This will be much shorter and less substantial than my Zelda II rant, so never fear.
So. Keiji Inafune, the father of the Mega Man franchise, once stated that he was disappointed in how Mega Man 3 turned out. I also get the feeling, somehow, that people don't really take to that game as much either. Mega Man 2 is far and away the series' darling, apparently, and at somewhat the expense of the third title. Mega Man 4 brought the Mega Buster, and the entire 8-bit run of the series started to become a bit irrelevant after that as the X series began, and as the original series got a cartoony facelift on the next-gen platforms.
Of all the Mega Man titles that surface during the series' multiple primes (the entire Mega Man franchise - spin-offs included - has this sort of ebb-and-flow to it that has it seeing multiple times of prosperity AND irrelevance), it seems that 3 is the most overlooked. This, coupled with Inafune-sama's statement, baffled me.
Why? Because Mega Man 3 is one of the greatest NES games I've ever played.
The level designs were wicked without being overly cheap. The slide move was first implemented in this title, and was also most cleverly used here. (Even in combat - the quickest way to kill those one-eyed robots that throw the ball-and-chain at you is to slide under the projectile and cap him point-blank.) There was NO STUPID SHIELD weapon, and every weapon (except for one) that WAS in this game had some sort of utility beyond trivial "I'll use this in this one situation and that'll be that". The character designs were on par with Mega Man 2 and, with the exception of the unfortunately corny "Top Man" (whose puny weapon I referenced above), were perhaps even better (sexual innuendo of "Hard Man" aside - hey, the second title had "Wood Man", alright?).
But what strikes me most about this game is the pacing, challenge and overall mood of the game. No doubt, the visuals were always strong for an 8-bit Mega Man title. But there's something about the eerie darkness of Gemini Man's icy, lunar-esque stage. The sterile, mechanical, robotic nature of Spark Man's stage. The almost disgusting snake-tubing that builds the structures in Snake Man's stage. The way that the entirety of Shadow Man's stage almost sneers at you despite it being an inanimate entity. All of these things, of course, supplemented by composer code-named Bun-Bun's fantastic jazzy, bluesy music that is at once both antagonistic and motivating, both chilling and heroic.
And then you've got Protoman, who drops in from nowhere every now and then, fueling the mystery as to what the hell's going on here. An added challenge, extra training for your slide moves, a robot that moves almost just like you and has similar tendencies.
What about the return of the eight robot masters from Mega Man 2? The precedent was set here to add an intermediate layer before you actually get to Dr. Wily's castle, but after you take down the eight robots. And Capcom did it without resorting to, "Hey! It's this new enemy! Oh wait now that you've defeated him, it's really Dr. Wily who's behind all this." This was Inafune-sama's main gripe - that due to rushing the product, the team had no choice but to add filler by reinventing four of the previous eight stages and throwing in the old boss robots.
I, for one, immensely enjoyed that aspect of the game.
I liked going back and seeing the vastly changed landscape of the stages I had previously conquered, especially because they were now effing difficult as all hell. And the mystery of the first time you see one of those unnamed robot bosses - what the hell are they? But then, oh, you see the mechanical "corpse" of robot masters past descend into that mysterious being, as if a robot ghost were powering its directive to smash you into itty witty bitty byte-sized bits. And then, the final reveal of Dr. Wily's castle after eight instances of looking like you'd seen a ghost.
And if you asked me, I couldn't care less about the fact that they changed the introductory music when you select a robot master to fight against. I like the "new" tune better, in fact.
I guess that was long. But whatever. Mega Man 3, like Zelda II: Adventure of Link before it, seems to be looked at with quizzical eyes. But also like Zelda II before it, it was dark, gritty, challenging, and had this different air about it that makes you scowl and clutch the controller, anxious to shove its taunting "You will never defeat me" nature back in its face. Mega Man 3 is among the pillars of 2D action platforming.
Well, I loved it.
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