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.
