Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Why Would You Play Mega Man 3 Today?

Posted on by Viljami

It takes some nerve to play Mega Man 3. You can play it with emulation or hardware. What ever your chosen form of play is you are going to face a very difficult game. Although it takes only three hours (regarding to HLTB website) to beat the game it does require a concentrated mind and good reflexes. NES as a gaming platform is not making things easier in any way. You also have to memorize many elements of this game.

I did try my best to beat the game in one sitting. I played Mega Man 3 for about two hours. I can only imagine the players back in the day trying to beat this game for hours and hours day after day until they finally could say something like “Man, I just beat the Mega Man 3 on my Nintendo Entertainment System!!”. For me the Sega Mega Drive was the closest thing to something like this. Even with Mega Drive I didn’t face a game as difficult as this one. This also tells us something about how gaming actually was back in the 80s and early 90s.

While Mega Man 3 is a hard game it is kind of rewarding after all. You get to know this game so thoroughly. When to jump and how hard should I push to accomplish a perfect landing that secures a some way of progression inside the game. You might get a hit from an enemy. Is it a critical hit? Can you continue to your goal or did you just miss something important that takes you all the way back to the beginning of the level?

Mega Man 3 isn’t for someone that is somewhat of a perfectionist. In several cases your character gets hit by an enemy or you miss a correct spot of a jump and lose some of your health. The health bar is your most important way to see how are things going and how are you getting with the overall progress in this game. Often in this game things get tight. There is a constant tension present while you keep playing and trying time after time.

Should you even try to play this game in 2026? You might like it. You might not like it. Regardless of the way you are going to play Mega Man 3 I am going to say to you that you will have to try it. It is a legendary game. That’s not even something to debate about. The game is legendary in a way that many youngsters today will never going to able to understand. And if you really like NES games the question about if you should or should not try to play this game, if you haven’t ever yet, is a kind of a “no brainer”.

We can go through some game mechanics. In Mega Man 3 you control the main character with a basic controller. You can move the character to forward and backward. You can jump and shoot with a press of a button. There are obstacles and enemies, that sometimes shoot ammo at you. If you get hit by an ammunition or an enemy you lose some of your health. You can pick up bonuses that can give you more health, lots of more health or maybe an extra life point. You get try each level for three times. The game progresses to a certain point. If you spend all three attempts, you’ll have to restart the whole level. Once you progress to a boss you get a try to defeat it. If you defeat the boss you get through the whole level. There are more than eight levels in the game. I only got to play two levels as I only played for two hours (I guess I will have to try again some other day and spend some more time with this game).

With some limitations that NES console does have I am encouraging you to play this game. If you like NES games this game is a must to play. You actually cannot save the game. You do have a password system that helps a lot if you are going to try to beat the game. Mega Man 3 was originally released in 1990 for NES. There are some later games released in the series. We can mention Mega Man X series and also some collections that have been released just lately. I think the game is also very much available as a NES cartridge as it doesn’t cost a whole lot. The price of Mega Man 3 seems to be about 45 euros today.

Red Dead Revolver

Posted on by Viljami

Red Dead Revolver was released in 2004 for PS2 and original Xbox. It tells you the story of a gun handler named “Red”. It is actually the first game in the series of Red Dead games that featured also, later, Red Dead Redemption and a sequel Red Dead Redemption 2. Red Dead Revolver was published by Rockstar Games.

The game is formed around 27 stages. The website, “How Long to Beat”, states that it takes seven hours to finish the game. I have played this game for a bit over nine hours already. I have almost finished it. I got stuck to the last stage that has a duel battle against the final boss “Griffon”. The duel, and also other duels in the game, are a bit hard to go through. “Griffon” is the final person that “Red” has to defeat in his journey of a revenge. There is a somewhat deep plot in the game but the action, at least for me, seems to be the driving force for trying to beat the game.

There is a lot of shooting and lots of weapons in this game. You basically select a rifle and a hand gun and also a melee or throwing weapon, like a knife, for you when you start a stage. You achieve some money from taking down the enemies that you can spend to buy better weapons. There exists also some other items that unlock some more content if you are interested in these special features of the game. Toughest parts are duels in which you try to pull your gun and aim it and also trigger the shooting to try to kill your enemy before the enemy kills you. There are some of these parts, maybe three or four, in this game. It can get tricky and you might have to spend a lot of time in trying to get through these parts.

You can buy Red Dead Revolver from Xbox store for fifteen euros. It is also possible to buy the physical copy of this game. It is backwards compatible with Xbox Series X. It isn’t the most expensive game but it can cost even as much as 70 or 80 euros since the prices seem to be rising. There are only a bit over 60 games from original Xbox that are actually backwards compatible with Series X. It might be interesting to try to collect all of them. I just recently got one more game that is backwards compatible in this way. It was “Star Wars – Jedi Knight – Jedi Academy” and it cost only ten euros. I got also some PS1 games with this same purchase. I am hoping to have some time with these games, also. One interesting game that I bought was “V-Rally 2”.

Red Dead Revolver is 22 years old game. It can be considered a retro game. What makes it remarkable is that it is actually the game that inspired the development of Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2. These were released in 2010 and 2018. I will always remember the launch of RDR2. Back then I was working in a game shop as a customer servant. I wrote a blog post of the shop about the release on this game shops own blog. We also sold a lot of RDR2 games and had a launch moment that started at midnight when RDR2 was actually released. I don’t know the actual sales figures of that happening but I can estimate that there were hundreds of games sold back at that moment that lasted maybe three hours.

Red Dead Revolver reminds a bit of Max Payne. It features very similar action in the gameplay. Both of them are shooting games with a slightly detailed plot that does make the game deeper as a video game experience. Plot can be very important in a video game but it never is the driving feature when it comes to how I like to play my video games. I actually even think that Max Payne was a bit more advanced and more realistic although it was released already three years earlier than Red Dead Revolver.

Switch Is Now The Most Sold Nintendo Console

Posted on by Viljami

Nintendo Switch passed Nintendo DS as the most sold Nintendo console of all time just recently. There have been over 155 million Switch video game consoles sold worldwide. This console was released already in 2017. Only Sony PlayStation 2 has sold more than Nintendo Switch. We saw earlier last year how Nintendo got to release the sequel and it was named Switch 2.

Current situation of Nintendo tells us a lot about how popular gaming really is today. Many people do still have the first Switch. It is also available for a game consumer to purchase. There haven’t yet been any decisions about how long will the first Switch stay in production and available for purchase. I don’t know if it will ever succeed like PS2 did. PS2 was for many people something even more than a device to play your latest video games. It was also for many a very working and first DVD player for watching also the latest movies. Currently PS2 holds the record of most selling gaming console with over 160 million units sold.

PS5 has also sold well. It holds the eight place in the list of most sold gaming consoles of all time with over 92 million units delivered. In this discussion we can also add Xbox Series S/X that have to this day sold almost 30 million units. PlayStation 4 has sold over 117 million units and Switch 2 a bit over 17 million units already. Switch 2 hasn’t been in the markets for even a year. It was released in June last year (2025).

As I am a hobbyist in this field I do have a Nintendo DS gaming console. I also do own Nintendo Switch Lite and Switch 2. I barely use a Switch console in the handheld mode. I keep my Switch 2 docked and connected to my television. As Switch 2 is fully backwards compatible with the first Switch it made a perfect sense to actually remove Switch from the setup when I first got my Switch 2 last year.

Nintendo DS is a funny and retro style of a gaming console. It offers a portable option for playing video games while being in the move. I got it just out of curiosity. It was first introduced in 2004. This was way before the modern smart phone as a gaming format was introduced. There were cellular phones but the first iPhone we did saw in 2007. With this in mind during the 2000s it would have been reasonable to buy a Nintendo DS and actually many people eventually did buy it.

I got my Switch two or three years ago. I wanted to purchase it for my somewhat intensely growing gaming setup. It offered some interesting games that weren’t available on any other system. I’m talking about games like Super Mario Wonder and Link’s Awakening and every other Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda game out there. Nintendo just seems to have this certain ability to entertain every one from children to senior. If we really go back to the 1990s we can see how first Sega and later Sony tried to destabilize Nintendo. Sega and Sony tried to offer things like blood and violence while SNES for example had their own modified and not-so-bloody version of a game like the first Mortal Kombat. Also, with SNES, the NHL hockey game didn’t include fighting at all.

Nintendo has always been for the whole family. They have been and still are a very successful gaming company. It has to be stated that Nintendo was the company that gave a console called NES or “Nintendo Entertainment System”. They were the company that made video gaming popular again back in the 1980s. Nintendo had games that were of a very high quality. The quality of the games seems to be the key to success they’ve managed to  hold even today.

If you want to read more about different video game consoles and how they have sold (the website keeps updating) you can head to:

This Wikipedia page right here