Mega Man 3

"Cos he knows that it'd be tragic if those evil robots win."

K-9 was one of the better things to happen to Doctor Who. Although if you ask the more serious fans of the cheesy Saturday night sci-fi classic (the sort who go around in deeply stupid scarves and heavy duffel coats even in the Summer) they may protest that the robot dog with the laser in his nose was too silly and took away from the scarier aspects of the show, us real people are able to acknowledge the basic truth: Robotic canines are awesome. Those tech-heads at Capcom are obviously just as aware of this as you and me, as they decided to give their iconic Mega Man character a robo-pooch sidekick for his third outing on the NES. And this isn't one of those crappy robot dog toys that everyone got for Christmas a few years ago, this is the real deal – this metal mutt is capable of doing a lot more than walking into the walls and making sounds like an eighty-a-day smoker, and it comes in an adorable pink hue. Admittedly not the most revolutionary way of evolving the series, but hey, Capcom are all about giving the people what they want, and people like dogs (it's the only reasonable explanation for Michelle McManus' continuing fame after all).

It's the not too distant future, and yet again the world is being thrown into crisis. Eight of the planet's most prominent mining robots have gone mental and turned homicidal. Unexpectedly, it appears that the evil Dr. Wily is not behind this latest bout of mechanised carnage; instead he actually appears to be concerned for Earth's safety. With that in mind he teams up with the renowned Dr. Light in order to put a stop to the robots. The two former enemies awaken Dr. Light's most famous creation, Mega Man, once more, along with Dr. Light's newest invention Rush the Dog, in a last-ditch attempt to calm the mining robots' uprising, but is Dr. Wily really turning over a new leaf, or is there something far more sinister at hand? Just why have all these robots suddenly turned to the dark side? And who is the shadowy and mysterious Proto Man, an unusually agile robot who seems to be lurking around many of the robotic battlefields? With his new companion by his side, Mega Man straps on his arm cannon yet again, for a third slice of cyber-carnage, hoping to solve these questions once and for all. . .

For its time, the plot in Mega Man 3 was surprisingly detailed. Although nowadays in order to follow the plot in a Mega Man title you need some ridiculously detailed and intricate knowledge of the past titles and their many characters, back in the classic 8-Bit era all you really needed to know was that Mega Man was good, and pretty much every other robot on the screen was bad, and deserved to die. So being greeted by some reasonably frequent cut-scenes upon sticking the Mega Man 3 cartridge into your NES was quite a welcome surprise. Of course, the inevitable plot twist involving Dr. Wily is so predictable that the only surprise is that it takes so long to get there, but the Proto Man mystery is genuinely quite interesting, and the question of his dubious loyalties is one that will carry on into later entries of the series. And, if nothing else, it's nice to see a more detailed reason as to why Mega Man must travel the globe (and beyond – one of the mine sites is on the moon, in one of the more original levels) in order to fight the eight robots.

Improved plot aside, though, this game initially feels incredibly similar to past Mega Man games. From the start you are sent to the level select screen, where you must decide which of the eight evil robots you wish to do battle with first of all. Each robot lies at the end of a twisting and complex side-scrolling level, and Mega Man must platform his way around, shooting down the enemies that will be coming thick and fast until he reaches his foe. Upon (hopefully) slaying the bad guy, Mega Man gains their special weapon to use at will, with different bosses having weaknesses for different weapons, which can cause the need for some tactical choice in deciding what order you wish to tackle the levels. It's a classic formula that worked well for the previous two entries, and which goes on to work well in countless later Mega Man titles. What really sets this game apart, though, is the originality of some of the levels you'll face.

Each of the levels is exceptionally well designed, and each feels significantly longer than previous efforts. Snake Man's stage starts off in a sewer-like environment, complete with twisty winding pipes – some of which have actually come to life with massive snake-heads shooting fireballs of death in your direction. After battling your way through this area and into the daylight you must scale higher and higher across floating platforms until you reach a showdown with the man (or robot) himself. Gemini Man's stage, meanwhile, sees you doing battle on the flat and open moon surface, before making your way down into the twisting and labyrinthine tunnels below, shooting your way through the mysterious bubbled substance that blocks your path. It's the contrasts like this within the actual stages that makes this game feel special – it isn't simply a case of playing an outside level, or an enemy base style level as you would find in lesser platform blasters, it's more a case of finding wildly different types of environment within a single stage, and it really does give the stages a more natural, grand feel – there's more of a sense of journey in the stages than would be achieved if the backgrounds stayed the same throughout the level.

There are plenty of cracking little touches thrown in for good measure, such as Magnet Man's magnetic flying footsoldiers who hover overhead and use their magnetic pull to drag Mega Man toward the bottomless pits, or the way that the lights will often go out in Shadow Man's level, which means that you will need a computer-like memory to remember where every platform and pit is (some jumps are still incredibly tight and need to be timed to perfection, even if you can't see where the platform ends and the fatal drop begins). These are married flawlessly with the classic Mega Man staples such as the small square platforms that fade in and out of existence (perfect timing is required if you are to make it safely across some of the longer sections of these platforms – you'll need to commit the pattern by which the platform appear and disappear to memory to even stand a chance) and all those classic Mega Man foes just ready to deal you some hardcore punishment – as expected, those unashamedly adorable and deceptively dangerous bad guys that look like builder's hard hats with feet, who are everybody's favourite grunts, are back with a vengeance, and even get to drive some heavy mining machinery while they attack, while new foes such as the spinning metal porcupines who shoot their spikes in all directions across the screen prove to be very challenging – and very satisfying – to destroy.

As ever with Mega Man titles, the bosses in the game are superbly designed. There's a terrific amount of variety on display here – Shadow Man is a fast-moving robotic ninja who happily flings lethal metal stars around the room while jumping and sliding all over the place like a youngster on coffee, which makes for a very fast-paced battle, while Top Man prefers to keep his distance and let his spinning tops of death (admittedly not the most fearsome attack ever conceived) do the talking, which leads toward a slower paced war or attrition, while other bosses require more cerebral tactics, such as Gemini Man, who (as you would expect) can clone himself into two separate robots at will. Then there are the regular battles with Proto Man. On half the regular stages Proto Man will appear as a sub-boss halfway through the level. The battles with him are incredibly fast-paced as the blighter never stops moving, always bouncing around, which makes it very tense and enjoyable. The only minor complaint is that each battle with him is just the same as the last, and so after fighting him a couple of times it can become a touch predictable.

It's once the eight mining robots have been defeated that the game really proves its worth, though. Rather than simply taking you to the villain's hideout as in previous games, four of the completed stages open up again, and you have to have a showdown with the eight robots from Mega Man 2, fighting two per stage. This was a genuinely surprising move, and adds to the length and challenge of the game no end, but what really make this a success are the revisited levels themselves. After your previous visit, and having destroyed the robot master that had inhabited the area, the levels actually look like a battle has been fought there. Though the basic layout is the same the look and feel are very different. In Needle Man's stage, for example, which was initially a busy-looking city environment, the city and scaffolding that made up the level is now in smouldering ruins, and the lighting has changed from a sunny ‘Summer's Day' feel to a dark and moody night time setting. Changing the areas like this really gives the game a much more epic feel, as you feel like your involvement in the stages is genuinely having some effect, and the disrepair that the levels are falling into gives a genuine impression that the game is building towards some sort of climax. It's just a pity that when you finally do reach the showdown at the bosses hideout, the level design feels slightly lacking compared to previous games in the series – it doesn't quite feel like the grand finale that it should.

The weapons that you gain during the game certainly look more interesting than in previous games, with Mega Man gaining the ability to launch robotic snakes, ninja stars and fist-shaped missiles, among other things, at his foes, but it has to be said that they can feel slightly underwhelming in action – quite often they look puny and small in comparison to the mighty versions that the bosses that relinquished them boast, and despite differences in appearance some of them simply don't feel that different to use – with this in mind the fact that some weapons are more effective against some bosses can seem quite arbitrary: although it makes sense, say, for Shadow Man to be vulnerable to the spinning top weapon since he's very mobile and their slow movement across the ground will slow him down, some of the weaknesses seem a touch too random, which can make working out which order to face the bosses a bit more hit-and-miss than it should be, really. The moves that you can gain for Rush, though, are far more enjoyable to use.

At first Rush can only be summoned to use as a springboard in order to allow Mega Man to jump to higher platforms. In all honesty this is slightly rubbish. However, by completing the right levels, you can gain the ability to transform Rush into an underwater submersible or a high-speed flying platform to get you across those great chasms. These are far more interesting abilities, which sadly aren't called for all that often in the first eight stages (mostly because you can play these levels in any order, and so if you haven't unlocked the ability when you reach a point where it's required you're stumped). Once you reach the later stages, though, these really come into their own, and it's great fun having to rapidly switch from one to the other in order to navigate the stages. Again, the high-flying and sub-aquatic action really gives Mega Man 3 an epic feel that truly sets it apart from most other platform shooters on the NES.

Mega Man 3 looks fantastic, too. The stages are very well designed from a graphical standpoint – from the slightly trippy colour scheme for the subterranean moon sections, to the richly detailed hi-tech metal base that Magnet Man occupies, the foregrounds are very well realised, and the backgrounds are amongst some of the most impressive on the NES – from mountain ranges at sunset to distant cityscapes there's rarely a dull vista in the game, making for some incredible visual moments. The characters are similarly very well crafted – from the shamelessly cute faces (complete with cartoonishly big eyes) that adorn some of the regular bad guys, to the genuinely quite imposing boss characters, every sprite looks marvellous. The little details, such as the way Mega Man opens his mouth in effort as he makes his leaps, or the way that Spark Man – an electrical boss – has replaced his hands with crackling exposed electricity cables really set this game apart from its peers, and complete the visual effect perfectly. The only problem is that when the screen gets busy there is some almost crippling slowdown and graphical break-up that puts a bit of a dampener on the otherwise flawless graphical veneer.

The music, too, is similarly magnificent. While it doesn't quite reach the heights of musical perfection achieved by Mega Man 2, the various tunes on offer are still unforgettable. With some thumping bass lines to get your TV rattling, and some genuinely emotive digitised rock tunes that seem to match the tone and look of their chosen level perfectly, this is how video games should sound. Some of the tunes are familiar from other entries to the series – such as the brief ditty that plays when you select a level – but other than that all the tunes are distinct, and manage to give Mega Man 3 it's own distinct sound in the series. There's not a single tune that won't stick in your memory for years to come, and that is the mark of a truly classic soundtrack. The sound effects, on the other hand, are all familiar from other Mega Man games, and it's hard not to feel the warm glow of nostalgia the first time Mega Man dies and that classic high-pitched, almost painful sounding popping noise rings out. And though the somewhat underwhelming pinging noise that rings out when Mega Man fires his standard arm cannon is just as slightly embarrassing as ever, the short metallic clunk when Mega Man lands after a jump shows an impressive attention to detail. Brash and in your face, and yet surprisingly subtle; cheesy at times yet incredibly enthusiastic, the sound and music in this game perfectly sums up the way the 8-Bit era sounded for gamers everywhere.

Mega Man 3 is a truly essential NES classic. The occasionally dull weapons, and the bizarre and inexcusable use of deadly spinning tops bring it down slightly, but not enough to stop the sheer quality of the title from shining through. There are few blasters on the system that offer such epic scope, taxing challenge and magnificent level design as Mega Man 3, and it deserves its place in any NES owner's collection – it's guaranteed to keep you coming back for more long after that RoboPet you got for Christmas has worn down it's batteries and died a slow and lonely death in the back of your cupboard, and those bastards last ages.

Get it in.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/06