Mega Man 3

Mega Man 3 was published by Capcom in 1990 for Nintendo's eight-bit console, and it is the entry where the series settled the ideas the first two games had been circling. It added the slide, a quick low dash that changed how the player dodges, and a robotic dog that converts into a springboard or a ride across a gap.

The underlying structure stayed intact. The player chooses the order of the stages, each guarded by a robotic opponent whose weapon becomes available after the fight. That creates a web of dependencies every player has to map out personally: the right order turns a punishing game into a manageable one, while the wrong order turns it into a wall.

By 1990 the eight-bit Nintendo was at its peak and developers knew how to extract everything from it. The stages run longer than in the first game, the soundtrack ranks among the best the console produced, and the controls are precise enough that a death can always be blamed on the player rather than the machine.

The record lists a single-player platform game, which is exactly right. This series is one of the cases where steep difficulty was not a flaw but the entire point, since the game lasts until the player has memorised its layouts and can clear them cleanly.

It is also the entry usually recommended as a starting point. The pacing is clearer than in the first game, there are more tools that forgive mistakes, and the difficulty that gives the series its reputation is still intact. It arrived while Capcom was shipping a new instalment almost every year, and yet the haste does not show in it.

Details on the year and publisher, plus stage images, are kept on the OldGame.cz page.