Mega Man 3 - Legacy

Legacy

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 and was included as part of Nintendo's PlayChoice-10 arcade systems. 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 Nintendo 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. Mega Man 3 was released by Capcom on mobile phones in Japan in 2005 and in North America in 2008. The NES version made its way to the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console service worldwide in 2008. Finally, the Complete Works version was released on the PlayStation Network (downloadable on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable) in Japan in 2010 and in North America in 2011. Mega Man 3 was made available for download on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in Japan on September 26, 2012.

Many of the features introduced in Mega Man 3 have been carried on by the series. These include the characters Proto Man and Rush, the player's ability to slide, and extra stages set between the initial eight Robot Masters and Dr. Wily's fortress. With the release of Mega Man 9 in 2008, however, some of these elements and others implemented in the third through eighth installments were forgone in favor of the more basic aspects of Mega Man and Mega Man 2. The producers of Mega Man 9 have referred to the ninth game as "the new Mega Man 3" because they wanted to surpass what they accomplished in Mega Man 2.