Mega Man 3

Mega Man 3 is an action game, and maintains gameplay elements established by the previous two Mega Man games released before it. The player controls the protagonist Mega Man as he traverses eight selectable stages. The player's primary blaster weapon is used to fend off the game's numerous enemies. Several power-ups can be picked up in each stage, including life energy, special weapon ammunition, extra lives, and "E-Tanks", which are stored and can be selected to refill the player's life energy completely.

At the end of every stage the player must defeat a Robot Master boss: Magnet Man, Hard Man, Top Man, Shadow Man, Spark Man, Snake Man, Gemini Man, or Needle Man. Each Robot Master features a unique weapon and stage related to the weapon's power. After defeating a boss, their signature weapon is added to Mega Man's arsenal. The Robot Masters are weak to the weapons of certain other Robot Masters, allowing the player to ease the boss battles by clearing some stages before others.

Mega Man 3 takes place during an unspecified year during the 21st century (20XX). Some time after Mega Man 2, the mad scientist Dr. Wily, having twice had plans for world domination dashed, claims to have reformed and begins work with Dr. Light on a project to build a peace-keeping robot named "Gamma".

Robot Masters – Top Man, Shadow Man, Spark Man, Magnet Man, Hard Man, Snake Man, Gemini Man, and Needle Man – in charge of a set of "mining worlds", however, go berserk and make off with Gamma's eight power crystals. Mega Man is called into action, this time with a canine companion named Rush, to retrieve the crystals from the sites. Throughout his mission, the protagonist continuously encounters and spars with Break Man, a masked foe who has abilities comparable to Mega Man's own. After Mega Man destroys the eight Robot Masters, he then revisits four of the mining sites to face off against eight "Doc Robots", who possess the abilities of the Robot Masters from Mega Man's previous mission.

Development on Mega Man 3 began at Capcom over a year after the release of Mega Man 2. Akira Kitamura, the lead supervisor for the first two games quit his job at the company during that gap of time. Artist Keiji Inafune, credited as "Inafking", considered Mega Man 3 as one of his least favorite entries in the series due to "[...] what went into the game and what was behind the release of the game."

He had "preset notions" about successful development because of the team's good experience with Mega Man 2 and found that his new superior "didn't really understand Mega Man the way his predecessor did". During the game's production, the developers lost the main planner, so Inafune had to take over that job for its completion. Inafune recalled the final two months of development as particularly turbulent, when he had to take responsibility for assessing and dividing up tasks among the team members who were not meeting deadlines. The team was forced to put Mega Man 3 on the market before they thought it was ready, releasing it in September instead of the series' usual arrivals in December.

Mega Man 3 has enjoyed a positive reception from print and online sources. Lucas M. Thomas of IGN, Christian Nutt and Justin Speer of GameSpot, Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser ("The Lessers") of Dragon, Dan Whitehead of Eurogamer, Edward J. Semrad of The Milwaukee Journal and Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), and the staff of Nintendo Power all mutually found the game to have impressive graphics, enjoyable music, and challenging gameplay.

Nutt and Speer summarized Mega Man 3 as a "top-notch game" and Capcom's "pinnacle of NES effort". IGN's Colin Moriarty argued the game as a major improvement over the original Mega Man and that it even surpasses the critically acclaimed Mega Man 2 in quality. Moriarty justified this claim with the third installment's attempt at better storytelling, its longer length than any other classic Mega Man game, and its inclusion of all eight Mega Man 2 Robot Masters in addition to its own. Brett Alan Weiss of AllGame described it as doing what "a great sequel is supposed to do by recapturing the fun, spirit and excitement of its predecessors while adding new levels, characters and challenges."

Mega Man 3 has seen releases on many consoles and other devices since its 1990 debut on the NES. In the United States, it was made into a stripped-down, handheld LCD game by Tiger Electronics. It is the only Mega Man game in Nintendo's PlayChoice-10 arcade library. Mega Man 3 was remade in 1994 for the Sega Genesis game Mega Man: The Wily Wars, featuring updated graphics and sound.

Mega Man 3 was released on the Sony PlayStation in the Rockman Complete Works line in Japan in 1999. This version has arranged music, artwork galleries, and a "navi" mode for beginner players. The NES edition of the game was also part of a North American compilation of ten titles in the series called Mega Man Anniversary Collection, which was released for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2004, and the Xbox in 2005. Also in 2005, Mega Man 3 was bundled alongside other Capcom games as part of a Plug It In & Play TV Games peripheral by Jakks Pacific.