JoeTheDestroyer's Mega Man III review

Are you going through all the GB Rockman games?

This one was done by the same developer as the original Rockman world (Wily's Revenge), which I think is why it didn't take the same missteps. Capcom outsourced all the GB games, which is why they were able to turn them out so fast. I've wondered which ones were in development at the same time.

I can't defend everything about MMIII here, but I did think it's the first of the Gameboy games that felt very similar to the NES series. I would appreciate it more if it took some risks, but I thinks it's mostly playable (and like the NES series, after playing a few times it gets pretty easy).

Yeah, I've been meaning to go through these games, and I'm doing so now. I noticed II and III had different developers, as you stated in your comments about II. I think even beyond that, it felt like this developer wanted to create an anti-II experience and got carried away.

I will say that III felt like a proper Mega Man game (although not a good one). I'm about halfway through IV right now, and it's a hell of a lot better than III. It's still a rehash game, but at least a decent one this time.

Frankly, back in the day, what I wanted from the Game Boy versions--despite not playing them at the time or even now just yet--was mostly a rehash game. So I don't care if they use a lot of the same elements. I welcome that! But a bad game that doesn't account for the handheld hardware is a bad game. And I've played some of the later Mega Man action titles for handheld platforms, so I can appreciate how quickly a promising thing can sour once the actual execution gets involved. ;-)

^^^Yeah, pretty much that. The main reason I soured on the first three games on Game Boy had little to do with the assets used, and more to do with way they were used. Wily's Revenge was fine, but too short (a mere six levels) and marred by a cheap final level. MMII felt half-hearted, and MMIII wore out its welcome.

I find the development arch of these games interesting. You can see Minakuchi Engineering getting better with each games. Wily's Revenge freelys like a decent scale down of an NES game, but by the time you get to IV and V, they become just good games. They had a pretty short dev period for these games; if you think about I, III, and IV as betas for V, I think it's probably closer to the actual dev. I've never been able to find any interviews with people from Minakuchi Engineering to hear what they thought about this, and what working with Capcom on such a bit series was like.