Mega Man 3 Video Game Review (About In Description)
3The Blue Bomber's 8-bit adventures continue on Wii with the arrival of his third original adventure for the Virtual Console.
The review of this product is based on a re-released version of the game. Because of this change of medium and the passage of time, it is possible that there are slight factual differences between the original retail product and the version reviewed. The following review should be used as a reference for how well the game stood up over time rather than an evaluation of how it would have scored based on its original release date.
It's a good time to be a fan of Mega Man. After the Virtual Console release of his original adventure, then the VC debut of its immediate sequel, then the WiiWare arrival of the all-new Mega Man 9 and its two waves of downloadable content, you'd think that the floodgates might close for a while -- that Capcom might hold back the rest of its classic Mega Man games for some later time, to give Wii gamers a chance to breathe. That thought's just been blown to bits, though, as the avalanche of 8-bit Mega Man action just doesn't want to relent -- as evidenced by today's addition of Mega Man 3 to the VC lineup. Hope you still have some Wii Points left, Mega Man fans. Because it's a good time to be one of you.
Mega Man 3 is, of course, the third installment in the original 8-bit NES Mega Man series. It first came to that system 18 years ago in 1990, and it was the first game in the series to be released to an already-established audience of franchise fans. The first Mega Man had come and gone with little fanfare, but Mega Man 2 had exploded onto the scene and found great success -- inspiring a wave of popularity for the franchise and the character. So by the time Mega Man 3 came around, Capcom could have decided to just make it a quick, cookie-cutter sequel. To cash in.
They didn't. Keiji Inafune and his team of developers instead took the time to craft an innovative, evolutionary installment that took the foundation of Mega Man 2 and expanded upon it. Adding new characters, new gameplay mechanics and a greater number of more detailed and challenging levels, Mega Man 3 left no aspect of the series untouched. It was no quick, cookie-cutter sequel. It was a fully realized follow-up to one of the best action games ever made for the NES.
The core gameplay of Mega Man 3 is much the same as the other games in the series -- you control Mega Man, a little blue robot with a gun on his arm, and as you fight and defeat each of the game's Robot Master bosses you then gain the power to use their signature weapons. Those weapons then each prove to be especially effective against one of the other Robot Masters, prompting you to try to discover the right Rock-Paper-Scissors order in which to challenge and defeat each one. After you take out all eight of the initial bosses in Mega Man 3, though, something different occurs -- you get a whole new set of stages to choose from.
Whereas Mega Man, Mega Man 2 and even Mega Man 9 took you straight into the linear progression of Dr. Wily's Castle after you defeated the first set of bosses in each game, Mega Man 3 extends the adventure with the addition of four interstitial "Doc Robot" levels. These four stages are remixed takes on four of the initial Robot Master levels, and it just goes to show you how much more involved and intricate the level design work was for this sequel -- you'll fall down a completely harmless vertical corridor the first time you go through Spark Man's stage, for example, but when you later revisit that scene for the Doc Robot Spark Man stage, that same shaft will be lined with deadly spikes. You'll see some large, partially buried hard hats stuck in the ground the first time you run through Needle Man's level, but when you later return for the remixed run those hats will unearth themselves and turn out to be huge mini-bosses that you'll have to destroy to move on.
It's a thoughtful and interesting take on Mega Man level design that, unfortunately, was never really seen again later in the series. But there are several other additions this sequel made that carried on into the franchise's future -- like the slide technique, the introduction of Rush and the debut of Mega Man's brother, Proto Man.
The slide is the first and most obvious addition to the game, as it's an immediately available new dodge technique that you can activate at any time by pressing down on the D-Pad and then hitting the jump button. The slide can be used to quickly move out of the way of an incoming enemy attack, or to just get Mega Man to fit through tight spaces -- there are some pathways in Mega Man 3's levels that are too short for our hero to run through, but sliding lets him zip straight through to the other side.