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Jesus, Megaman 3 is hard.
…
Despite the uninspiring music and level design, and second-class boss design, I might have a higher estimation of the game were I able to beat a level or two. Maybe once, in fourteen years.
A criticism often levied against the second game — indeed the only frequent one I hear — is that it is too easy. Usually it’s the hardcore assholes who lay the claim, although other, less hardcore, sometimes not-at-all-assholes sometimes agree. I have always found the US version of the game at just the right level: tough enough to hold my attention, while forgiving enough that I can play the damned thing.
As regards the follow-up, I just don’t understand the appeal here. Were the game itself rewarding enough to drive me through the frustration, that would be fine. Megaman III, though, makes me feel even worse than when I play Ninja Gaiden III. At least the latter game is such a bizarre failure that I am compelled by a dark curiosity. Megaman III isn’t so charming as to be poor. It’s just dull. Way too dull to be way too hard. It seems to expect me to bring my own baggage: to play it, and like it, just because I played and liked its predecessor.
Then, I have never enjoyed Streets of Rage II as much as the first game. I feel Sonic 2 loses a lot of the appeal of the original. I don’t enjoy King of Fighters 2000 or ’97 nearly as much as the chapters to which they are mere upgrades. Perhaps the game is just too polished for my tastes. Perhaps the implicit inertia in its design and execution offends me on some level that I cannot justify in rational terms.
Or perhaps I’m just not hardcore enough.
I guess I can live with that.
Now here’s the crazy part.
I can’t beat a single boss in Megaman 2.
I can almost beat Megaman 3 blindfolded, except for the part where you have to fight bosses from Megaman 2. This is hard for the reasons above.
PROTIP: Hardman, Topman, Magnetman, and maybe Snakeman can all be defeated quite easily with just your megaman blaster.
I thought Megaman 4′s design was poor when I realized that the castles in that game are just the entirety of Megaman 1.
Yeah, 3 is the worst in the original series. However, if you want to span ALL Megaman games… 3 ain’t so bad… *coughcoughnetworktransmissioncoughcough*
-Dan
sonic 2 was clever but impeccably easy for some reason…
as for Megaman 3, thats odd… cos I spent half my childhood at my friend Bort’s house on his NES, and the first and only MM game I played for years was MM3 alone. We got to the final stages but were irrevocably reamed by the clone-Megaman 2 boss thingies, or whatever they were… was I good at the game, or was it just persistence?
I haven’t played megaman 3 in a decade and change, but I seem to remember that megaman 3 emphasized the “x beats y which beats z” mechanic, making it “the only way to beat y is with x, and then the only way to beat z is with y.”
Which makes playing it without a strategy guide pretty hard probably.
hint: start with topman.
Not that you should say, continue playing, once you’ve played through mega man 2 (It is a sad thing when your game line of roughly 17 or 18 games in the main line, peaks with no. 2).
Really? I don’t remember it to be all that hard. Just, you know, start with Magnet Man and work from there. It’s possible I abused the “no death from falling trick” (what was it, hold Up on Controller 2 constantly?), but I sincerly doubt it.
Not that this has anything with your actual point, but there was all this empty space down here…
Magnet Man hits you, I think, three times, and you’re dead. And his strategy is to RUN RIGHT AT YOU AND GIVE YOU NO ROOM TO AVOID HIM.
I mean. Maybe with another dozen lives I’d chance to pass him somehow. Three? No way.
Top Man isn’t that much better.
And the stages are just so tedious and punishing in their design, that I have no desire to work my way back through them just to take another pass at the boss.
That is crazy. Perhaps the Megaman 2 bosses are a lot harder in MM3. I wouldn’t doubt it. In their own game — the US version, anyway — the strategy is mostly “shoot endlessly, jumping over the enemy fire on occasion and switching sides of the screen when the boss comes too near you”. There’s not much to them, especially if you beat them in the right order (which is not too hard to deuce out, as the elements haven’t yet gotten as arbitrary as they would starting with the next game). Even if not, they don’t have many brains and they’re not that powerful.
I can’t beat any of those bosses. As noted below, only a few hits kill and it’s just about impossible for me to avoid getting hit. And I only have a couple of lives (and rarely much energy for the first one, by the time I get to the boss). And again, once I’m out of lives I have no interest in working my way back through the boring levels again. If I could continue right outside the boss chamber, that might be something.
Sonic 2 was where the whole game design theory of “HOLD RIGHT AND JUMP OCCASIONALLY” came into play. That was… basically the entire game. RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN. GOTTA GO FASTER FASTER FASTER FASTER FASTER.
And a lot of that running is well-structured in this case. It’s just — by stripping away everything else to focus upon this element, Naka also stripped away some of the charm of the first game. All of the surreal elements are gone. The exploration element, should you choose to take advantage of it, is nowhere near as developed. Whereas every level in the first game really changed the game dynamics, there really aren’t any other modes of play in the second.
Which is not to say that I desire another Marble Hill or Labyrinth Zone, or that I fail to appreciate some of the beautiful locations in the sequel.
It’s just. This is where a lot of the wonder began to tap out of the series. You can tell that Naka is a programmer; not an artist. His concept of the series is so… logical.
Of course, this used to be my favourite game in the series.
It hasn’t really held up for me over time, though. The older I get, the more transparent it becomes to me. And the more I lean back toward the first game, and the original conception of the character and series, that originally ensnared me, and all of the more gentle potential that never went anywhere in favor of easy crowd-pleasing antics.
I agree. Mega Man 3 is very hard. As I am playing through the new PS2 collection, Mega Man 3 has given me the most trouble. I’ve often debated with a friend which one is better, Mega Man 2 or Mega Man 3. I say 2 because it has the best music, better boss and upgrade designs, and because it introduced the charged shot, one of the trademark moves of Mega Man games to come. He says three mainly because of Protoman, the slide, and also because of 3′s Rush Jet, without a doubt the best RJ of the series. We also argue other little details about the games.
Mega Man games are short and to the point, and a big way to get people to play longer is to ensure that they never beat the game. A nasty trick indeed that has since been done away with by use of larger media which can house either more levels or more rewards for replaying games, etc. That being said, I don’t think you are expected to be able to beat a Mega Man on your first try. Capcom expects you to fail, and more importantly, to learn from your mistakes and memorize the levels so you know which enemies are going to be where, the pattern of the boss, and where the safe spots are (which can only be attained through trial and error).
These are very sheap tactics, but unfortunatly, they were the only tools available at the time. Is Mega Man 3 too hard though? It is if you expect that you can breeze through the on your first try, and it is too bad that a lot games allow to do just that, but with some dedication, and a steady mind and steady hands, it is doable. That is not to say that Mega Man 2 was a walk in the park though. Its Wily stage is long and very unforgiving.
Is it worth it? Protoman makes it worth it. This is the first game we see this Racer X archetype. He seems to be your foe, but is he really? Plus his theme is without a doubt the best piece of music in the game, and one of maybe two or three that I’d want to listen to outside of gameplay. I always look foreward to falling down and hearing that whistle. Protoman is really the only trump card 3 holds over 2, so if that doesn’t do it for you, my suggestion is to stick with Mega Man 2.
And while we are talkign abotu sequels, I’ve found the same thing as you, I believe, but with music. A band’s 2nd album is almost always their worst. I’ve always thought it was because they’ve had their whole lives to write and prepare their first album, but when it comes time for the second, it’s like they’ve used up all their good ideas already, and they do not have the time to come up with good ones. Perhaps the same could be said of video game designers, too. This rule is of course nto without exception.
TOLLMASTER commands you to stop playing Mega Man
Mega Man is a flawed concept from the get-go. You start the game essentially naked. You have a choice of 8 (or 6, if you’re OLD SKOOL) stages to choose from. You gain powers from beating the bosses in the 8 stages, and each power you gain gives you an extra chance to have the power that is SUPER EFFECTIVE against that boss. Usually, the SUPER EFFECTIVE weapon makes no sense to be SUPER EFFECTIVE, but that’s only an annoyance. The major flaw is that the game gets easier as you go on. It’s incredibly difficult to beat the first boss, but entirely too easy to be the last. This got even more ridiculous in the X games, where you not only have boss powers but armor upgrades, life upgrades, riding armor upgrades, arm upgrades, movement upgrades, scanning upgrades, and viagra upgrades.
As satisfying it is to get your arse kicked by a weapon, try again a few times, and then become teh Mizaster of that weapon, the system is flawed and should have been improved somehow somewhere along the quadrillions of Mega Man games that exist.
hm. the “HOLD RIGHT AND JUMP OCCASIONALLY” approach has been how the entire sonic series has seemed to me. I could never understand the popularity of it at all, it seemed to be all style no substance.
But then, I never owned a Genesis.
This is speaking from having thrown myself at the game, off and on, over a period of fourteen years.
I just happened to take another whack at it. And. No. Still no dice. Impenetrable to me.
Protoman is a neat touch. I guess that’s really what the third game has to add to the series: supporting cast, between Blues and Rush.
It is a limited game concept. There was reason for the first game. And for the second. Things started to break down with Sonic 3 (the first evidence of Naka’s inability to finish anything, and the first strong evidence that his concept of the series bore little similarity to Ohshima’s). Sonic Adventure was a really interesting re-envisioning, for its part; it brought a bunch of depth and variety back to the series which had been missing since the first game. It could have gone somewhere really special after that. Instead, we got SA2. And… Yeah.
Sonic was a product of his time.
It’s all about the slide. Just keep on sliding.
See, I remember that the Mega Man 2 bosses were harder. Sure, some of them were fairly straight-forward, but guys like Air Man and Quick Man gave me issues even when I came ready with the proper weapon.
I guess in Mega Man 3, that difficulty is transferred over to the stages. Too many disappearing block puzzles, too many terminal velocity plunges through spike-lined corridors. Once you got past all that, I seem to remember the bosses as fairly simple.
I guess the problem isn’t the difficulty at all, it’s the tediousness. And, I admit, the last time I played Mega Man 3, I was probably young and quite immune to tediousness. Hey, there’s no real PUNISHMENT for dying, right? Let’s try again!
…how are you playing this, anyway? Emulator? NES? Gamecube compilation? When all else fails, blame the controller…
YOU SUCK, ADERACK.
*ahem*
I’ll have to show you my l33t skillz sometime. I can beat the entire game without getting touched. Well, I used to be able to. I’m not quite up to that level of talent anymore, but I can still beat it in my sleep.
…and uninspiring music? That hurts me deep inside.
labyrinth zone utterly raped me as a child. i was so very traumatized that, to this very day, I don’t play Sonic 1 without level select.
just… too much trauma.
But can you beat it with nothing but the TOP SPIN?
I’d bet I could have, when I was 12, and had an NES Max. I even had a special way of holding the controller for Megaman games.
There’s one for sale at the EB down the street. I really need to buy it.
Now I play on the Xbox. A while back, I beat Megaman 1-5 on consecutive nights, just for the heck of it. I still haven’t played 6 or 7. I really should, sometime.
I hate to double post, but I just remembered that the only weapon that penetrates Wily’s final defense is the search snake.
I’m sure you are going to find loads of hidden meaning in the above sentence.
I’ve done that in my SLEEP.
Well. I’ve dreamed that I’ve done something like that in a game that was really more like Symphony of the Night.
CLOSE ENOUGH.
Megaman 3 was one of the first games I ever beat. Tons of fun, that one…
I think you may be half kidding. Give me a second I will load up Megaman 3 and play Magnetman. Hmm, I didn’t know he took off that much life. his little missles take off much less. They are also much easier to avoid.
if you want the blunt kill, play Hardman, don’t worry about his little fists, just keep shooting him. dodge his little falling attack. you will win by attrition.
Topman is simple wait till the last second to jump over his tops, jump over him, rinse and repeat.
What is so hard about this son?