out all 8 robot masters. The next four levels followed the same pattern, each level had a box for a blue dot, and each of the two pairs had a box for the red dot. So six red dots got you too the Wily levels. If you are following along (10 E-tank boxes) + (8 Robot Master boxes) + (4 Robot Master pair boxes) + (4 Doc Robot level boxes) + (2 Doc Robot level pair boxes) = 28. So 28 out of 36 boxes had a single purpose. The other 8 boxes were "dummy" boxes that would give you an error every time unless they were empty. With only 36 boxes and such a simple algorithm, I think it took us like 2 hours to figure out every password combination. The passwords were much more "encrypted" in the later Megaman games.
Like Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3 is another game that's popular and also considered the best or even favorite Mega Man game. But like Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3 does has problems. Not alot and doesn't ruined the enjoyment of the game. But it's easy to notice. As for my thoughts. What 2 did for QOL improvement over 1, 3 does the same thing for the first 2 and so on. Features like the Slide & Rush was an great addition. Other QOL improvements like E Tanks to where you can carry 9 instead of 4 and you don't lose them when you get an Game Over and the level designs in the Robot Master stages are more tolerable & unique than the ones from the first 2 games. But now for the negatives. The weapons are once again unbalanced and not all that fun to use ( Only good ones are the Magnet Missiles & Shadow Blade ). The filler levels are absolutely exhausting & Doc Robot can go die in the fire. Wily Castles are very underwhelming and the bosses are ridiculously easy. And lastly, this game was rushed that many content and other things were cut. It's no Mega Man X6 levels of bad. But still Overall Mega Man 3 is good and I enjoyed it more than 2 personally. But it's still not as great as it could've been. Looking forward to Mega Man 4 review. That game is where the series starting to get into the right direction.
Mega Man 4 has it's own set of problems, at least from how I'm playing it. I find the charge shot to be tedious to use, and prefer to use weapons, but then a bunch of weapon immunity and bosses taking no damage from the basic pellets gets a bit on my nerves. Mega Man 5 has the worst weapons in the series, so I don't want to get into that, but you get my point. Each of these games has flaws, it's not like Mega Man 4-6 is so significantly better than MM2 and MM3.
MM3 is my personal favorite game in the series, and actually my favorite game of all time. Yes it has flaws from being rushed, (pun intended) but the introduction of the slide, and Rush himself, was fantastic. The music IMO is better than MM2’s music. The levels are great. I know people don’t like the Doc robot stages, but it created the idea of a “castle” before Wily’s fortress, that we saw in 4-6. Being able to re-fight the MM2 bosses was great, and challenging. Wily’s stages are tons of fun, even if the bosses like the clones and Gamma have big flaws. At least it’s not the wall bubbles from MM2
I think one of the things about this game that makes it look incomplete are the final castle levels. Correct me if im wrong but this is the only game in classic sextet that the map shown in the castle screen does not match up to the actually castle levels. For instance, the refight section is mapped completely outside the castle, as are both Wily fights. The first two stages are mapped as verticle and to the left but you are going up and right, which would put you outside in the nearby woods.
That is so true. I may have noticed it once, but by this point in the NES life cycle mapping out the geography of the levels in the level select was standard practice. So the fact that they don’t match in this is telling of the development cycle. Nice detail catch
I enjoy Megaman 3 way more than 2, with the added sliding, Rush being better than just spawning in random item platforms and better designed bosses than that accursed Booby Trap in MM2. I personally never had a problem with the Doc Robot Stages but I can understand them being blatant filler and shameless MM2 nostalgia pandering before nostalgia pandering was cool I guess. I’d even argue the MM3 title screen intro them is way better than MM2 but that’s not to say I hate MM2’s. I can’t wait for the Megaman 4 video.
I don't necessarily think it was nostalgia pandering as much as a conclusion to the first 3 games. I mean there's tons of references to the first two games in this one.
@@thomasffrench3639 They weren't sure the series would continue as each game could be their last. The japanese subtitle was the end of wily? As the game concluded where it could been the finale and called it a day. Heck that's reason most of actually believed Doc Cossack was a legit new villain since Wily might really been gone.(It was probably the only time in the imposter trilogy,4-6 we bought it.) Every robot master has a cameo in MM 3 since they wanted honor the entire series.
While I do love the soundtrack and the new additions they added like slide and Rush, there were a lot that I felt held it back from being the best. However, MM3 Improvement Project addresses a lot of it, and I actually consider that version to compete with 2!
@BioMega96 There wer many unfinished & unpolished Mega Man games being revamp by an fan-made games. MM3, MMX3, MMX5, MMX6, etc. There so much better than what we expected.
Some things that scream "obvious beta" when playing this game: - no intro before the title screen - title screen is pretty barren - the weird flickering line in the stage select screen (I legit thought it was my copy of the game that had the problem) - the debug codes (activated via controller 2) are still accessible - Rush Jet being OP - Top Spin randomly spending the whole energy bar - Rush Marine not opening its mouth to shoot while the graphics for it are in the game - the glitch that allows you to use Rush Jet without having it - even as a child I noticed the color palette in the game looks oddly vibrant compared to the one used in every other Mega Man game (not a bad thing, but it makes it stand out) - the infamous missing planet from Gemini Man's stage - there are graphics for a city during the Wily cutscene that are never used - the little Skull Fortress shown in the midgame cutscene looks nothing like the one actually in the game (but it matches the one in Mega Man 2) - but the Skull Fortress map music and the Proto Man theme for the ending are way longer than what the game lets you hear. - I always wondered what was up with fighting "Break Man" without his face mask for the whole game and then during his actual boss fight he suddenly covers his face? Even with all those, it's still a pretty solid game. BTW, the "Doc Robot" stages weren't the only nod to Mega Man 2, the credits theme is a remixed version of that melancholic ending theme from Mega Man 2.
That whole "unfinished" stuff was later rectified with fan-made patches. For example, _Mega Man 3 Improvement_ by *kuja killer.* - Lots of bugs were fixed. - An intro cutscene was properly added and translated (you can actually hear that iconic theme in full!) - The memory was expanded to alleviate sprite flickering issues. - And so much more. You've mentioned _Tweaks_ patches for X5 and X6 - so I've figured it's time to share this useful MM3 tidbit with you.
One detail that I have always liked about the Doc stages, and that I feel isn't mentioned that often, is that the MM2 bosses generally match the designs of the Doc stages really well; this is especially obvious on Gemini Man's stage, where you have flashing platforms, underwater sections and tadpoles, which very clearly match Flash Man and Bubble Man. There are also several other matching themes on the other stages, such as the fast-moving machinery, the moving platforms and the fast-blinking lights on Doc Spark Man's stage, which are perfect for Metal Man and Quick Man, and you also have the wood-coloured textures and the lava streams on Doc Shadow Man's stage, which are very fitting for Wood Man and Heat Man. Doc Needle Man is probably least obvious in this regard, but it does seem to have been designed to a high-altitude air-themed area in the middle of the night, and this is good for Air Man and Crash Man.
![[UNCUT] The Loyal Pin ปิ่นภักดิ์ EP.15 (1/4)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TLBjiHvkKtE/mqdefault.jpg)
When I was a young girl in elementary school, my best friend was a neighorhood boy and I would play Mega Man 3 with him on his NES. We would pass the controller back and forth and try together to figure out how to beat the robot masters. At school during recess, we would pretend we were the characters and go on imaginary adventures on the playground. We came up with an imagined "Player 2" Megaman for me to be, "MegaMac". In hindsight, we should have come up with MegaGirl, but I guess MegaMac just rolled off the tongue better.
Anyways, we would run around on the school playground, jumping and pretending we were shooting robot masters and earning weapons. We would pretend to fly around on our imaginary Rush Jets or Rush Submarines. The game really left a mark on us that we loved it so much we "lived" it through our imaginary recess adventures.
As time went on, his family moved and of course took him with him, and I ultimately lost contact with him. I don't know how to contact him anymore, and haven't for many years. But even now, decades later, I still think back to that childhood boy I played with when I was an elementary school girl, going on Megaman adventures limited only by our imaginations. Memories I will cherish all my life.
i did the same thign as a kid. i was friends with a boy down the street from me and he had an older brother who actually came up with stats and stuff for robot master weapons and energy levels for us and would play along as the bad guys for us to fight.
Hey Cran! Fancy running into you here! Its Kurisu! I didnt know you were into Megaman. Nice! I had a similar childhood experience but mine involved both Megaman Xtreme 1 & 2 as well as the Gameboy version of Megaman 2.
That sounds like a nice story to keep in mind.
Hope for you to find your childhood friend again someday though :,)
Touching story. I hope that you could find you friend from the childhood. If you know his names there is Internet and search for him. I wish you luck!
Same for me! I had a friend who lived across the street from me, and we would pretend to be Mega Man and Proto Man, fighting the bosses together. Why it took until Mega Man NINE for Proto Man to be a playable character (excluding Power Battle and Power Fighters), I'll never know... and why there was never a 2-player game option (except in the secret "Fighting Game Mode" of Mega Man 7 between Mega Man and Bass), I'll never know... but Capcom kind of missed the boat by not having Mega Man and Proto Man be the Mario and Luigi of Robot Masters!
While Megaman 3 is a rushed game like Megaman X6, it’s still a fun experience and it’s still people’s favourites. The introduction of Rush & Protoman is amazing, being able to slide is revolutionary as it adds more strategy when fighting bosses. Megaman 3 will always have a place In my heart.
At least MM3 isn't as bad as X6.
@@jaretco6423 yeah true, but I like X6
Sliding is the best as it adds more movement options and faster traversal. They basically were thinking about speedrunners when adding that feature.
I seriously hate how Mega Man 9 & 10 stripped the slide and charge shot. Made the base move set of Mega Man in those games feel. Basic (and not in a good way)
@@jaretco6423 Fortunately, X6 has the Tweaks patch.
Fun fact about Rush Jet: it is even more broken than you showed. It only drains energy while you are ON the jet. This means that if you repeatedly jump, it barely drains energy while you stay on it. Basically, this lets you clear the jet sections with almost no trouble.
Proof "Bad" Box Art Mega Man is the reality. Rush gets more tired from actually carrying Mega Man's fat 50-year-old ass on top of that 200 lb. armor. Don't believe me? Read Beat's CD from MM&B. He complains about ol' Rocky Light's not-so-light weight.
I mentioned this in my own comment, but this is basically required if you play the Complete Works version on Hard since no weapon energy is present in the entire game. I don't remember if the MM Anniversary Collection has it since I passed on it hearing about how bad the ports were.
@@Zenocide the anniversary collection does. It was the version I had access to for my college years.
You could also use the second controller trick to enable zombie mode.
Which makes it more fun
Another trick is that if you have Shadow Blade, the menu is screwy and lets you select Rush Jet next to it even if you haven't gotten it yet. It'll start with no energy, but grab an energy pickup and now you can use Rush Jet without actually having it XD
There's a modded rom for Mega Man 3 called "Mega Man 3 Revamped", and it is absolutely awesome. It has an opening cutscene, giving us the story of Gamma being built by Light and a "reformed" Wily, and it fixes much of the glitches and slowdowns that plague the game.
yeah i liked that about wily wars re release the lag and stupid nonsense like the rising platforms yeeting you on snakes stage are ironed out.
I am not really a fan of the changed level design with some exceptions.
Yes, that is a great rom hack! It definitely feels like the definitive version of the game.
@@mattb6522 it’s way more kaizo than the original, and I think that the original has better level design. It also introduces gimmicks in the most boring way possible
Doc robot levels and bosses were great. Wish they stayed for future editions.
Dr. Wight's voice basically being the M-Megaman 8 version makes me vewy happy
We just need to watch out for Doctuh Wahwee.
Megaman 8 and it’s timeless anime cutscenes were a blessing to the franchise.
Man I didn't get the joke at first lol and was wondering why whoever it was reading was reading in an uwufied voice
It's not a uwu voice is doctah wahwee
It's funny how the voice actor for Dr. Light in Mega Man 8 made him sound like Elmer Fudd from Looney Tunes. Like, reading that and then imagine Dr. Light saying it as if it *was* Mega Man 8 just made me think, "Did English dub voice acting really have *that* little standard before 2004?"
The Title Screen of the Japanese version has the image of Mega Man that also appears on the Weapon Get Screen! Just wanted to point that out!
Yup. Doesn't mean things were any less… Rush'd, though. :
@@CarbonRollerCaco to me it looks Pretty cute imo. But yes, I can really notice a rushed work specially on the fortress stages. If I were to remake the game I would double the size of the first three and place Break Man after the Boss Rush. Also, I heard that the Gamma Stage is literally a test Stage.
@@laffyfluvy7351
The room right before the final battle is weird in a lot of ways;
the ceiling looks a lot as if it is the end of a longer stage, and it is very strange how the room has a large life capsule lying around, since there is never any use for it.
It also certainly does look as if that room was some sort of item test room, since it has all of the different types of items lying around there
(except for the small life capsules and the small weapon capsules, but they are pretty much just more lame versions of the large capsules).
As a child of the 80s that eagerly anticipated the next megaman game, 3 was one of my favorites.
In a modern retrospective, those mid-game levels/bosses may seem like filler, but as a kid in the 80s, it was 4 more levels to play. When you only got 2-3 new games a year, those extra levels were a big deal.
Maybe it was rushed and isn't a perfect game.. But it cost $40 back in the 80s (when 40 bucks was a big deal). At the time, It wasn't just good value for money... But one of the best games available at the time.
Yeah, we are facing the same thing nowadays. Look at what was popular for a while recently: Open World Games, which was hugely popular for a while and still probably is. And a big reason was the amount of content for a certain price. It hasn't gone away.
@@thomasffrench3639The main difference between games sold today vs back then was that when you bought a cartridge game you bought a complete game as it was opposed to a game that required additional DLC, expansions skins and other end game content.
Spark Shock is nowhere near a good weapon lmao. When you stun an enemy with it, you cannot pause the game to switch to another weapon and finish the job like you could with Ice Slasher. And most of the enemies in MM3 have such a large hitbox that freezing them would be more of a detriment than anything.
Correct. It is a WORSE Ice Slasher, which is why I consider it the worst weapon in the game. It breaks the tie between other poor weapons in this game, IMO.
I feel like I'm the only person who unironically used the Spark Shock pretty consistently.
@@thomasffrench3639 If you found a good use for it, that's GREAT. :D I am fond of the Needle Cannon; yes, I can manually rapid fire the regular buster shot that fast, but semi-automatic fire is just more handy.
What’s even sadder is they gave Spark Shot to Megaman in Smash as an Up Smash, it’s an ok up smash.
Yeah top spin gets all the flak, but spark shock is by far the worst of at least MM3, and certainly in the top 5 in the whole series.
I actually liked the Doc Robots stages, it felt like some kind of NG+
Though I hated how the first checkpoint in each stage was after the first of the two bosses. It made them unnecessarily hard.
I never understood that you were supposed to get that Wily and Light were working together before the final stages. And I was one of the players who were like "who the hell is Gamma?"
Yeah I thought the Doc robot stages were great. A little more challenging (but not kaizo, let's be real here) and they showed off a broken down and nighttime aesthetic of the levels.
The issue I have with Doc Robot stages are the length of the levels and Doc Robot itself. The levels goes on for far too long & the first checkpoint isn't till after you beat the first Doc Robot. And Doc Robot is an obnoxious boss. I do like he uses Mega Man 2's Robot Master as his weapons. But fighting it is more obnoxious than the ones from 2 cause you have to find weakness that you don't know till you randomly pick one and if you gets an Game Over, you have to redue to entire level all over again. Also going to the same levels as we've been there before felt unnecessary. I think later Mega Man games; 4-6 at least, implementing them way better.
@@jaretco6423 i agree with the checkpoints and the weakness finding being pretty bad. i also hate the sizing thing but i dont entirely hate the doc robots stages cause they feel more scaled to you having a full loadout of weapons. TBH i never really liked how boss weaknesses worked anyways cause a lot of them are nonsense (why i like zero going with element weaknesses cause you can figure it out due to consistency of it) but figuing out their weakness might force E tanks outta you and MM3 having so many E tanks i think thats intresting. also killing them with the buster is kinda nuts which is a weird thing with them.
on the flip side i thought refighting the megaman 2 bosses as... actual threats was kinda cool cause you dont really fight them in their own game (lol metal blades) i didnt really mind the revisits either cause the levels felt a lot more punishing
Yeah, the game's plot is locked behind the instruction manual. If you didn't have that (like me), then you had no idea about elements like Wily's alleged reform and Mega Man traveling to different planets. It wasn't until much later that I knew the full story!
I think I learned the story from Archie's comics, since they're kinda canon
That was not so long ago, too
3:36 I've always been puzzled by the american's obsession with drawing megaman like a garden gnome in the NES days
They thought kids' anime looked too cutesy for American advertising. And for MM1 and 2, they wanted to have a Mega _Man._ Ain't defending it, just saying.
Even more hilarious is Euro Wily. He looks like he'd seen so many unspeakable horrors he'd become one himself.
@@CarbonRollerCaco I understand that, which explains the Megaman 2 boxart, but I still don't understand how a garden gnome face would look cooler than an anime one
It was the 80s. The answer is cocaine.
@@vxicepickxv You're right. The answer in the 80s to "why is this weird" - Cocaine and Prog Rock
@@MechanicalRabbits Because RAWR MORE DETAILED=MORE AWESOME OW THE EDGE
The worst part about the game being rushed is knowing the potential of what it could’ve been if the devs had time to finish it.
because no joke, I love this game even if it’s hilarious to see the top spin have more use than the spark shock
I don't think people realize how impactful the slide move actually was. Having a spam-able mobility move that lets you feel like you're getting through the content faster created a legacy that affects far more than just the Megaman franchise. Next time you're dashing, sliding, or rolling because it feels faster than just pressing forward, thank MM3.
Yeah, I can’t think of a game before Mega Man that had a dash movement. Sure you had running in Mario, but that’s different. I love that Ritcher Belmont has both the dash and slide from Symphony of the Night
Mega Man 3 is fascinating for me mostly because it has an incomplete weakness chain. If you're doing the common route of starting with Top Man, you're stuck after beating Hard Man unless you want the slight damage advantage of the Shadow Blade with Needle Man. (It only does 1 more damage than buster shots)
It just has two chains instead of one.
I actually like that approach. I wish some Mega Man game did it again. @@panthekirb7561
Shadow Blade does two to Snake and Gemini as well, so you can easily start the smaller chain wherever you want. Just be careful to hold the shot button against Gemini to make sure your shot comes out in case you get a lag frame, because Gemini will stop to shoot when you press the shot button even if lag keeps you from shooting then.
Just like the Game Boy games that started soon after!
@@BagOfMagicFood Yeah, but they're neatly separated by half/OG entry. Except for World 5 (I don't like the Arabic vs. Roman numeral convention as the in-game logos all use Roman numerals anyway unlike the box art) which is all over the place and even includes the 9th guy as part of the loop but not the refights. And ofC 7 which has Burst and Slash both be equally weak to both Freeze and Turbo, the temperature extremes, to make both two half-specific loops and one full-lineup loop. Must be a cold blood (cold oil?) thing.
There was a cool trick/cheat if you will that only this Megaman game had. If you held down the Left or Right button (I forgot which but it's only one of the 2) on the 2nd controller, you were able to jump super high as if Megaman had the rush coil option built into him and on top of that you were immune to pit deaths. Also in the pit if you let go of the button and re-press you would hear the death sound effect but still be alive and there was also a random chance your health bar would go down to 0. If that happened you were actually invincible in that state with the only down side being you cannot use your primary Megabuster however the boss weapons would still work.
These are theorized as debug codes - or rather, on-demand debug modes - that were left in the game.
When I accidentally found out about that as a kid, it blew my mind. I loved playing through using that "glitch". It made a game I'd played a hundred times seem fresh again.
Spot on Dr. Light impersonation. Loved it.
ive never skipped the doc robot stages. i actually really like them. playing thru harder remixes of the existing stages with all your tools at your disposal is fun. i wish the checkpoints were better and the doc robot fights themselves were a little less brutal, but i played thru it somewhat recently and enjoyed it just fine. i even got my fiancée into the series and iirc 3 was the first one she managed to beat all on her own. i was very proud of her as she had never played a Megaman game before.
Yeah. At least Capcom made sure to alter the level designs to prevent revisiting the stages from feeling as repetitive as it could've.
Agreed on all points
My other issue is that the levels goes on for too long. Because your facing two kinds of Doc Robot in each 4 stages, the levels started too drag and combined with the inconsistent first checkpoints and the fight against Doc Robot, the levels can be exhausting and not fun. I think MM4-MM6 implemented them way better.
wind pulling you in the yoku block segment of the magnet man stage!? MAGNET mans stage? theyre magnets lol :P
My favourite Mega Man game. By far the best music in the series - I used to fire up my NES and just leave it on the title screen and listen to that song.
I actually enjoyed the Doc Robot stages. It would’ve been cool if they’d altered Mega Man 2 levels instead of the ones they did, though.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the lag - worst part of the game is the slowdown when too many sprites are on screen. I think that might be a symptom of the rushed development
Heh. You wish they would've crammed in MM2 level assets and designs while bemoaning the rushing resulting in lag? *noogies* You're silly.
Oh yeah, definitely the best music!
@@CarbonRollerCaco Yeah, all the MegaMan games on NES have sections with severe lag. It's par for an NES game.
Yup. I love the first 5 Mega Mans and a handful of the X's, but III has hands-down the best tracks, although II's intro and Wily Stage are just gnarly.
lol P.S. A couple of months ago I was bored and just thought to myself "I wanna learn to play Top Man's theme on guitar. I bet it sounds sassy AF on guitar.".......and YES IT DOES!
Mega Man 3 is so unfinished that the debug key shortcuts are still left in place (you can slow down, high jump, and enable invincibility with the player 2 controller. I loved this game so much, it's my personal favorite classic Mega Man despite its shortcomings. The Doc Robot stages are probably my favorite part, if anything I wish we got remixes of the other four main Robot Master stages with similar dark and rundown theming!
Now, a lot of my preference for this game is predictable nostalgic attachment; my family already had Mega Man 2 in 1990, but it was three year old _me_ who had his name on the Christmas present with Mega Man 3 in it. At some point the label tore partway off and I redrew in pencil on it from memory the designs of my favorite Robot Masters (Snake Man, Top Man, and Needle Man).
The addition of the slide is probably the best permanent shakeup to the base formula of MM1 the series has ever gotten. This is _huge_ and its absence from 9 and 10 is why those two games will never be as good as 4-6 are, and arguably not even better than 3. 2 was a bigger improvement of the finer details (boosting 6 Robot Masters to 8, buffing special weapons, and overall refinement of base movement) but 3 made a _fundamental_ control change that causes Mega Man stages to be able to be built in a uniquely Mega Man way.
In my opinion, Inti Creates removing the slide and charged Mega Buster shots from _Mega Man 9_ and _10_ was unforgivable.
@@Loader2K1All to create an experience like Mega Man 2 since everyone loves that game. What a shame.
@@MisterAutist: I have no idea if you're trying to be sarcastic or not.
Wind pulling you in Magnet Mans Stage? XD pretty sure those are magnets ;) but really great review man I'm an older Megaman Fan and your videos got me busting out my old collection again.
Right. I thought it was pretty obvious...
I first played it years ago thanks to a friend of my family, while I forgot how many sequels were made for the NES at the time, I had only played MM1 up to that point, I had NO idea for months that you could slide in the game as I was so used to MM1's style and controls, so when this same family friend told me how to slide, the whole game opened up! Then I learned some neat tricks from experimenting, if you have a 2nd controller, and hold right on the d-pad on it, it breaks the game! You can't die in pits, and you can jump infinitely! Helped me beat the game easily!
Sadly, tragically, this family friend died in the war in Afghanistan, I miss him so much.
10:05 bro that's not wind it's a magnet! You're in Magnetman's stage
Hmm….that would make more sense. It kind of looked like a vent, to me.
Wow, been playing this for years and never realized the obvius as well, they should've used the same line drawing used on Magnet Man pull attack, tho
Kinda funny-looking for one, regardless. But how are those NEEDLES in NEEDLE Man's stage "pistons"? Just because they're made from collapsing rods? Though in fairness I never got that Needle Man's stage was supposed to be on a ship in a harbor because it looked so abstract. I learned that from the Indie Gamer Chick. Regardless, it's about as needle-y as Top Man's greenhouse is top-y. Maybe they should trade. Hmm, top-y… did someone, when salvaging the work on Top Man, think his name referred to topiaries?
@@JsReviewsIt looks like a turbine or giant sparkplug or something. I get motors basically run on coils which are electromagnetic and that we're going to fight Magnet Man by crossing rooms with surfaces covered in electrical cabling, but I'd never seen a dedicated electromagnet look like that.
Well magnetism and electricity are inseparably and really just electro-magnetism as science found out.
Who is to say it's not also wind we'll discover in like 20 years?
16:25: Oh man, I remember Ryan farming on this level on the BrainScratch Comms LP waaaaaaaaaaayyyy back in the day. XD
Johnny: * screams in agony *
Lewis: C'mon, Squall! You only need 5 more Death spells to be immune to 5 Death forever! *KEEP DRAWING!*
And that whole _Johnny vs._ episode featuring Clement. You know, that *"PLEASE, FORGIVE ME!"* guy and resident _Mega Man_ expert.
That moment was legendary
I think that was one of their first LPs. Yeah, that was a pretty hilarious moment! I kind of miss old BrainScratch Comms. 😅
The Doc Robot segments are interesting on a conceptual level because you can tell that the team making these games wanted to extend the MM formula beyond the Robot Masters and Wily Castle. It's not something that would stay around, since the second castles of MM4-6 pretty much be the only times the Classic MM games go beyond the standard 8 Robot Masters and Wily Castle structure.
ive always preferred those extensions myself. 8 robot masters into 4 wily stages always felt too short to me.
I don't mind it. But at the same time, I could care less. My biggest issue with the one in MM3 is that the levels are too long, the first checkpoint is after the first Doc Robot you defeated and Doc Robot is infurating to fight. I think MM4-MM6 implemented those segments far better. But I also don't care if there absent since it does padded the game out. I prefer shorter games over long ones.
The doc-robot stages were what made this game actually hard. Plus of course the fact there wasn't any one ace of all trades superweapon any more.
I think I mostly "needled" my way through it, because it's the most spammable, and used shadowblade and the magnets when dealing with flying stuff.
And then there's frickin top spin.
Top Spin helps with those monkeys in Hard Man's stage and those jumping enemies. (And the penguins in Wily Castle!) I'm not the biggest Top Spin defender but I've been trying to find uses for it on my playthroughs.
@@shinyocelot04archive I used the Spark Shock on those monkeys instead
I would still say the Rush Jet is the ace of all trades superweapon even if you can't use it to blast through the bosses - but it always guarantees that if you are serious about a speedrun in Mega Man 3 - Needle Man will be one of your first picks.
Those parachute enemies can be Top Spinned and killed in one hit with that weapon btw, not sure about other enemies.
@@shinyocelot04archive I found that the Spark Shock was easier for me to use on the Monkeys.
Megaman 3 i would say is one of my favorites of the original Megaman series. Sure its not as iconic as Megaman 2 but it introduced a lot of cool concepts to the series such as Protoman and i love how it started expanding the story of Megaman.
Love the dramatic Dr. Wight reading at 5:15
I just wanna say that I LOVE the fact you're using some of the remixes from the complete works as background music! Those tracks are SO underrated, and more people should listen to them! Thank you for that!
Mega Man 3 is pretty cool just for introducing Rush and Proto Man alone. I also think the soundtrack is on par with 2 as my favorite in the 8-bit style games.
It also did the slide which was a game changer from 3 onwards.
I really love your Dr. Light voice impression, and I'm glad it's intended to sound like the one from Mega Man 8. It's easily my favorite voice for Dr. Light purely because of how hilarious it is. Every time I stream the Mega Man X games for my friends and followers, I always like reading the capsule dialogue out loud in my own impression of that voice. XD
speaking of megaman 8 voice acting i did find it pretty funny that megaman sounded girlish than roll
Doc Robot levels are honestly bangers, I don't know who hates them. They don't feel like they bad the run time, they feel like an escalation. Suddenly all those E-tanks don't feel like they trivialize a game balanced for less health. Rush Jet becomes a resource you're careful with because it can run out if you abuse it when you don't need it. It's honestly always been one of my favorite bits and I remember disappointment that future games didn't make us fight the throwback roster.
Didn't realise it was a rushed production, but that actually explains my favourite glitch in the game (and damned if I remember where I heard this) - if you jump down a pit and hold right on player 2's controller, you won't die. And as a bonus, you'll be able to jump like you're underwater at all times. Makes all the Rush segments play differently, since you don't don't actually need him. And on top of that, if you let you energy zero out *before* you push and hold right, you'll be immune to damage. Only spikes can kill you after that. (I started out having my brother hold it for me, but eventually, I started using one of my toes.)
This game was probably supposed to come out in December like most other MM games but the Super Famicom was coming out in November, so 3 was rushed to market in September
In my oppinion MM3 has the best soundtrack of the whole franchise. I like the tense music so much. Starting from the Title Song, over the Robot Master Selection Screen, even the Robot Master Introduction Music was different but really cool. The Boss FIght Music was intense and cool, and the Stages had memorible and intense music.
I always thought it was cool, that the Doc Man stages came up. MM3 was the only came that had such a thing, and made it feel more important to get to Wileys Castle. Always thought of them as Robots who broke in to the before visited worlds and twisted them. And after that, you have to choose Break Man as a boss in the Robot Master Screen. It was like: Woooa, what's going on here.
Even if the Wiley stages were not that hard, they had an End of Game Feel to it, I alwys appreciated.
So MM3 did things different and I liked a lot for it. To be honest I came to play MM2 many years later, never played it in childhood. Despite a cool game I always thought of it as short and to easy. It has cool music als well, but for me the MM3 Soundtrack is the better one.
I always think MM3 feels like it has more weight to it, storywise.
I’m sorry, did you just say that the spark shock was useful?!
It is. It's localized time stopping on normal enemies. I shoot the monkey's on hardman's stage with it, and run past them. The bosses that are weak to it die in seconds. It destroys the Wily mobile's canon in 4 shots. All the weapons in MM 3 have some merit.
I would say it’s only use are a doc robot and the one wily machine…. Top Spin also kills monkeys
I never used it 🤣
The boss rush was always my favorite part of NES action games. It was like a reunion with old friends and a chance to show off how far I had improved.
But.
Getting a boss rush against bosses from another game entirely? Easily made this my favorite rental ever, back in the day.
It's incredible that people still think that Mega Man 2 and 3 are the best in the series when the likes of 6 and 9 exist. 6 still works within the NES's hardware limitations but being one of the last 10 games released on the system meant they had more time than just about any other developer to understand the system and work within it to make something that could stand up to 2D platformers for decades to come, and 9 while a retro throwback, knocks it out of the park with music, level design, the most useful arsenal of special weapons, and fun bosses. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on those two in particular.
I partially agree. Mega Man 6 is the best of the NES Mega Man games. Unless the Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 ruined Mega Man 9 (possible), that game is like Mega Man 2 (NES): badly overhyped. Not bad games, mind you, but Mega Man *needs* his slide. Mega Man 9 honestly felt kind of "try hard" with its difficulty. I ain't a great Mega Man player, but Mega Man 11 got it right when it came to handling the different selectable difficulty levels *and* the difficulty curve within a particular difficulty level's gameplay.
I have not gotten to it yet, but all I see in Mega Man 9 is a bunch of BS deaths. I would actually argue that the NES in general has a stronger selection of platformers than almost any other system. Yes, including the SNES.
@@thomasffrench3639 Yeah, due to various reasons, I had to skip MM9 on original hardware. Finally got to play it via the Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 on Steam. It wasn't bad, but it is like the one thing the devs liked about Mega Man 3 (NES) was the difficulty of the Doc Robot Stages. XD
@@KamisamanoOtaku Man, you just made yourself an enemy of MM9 stans by calling it Doc Robot stages. I have seen the weapons of MM9, and they seem to be the best of the series, but the level design is among the weakest. I need to play the game, but those are my initial impressions.
@@thomasffrench3639 I *just* got to play Mega Man 9 for the first time about a month ago (got the Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 as a late X-Mas gift). Because of the general praise MM9 had received in the community, and how friends who warned me it could be brutal also found Mega Man 11's higher difficulties unfairly difficult, I went in thinking I'd be fine.
*I was wrong.* I won't call it a bad game, but if there's a fan version that adds the slide back in - I can live without the charge shot - I hope I find it. It isn't just MM9, either; whether older or newer titles, I feel like Rock *needs* his Slide and his Rush Coil. ;)
So... if the MM9 stans bother reading this, it probably won't make a difference, but now y'all have context for my preferences. XD
17:02 Castlevania Retrospective coming soon?
Edit: Castlevania III padded content by having branching paths. I have no issue with that, it is a joy to go in different paths, but thought I would point that out.
Bump I hope J sees this and considers it.
To be honest, if you want to play Castlevania III, play the famicom version. Far better balanced plus has a sick soundtrack.
@@antimatter3084 that’s the only version I’ve played. So yes, I’m well aware that the difficulty and music is way better.
@@thomasffrench3639 I saying it in case J's see this and for some reason does a Castlevania retrospective since I want a fair analysis of the game lmao.
OMG! Your impression at 5:15 of the bad voice acting for Dr. Light in Mega Man 8 is spot on! 🤣
I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you on the doc robot section. I played the game hard-core on initial release. And what that section provides; is a massive amount of frustration, with a huge feeling of reward. It wasn’t added to simply fluff the game Content. It was there to make you struggle. So that you felt a much larger reward when you finally succeeded. I struggled through each level a countless number of times. And the feeling I felt when I finally succeeded; was paramount. The password code I got, after it was all said, and done; was golden to me. We didn’t have the Internet. And I didn’t have the money for a game guide. And even if I did; simply finding an issue was hard. My parents wouldn’t take me to go searching for a magazine. Back in those days; those things were out of my reach. Grinding through MegaMan threes endgame was all I looked forward to after school. trying to beat the puzzles was all I thought about while at school. And it also was a throwback to MegaMan two. It was dopamine for kids. This is a very real and Japanese approach on things. Granted, I am American. But I still felt it. 100%.🤷♂️
I would argue that section of the game had a huge value to its active audience at the time. Some thing I feel that a current player nowadays are may find it difficult to understand from the shoes of the past.
Eh, it's alright.
I really like how you show some pages from the Mega Man Archie comics. Those were quite faithful to the game lore and helped clarify things that may not have clear during the NES days. Ah, I miss those comics…
I'm clearly the odd one out. I liked the "Doc Robot" bits, though I always thought it was Dark Robots. The game's easy enough that the extra challenge of the replay stages wasn't a problem, and I liked the concept of refighting bosses from the previous game - since the only two Mega Man games I originally played were 2 and 3. It was a fun call back to me.
As for the Doc Robot battles and figuring out the weaknesses of Mega Man 2 bosses to Mega Man 3 weapons... back then, we didn't have the Internet yet! Not until about three years later! Even then, the Internet was nowhere near as robust as it is now! We HAD to rely on Nintendo Power and other gaming magazines for such juicy gaming info.
Or just experiment for yourself (and if you have a little knowledge of Mega Man 2 still in your mind, try to think "What's the closest thing to his old weakness, in terms of element and/or projectile pattern?). Metal Man is METAL Man, so of course the magnet seeks his extra metallic body the way it does Hard Man's! Wood Man is weak to being cut by sawblades, and your bladed weapons now are Shadow Blade and Needle Cannon! Flash Man is weak to the drill bombs and metal blades, so again Needle Cannon for its penetrative ability resembling a Crash Bomb! Top Spin is the same element as Air Shooter, so try it on the bosses weak to that; Shadow Blade is a ninja star coated in toxic fluid, so it's the element of Bubble Lead; Search Snake rolls along the ground so it's the attack pattern of Bubble Lead.
The Doc Robots all having at least two weaknesses helps.
I'm still glad Capcom made sure to have new level designs for the revisits. Certainly keeps them from being as repetitive as they could've been.
I'm glad you mentioned the faster ladder climbing. It gets overlooked a lot when talking about the game (not terribly surprising since it is of course a small detail). It's honestly the #1 reason I was so disappointed that they decided to go with the Mega Man 2 foundation for 9 and 10. Slow ladder climbing is so frustrating when you know it can be done better.
When I was a kid we loved the doc robot levels.. it was like another 50% of the game added. I don't remember it being hated, we thought it was cool.
Controversial Statement
I prefer 3 over 2
You get protoman, rush,16 bosses, a good story if you know it, and i love the weapons
Speaking of Doc Robots, The X games I feel can be too short at times and I wish those had some sort of Doc Robots.
There’s the X Hunters in X2 and Vile Mk 2 in X3 but those are optional and not mandatory.
I don't mind it. Sometimes having an game short isn't an bad case. It doesn't really padded the game out.
I remember a ROM hack that added an intro to this game, and it felt right at home. That intro theme deserves an accompaniment.
Great review! Looking forward to 4 eventually
It's quite funny that back in 1990 this game released and most people who played it wouldn't have ever realised it was "unfinished" yet the creator comes out and apologises for releasing an unfinished game.
Then you come to the modern day and have companies like Bethesda releasing Fallout 76, a game that you only had to play for about 5 minutes to realise how incredibly and obviously unfinished it was and Bethesda argued it wasn't, said it was meant to be like that (aside from the millions of bugs), cheaped out on the extras that people paid a lot of money for, lied about features they said they would never add only to add them within a year of launch, etc, etc.
How times change.
About the Doc Robot, yes they're flawed, in that there really should have been more check points but... I feel like they've gotten a lot if negativity that they didn't necessarily have back when the game was released.
It wasn't "filler" like so many people claim. Lots of games reused level assets for multiple levels back then. At least they tool the time to make the levels look all destroyed and stuff. You got to fight those giant hardhats it looked like they were building in needle man revisited.
And the doc robots themselves? You be to tell me that we get to fight all the bosses from mega man 2 on TOP of this one, and we get to use all the new weapons to do it?
Games back then *didn't do that*. Most of them literally couldn't due to space issues. Bringing back 8 of the most iconic bosses of all time was amazing, not lazy. It was unheard of to bring back bosses from a previous game.
and yeah, it cranked up the difficulty, but we had 9 E tanks to help burn through the challenge. It was a crazy plot twist.
makes me a little sad to see how people will condemn them without even giving them a shot. that's all.
I just think they could've made it more tolerable and fair in those segments cause they were pretty obnoxious m. That & the levels in MM3 goes on for too long. I think MM4-MM6 implemented those segments far better than what MM3 offers. So at least it was improved.
I agree that the idea of the Doc Robot stages are pretty cool, especially as a way to tie the entire trilogy together along with Proto Man being the beginning of the Robot Masters and a reference to all of the previous robot masters of the series. However, in practice a lot of the level design in the Doc Robot stages suck, and although they have their good parts, they sour the experience of the entire middle of the game. The rest of the game is great tho
3:50 He looks less like Dr. Wily and more like Heihachi about to deck me with an EWGF
Hot Take. I liked the Doc Robot levels... even as a kid. It was something that broke the mold of the established Mega Man end stages. Also, I get to fight against what most consider the greatest set of robot masters with NEW weapons? Yes please!
If you look at the comments, theres way more people who approve the docbots than hated them. I feel people who came in long after the fact on the internet are more vocal about them being too hard than reality.
IDK I always liked the Doc Robot stages and the MM2 boss rematches as a kid. Mega Man 2 was a game I didn't own, could only rent it once in a while so I thought it was really cool to be able to fight them again in the sequel.
I still have no idea why the Doc Robot stages are bad. I like how the game is longer and I like the concept of the remixed stages too. The only downside is the lack of a checkpoint before the first Doc Robot fight.
This game's soundtrack even past 8 bit games is really good
This was the first mega man game I ever played.
It still remains my favorite of the original series to this day.
*also first boxart with arm cannon.
*4:50 would literally let it sit at the menu to listen....
I think me too, then #2
Honestly, MM3 is my favourite Mega Man platformer of them all.
I know people clamor over 1 and 2 but give me literally any other classic MM game over those. 3 is one I found quite fun!
Great coverage!
People like to call the doc robot stages needless filler, but I felt they served the important role of actually giving you the opportunity to make good use of all of the weapons in the game - especially since, as we saw, the actual final stages were rushed and not really anything to write home about. If anything, the doc robot stages are the real final stages.
That MM8-style Dr. Light voice is golden lol, keep it up.
Funny how both Megaman and Sonic introduced a rivel turned friend in the 3rd game
Ig Sonic CD doesn't exist lel
@@entertainer_ev2747 I meant numerically but good point
Maybe I am the odd one out here, but I liked the concept of the Skull (Doc) Robots. These Frankeinstein's monster of a boss model re-using the consciences of the baddies batch from 2, rather cruelly turning them into these monsters just to die again to you feels right out of a horror movie. But maybe I can only appreciate this since I only considered their stages "different" rather than "harder" re-runs, but it's a cool detail that CAPCOM paid attention to the story of an 8-bit series.
I loved the doc robot sections
I highly recommend any mega man fans here to check out the archie comics that were made for the classic series. Other than the sonic crossover, they're retelling of the games stories but it has some of the best writing the series has ever seen with amazing art to along with it.
I bring it up on this video specifically because I specifically remember the mega man 3 arc standing out in my head for some reason.
Despite the minimalistic title screen, Mega Man 3 did something really cool that you don't tend to see often: it starts the music right off the bat, at the copyright screen. It gives the intro a _lot_ more impact (compared to waiting for the actual title screen to start the music), and to this day I still can't articulate why.
I would often sit and let it play before pressing start. Just something special about this tune.
10:38 “I was able to come out on top” *shows Top Man*
J knows how to do _Visual Pun_ trope right.
I like the doc robot stages. In a MM game where the Wily stages were an absolute cakewalk, the doc robot stages provide the only real challenge in this game.
Disagree big time with the assertion that the Doc Robot sections are "padding", those sections are really fun and somewhat challenging.
13:33 - So, when I was kid Mega Man 3 was the first video game I ever bought with money that I had earned myself. (We did a yard sale.) I worked very hard to get the money to buy that game. And I was not disappointment and I played it to death, writing passwords in a little spiral notebook.
So anyway, when I encountered Doc Robot I was *elated*. You mean I get to fight the Mega Man 2 bosses, a $50 game, or about $120 in today's money, all within Mega Man 3?! I was so soooo happy. (I didn't own Mega Man 2. In fact I never did get a copy. I had Mega Man 3 and one day got Mega Man 1 because it was on sale for $20.)
So anyway, yeah, I always have good memories of the Doc Robots. Even though they make the game longer, and they just recycle the old stages. I was more accepting of that stuff back then.
Agreed, would you just wanted the game be 4 lvls shorter? I guess if you don't like them you can password right past them if they bother you that much, but I never thought they were that hard that I couldn't handle them. I thought was cool way for us to see past robot masters return with new weaknesses.(Metalman fittingly is weak to magnet missiles heh.) Sure the coolest way to have done was have the actual robot masters fight us and get their weapons, but the game didn't have enough memory for that to happen. The docbots were a cool work around that allows this rematch to happen that made sense with in the story. Wily just making some mass produced proxy robot to mimic other masters to stall Megaman fits what was going on in the game.
I feel like calling the Doc Robot stages one of the worst parts in the series is overkill, especially when games like X6 and X7 exist. Personally, I kind of like the Doc Robot stages, even though I mainly prefer two of the stages. It's not as bad as I make it out to be now that I'm not a little kid, but the Rush Jet section in Needle Man's Doc Robot stage is probably what worry about most in a playthrough of Mega Man 3.
MM3 "Good"!?
It's freaking *GREAT!*
Once you LIVE by the *Slide* you NEVER look back!
To be honest, I liked the black void opening screen. Something compelling about it.
As for any player of megaman 3, I feel obligated to mention an awesome romhack called megaman 3 revamped! I won't take too long but overall, it makes better use of setpieces, and makes plenty of new and creative puzzles with them. And also takes advantage of more weapons (as well as improving many of those weapons) and enemies. Almost every stage has had a noticeable change in design to make it feel more impressive. While I'd say one way it falls short is improving the doc robot stages, the crowning jewel is the complete overhaul of the wily stages to make them actually feel more complete and worth the title of a "final gauntlet". According to the romhackers there's a whopping 40 new screens added to the game. I figured I'd mention this coz, I think if you have some extra time, it's worth checking out by yourself! There's also plenty of other additions i didn't mention. So I think you should!
It's nice to hear the Shadow Blade getting some positive reflection for a change. I always thought it was a cool weapon even without proper context. A robot throwing a giant shuriken? Yeah, that's cool.
Doc Robot is one of my favorite moments in the franchise :'>
@@youngkappakhan I don't remember the Rush jet section in the original Needle Man stage, but maybe I'm forgetting something.
@@youngkappakhan I liked it because I liked Mega Man 3. So more Mega Man 3 felt awesome.
@@youngkappakhan Sorry, Mega Man 3 is my favorite. Don't know what to tell you. Mega Man 2 -5 are collectively the best imo. Your criticisms are valid, I'm just explaining why I liked it.
@@youngkappakhan It's game from 1990 on the NES lol. Grass is calling, it needs to be touched.
@@youngkappakhan She even said your criticism was valid. What is your problem? I can't believe I'm seeing this kind of hostility on a Mega Man 3 comment section. For the record, I liked the Doc Robot section too. Read the rest of the comments on this video, majority like it. Go make your own neckbeard game, dude.
With this game's ending, a theory popped up that after the events of mega man 3, Dr Wily in the rest of the games is a robot. This is backed up by the fact that before mega man fights wily inside of gamma, it turns out to be a robot fake. Then in mega man 10, wily catches a fever and mega man suspects it to be the roboenza virus that causes robots to go crazy. And in mega man 11, once wily is defeated, he uses the double gear to beg for forgiveness as he's been doing. However not only was that used as a gag, but wily can be seen making his escape in this game before the credits even come up completley debunking this theory.
You know you can just jump on those Spark Man garbage cubes instead of murdering your thumb/wallet turbo-shooting them to bits, right? They won't hurt you; they're just scrap metal packed nice and smooth and you're a tough robo-boy who can't even get sick like we humans can. Go get 'em, son! :
I used to have so much fun with the second controller debug mode as a kid. I mean it was kinda tricky to use the second controller with my feet, but hey :D
I can honestly say I was bopping to this entire video. Makes me miss the days when renting these games
Mega Man 3 is my number 1 favorite Mega Man video game in the classic series! With 4, 11, 7, 6 and 10 being 2nd and 3rd places!!!
"Everyone agrees that the Doc Robot stages were a mistake"? Really? Because I loved them, and I've only heard people say good things about them. They gave something in between the all-too-short Dr. Wily stages and the 8 initial stages, something for you to really use those weapons on, to collect and expend lives and e-tanks, and in short, to have MORE GAME.
It's not that the concept of it was bad. It's just the way it's design is exhausting & and annoying. The levels goes on for too long, they could've add more checkpoints rather the one being after the first Doc Robot defeat and the Last one before the 2nd Doc Robot fight and Doc Robot itself can be obnoxious. Had they make them more tolerable, than it wouldn't be an issue.
AH right yes, that's why I like Megaman 3 but love Megaman 4 significantly more. LOL
Yeah, I definitely passworded past the Doc Robot stages too, oh my lord those are just way too brutal. 😂
Really? You think MM 3 too brutal? and you like MM4 more? I replayed all games when I bought MM 11, and I found MM 4 the biggest chore play thru of the NES games. It has way too many hole jumping bad guys. Some in areas with ice. I find the game far more annoying play for this reason. The weapons are largely meh. You generally get by on charged buster to often the subpar weapons.(This often the case with MM 4-6.)
The docbot stages are not that tough. I beat them as a kid as I learned the weaknesses for the docbots. You have all the weapons and E tanks to get through the docbot stages. Any of the tougher parts can be rush jetted over, as if you jump it doesn't waste energy, so you can fly for insane distances. The toughest boss of the bunch is docbot quickman, but if you just let the boomerangs hit you, then you won't take the collision damage which is far worse. He dies fairly fast to gemini laser. Again you can easily have 9 E tanks cheese you way thru if you're that bad at this. (Red A-6 starts the game with with 9 E tanks.) I don't see how the docbots are any worse idea than the fake castles 4-6 do. Instead of being forced fight all bosses in a set order with your weapons needing be topped off, you instead get fight the stages in any order and don't need worry about your weapons enegry levels upon winning each stage.
Megaman4 was the game that came out the year I was born. My parents owned it, so I spent the most time with it. haha
I played these games before the internet was widely available for finding passwords without knowing a friend, so like, my experiences with 3 were nooot fun. lol@@Lastjustice
I hate the WIND that blows the metal robot around on MAGNET MAN'S stage.
And on the subject of the doc robot stages: Are you going to shit on the extra castles (i.e. 4 extra, harder levels) in mm4, 5 and 6?
The Doc robots stages never bothered me much. They are effectively the "1st fortress" of later games (Cossack, Protoman, and Mr. X) and considering the Wily stages in MM3 are rather lacking, I felt they were fine for post-8 robot master content. I think people's _real_ problem was the recycled aesthetics than anything, not that there were 4 stages (as becomes the norm in MM4-6) or that you fight the MM2 bosses (which was actually fun imo). I think they would get far less hate if they had unique looks and design.
It's also that the first checkpoint is always after the first Doc Robot. So if you die before getting into the first Doc Robot, you have to start the first halve of the level all over again.
It’s funny to me now, I’ve watched a lot of these retrospective play throughs and such, nobody seems to know that you can jump from the rush jet and not use any energy. No one has ever mentioned this! He’ll follow underneath you! This makes it super overpowered! One of the reasons I can only play three or six from the original series.
I’ve seen it quite a few times people mention it.
Stumbled upon your channel, and love the Megaman content. I've been playing these games since they came out. A couple other interesting things about this game. Megaman 2 took all your E-tanks away after a game over. In Megaman 3 the number of E-tanks you had is stored in the password, so even if you quit the game and came back, you still had your E-tanks. Games 4, 5, and 6 found a nice balance where you kept your E-tanks when got a game over, but lost them if you had to use a password.
Speaking of passwords, this game's password system was way too easy to crack. I'm writing this completely from memory of when I cracked it over 20 years ago, but if I remember right:
A single blue or red dot set your number of E-tanks from 0-9. The color doesn't matter, as long as only one of the 10 E-tank boxes has a dot. This took up 10 of the 36 possible boxes.
Each individual Robot Master had a corresponding box, where placing a single blue dot showed that Robot Master as defeated.
The only caveat was each Robot Master was paired with another Robot Master to form 4 pairs. If both the Robot Masters from the same were defeated, the two blues dots would be replaced by a single red dot. If you placed two blue dots for two Robot Masters in the same pair, it would give you an error. You had to use the red dot in other spot instead, which took out the pair. I don't remember who was paired with who anymore. So four red dots took out all 8 robot masters.
The next four levels followed the same pattern, each level had a box for a blue dot, and each of the two pairs had a box for the red dot. So six red dots got you too the Wily levels.
If you are following along (10 E-tank boxes) + (8 Robot Master boxes) + (4 Robot Master pair boxes) + (4 Doc Robot level boxes) + (2 Doc Robot level pair boxes) = 28. So 28 out of 36 boxes had a single purpose. The other 8 boxes were "dummy" boxes that would give you an error every time unless they were empty.
With only 36 boxes and such a simple algorithm, I think it took us like 2 hours to figure out every password combination.
The passwords were much more "encrypted" in the later Megaman games.
Like Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3 is another game that's popular and also considered the best or even favorite Mega Man game. But like Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3 does has problems. Not alot and doesn't ruined the enjoyment of the game. But it's easy to notice. As for my thoughts. What 2 did for QOL improvement over 1, 3 does the same thing for the first 2 and so on. Features like the Slide & Rush was an great addition. Other QOL improvements like E Tanks to where you can carry 9 instead of 4 and you don't lose them when you get an Game Over and the level designs in the Robot Master stages are more tolerable & unique than the ones from the first 2 games. But now for the negatives. The weapons are once again unbalanced and not all that fun to use ( Only good ones are the Magnet Missiles & Shadow Blade ). The filler levels are absolutely exhausting & Doc Robot can go die in the fire. Wily Castles are very underwhelming and the bosses are ridiculously easy. And lastly, this game was rushed that many content and other things were cut. It's no Mega Man X6 levels of bad. But still
Overall Mega Man 3 is good and I enjoyed it more than 2 personally. But it's still not as great as it could've been. Looking forward to Mega Man 4 review. That game is where the series starting to get into the right direction.
Mega Man 4 has it's own set of problems, at least from how I'm playing it. I find the charge shot to be tedious to use, and prefer to use weapons, but then a bunch of weapon immunity and bosses taking no damage from the basic pellets gets a bit on my nerves. Mega Man 5 has the worst weapons in the series, so I don't want to get into that, but you get my point. Each of these games has flaws, it's not like Mega Man 4-6 is so significantly better than MM2 and MM3.
@@jaretco6423 I don't think Mega Man 2 or 3 are as flawed as people say, but that's fair.
@@jaretco6423 Except it's not. But whatever you say.
Megaman 3 is a beautiful game and it was rushed, imagine if more people got more time to work on it
MM3 is my personal favorite game in the series, and actually my favorite game of all time.
Yes it has flaws from being rushed, (pun intended) but the introduction of the slide, and Rush himself, was fantastic. The music IMO is better than MM2’s music. The levels are great.
I know people don’t like the Doc robot stages, but it created the idea of a “castle” before Wily’s fortress, that we saw in 4-6. Being able to re-fight the MM2 bosses was great, and challenging. Wily’s stages are tons of fun, even if the bosses like the clones and Gamma have big flaws. At least it’s not the wall bubbles from MM2
I think one of the things about this game that makes it look incomplete are the final castle levels. Correct me if im wrong but this is the only game in classic sextet that the map shown in the castle screen does not match up to the actually castle levels. For instance, the refight section is mapped completely outside the castle, as are both Wily fights. The first two stages are mapped as verticle and to the left but you are going up and right, which would put you outside in the nearby woods.
That is so true. I may have noticed it once, but by this point in the NES life cycle mapping out the geography of the levels in the level select was standard practice. So the fact that they don’t match in this is telling of the development cycle. Nice detail catch
Megaman 3 OST was insane bro. Top notch music for sure
I enjoy Megaman 3 way more than 2, with the added sliding, Rush being better than just spawning in random item platforms and better designed bosses than that accursed Booby Trap in MM2. I personally never had a problem with the Doc Robot Stages but I can understand them being blatant filler and shameless MM2 nostalgia pandering before nostalgia pandering was cool I guess. I’d even argue the MM3 title screen intro them is way better than MM2 but that’s not to say I hate MM2’s. I can’t wait for the Megaman 4 video.
I don't necessarily think it was nostalgia pandering as much as a conclusion to the first 3 games. I mean there's tons of references to the first two games in this one.
@@thomasffrench3639 They weren't sure the series would continue as each game could be their last. The japanese subtitle was the end of wily? As the game concluded where it could been the finale and called it a day. Heck that's reason most of actually believed Doc Cossack was a legit new villain since Wily might really been gone.(It was probably the only time in the imposter trilogy,4-6 we bought it.) Every robot master has a cameo in MM 3 since they wanted honor the entire series.
@@Lastjustice yep, that’s what I was getting at. You said everything that I was thinking
While I do love the soundtrack and the new additions they added like slide and Rush, there were a lot that I felt held it back from being the best. However, MM3 Improvement Project addresses a lot of it, and I actually consider that version to compete with 2!
I never knew there was an improvement project for mm3, gotta check that out later
@BioMega96 There wer many unfinished & unpolished Mega Man games being revamp by an fan-made games. MM3, MMX3, MMX5, MMX6, etc. There so much better than what we expected.
Mega Man 3 Game title game music gets me the vibes
That look on Mega Man's face just kills me. 😂
MM3 has the best music and I like how 'long' the game is. Doc Robots bring the game to 12 stages instead of 8.
Some things that scream "obvious beta" when playing this game:
- no intro before the title screen
- title screen is pretty barren
- the weird flickering line in the stage select screen (I legit thought it was my copy of the game that had the problem)
- the debug codes (activated via controller 2) are still accessible
- Rush Jet being OP
- Top Spin randomly spending the whole energy bar
- Rush Marine not opening its mouth to shoot while the graphics for it are in the game
- the glitch that allows you to use Rush Jet without having it
- even as a child I noticed the color palette in the game looks oddly vibrant compared to the one used in every other Mega Man game (not a bad thing, but it makes it stand out)
- the infamous missing planet from Gemini Man's stage
- there are graphics for a city during the Wily cutscene that are never used
- the little Skull Fortress shown in the midgame cutscene looks nothing like the one actually in the game (but it matches the one in Mega Man 2)
- but the Skull Fortress map music and the Proto Man theme for the ending are way longer than what the game lets you hear.
- I always wondered what was up with fighting "Break Man" without his face mask for the whole game and then during his actual boss fight he suddenly covers his face?
Even with all those, it's still a pretty solid game.
BTW, the "Doc Robot" stages weren't the only nod to Mega Man 2, the credits theme is a remixed version of that melancholic ending theme from Mega Man 2.
That whole "unfinished" stuff was later rectified with fan-made patches.
For example, _Mega Man 3 Improvement_ by *kuja killer.*
- Lots of bugs were fixed.
- An intro cutscene was properly added and translated (you can actually hear that iconic theme in full!)
- The memory was expanded to alleviate sprite flickering issues.
- And so much more.
You've mentioned _Tweaks_ patches for X5 and X6 - so I've figured it's time to share this useful MM3 tidbit with you.
I love it when fan made games makes an better version of those games.
One detail that I have always liked about the Doc stages, and that I feel isn't mentioned that often, is that the MM2 bosses generally match the designs of the Doc stages really well;
this is especially obvious on Gemini Man's stage, where you have flashing platforms, underwater sections and tadpoles, which very clearly match Flash Man and Bubble Man.
There are also several other matching themes on the other stages, such as the fast-moving machinery, the moving platforms and the fast-blinking lights on Doc Spark Man's stage, which are perfect for Metal Man and Quick Man, and you also have the wood-coloured textures and the lava streams on Doc Shadow Man's stage, which are very fitting for Wood Man and Heat Man.
Doc Needle Man is probably least obvious in this regard, but it does seem to have been designed to a high-altitude air-themed area in the middle of the night, and this is good for Air Man and Crash Man.