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This hack improves upon the game Mega Man 3 in many great ways. As many people know Mega Man 3 was a rushed game with many bugs and glitches. As such this game feels unpolished and unrefined compared to other entries in the series. Mega Man 3 Improvement aims to fix that by fixing many of the bugs and adding some of the many unused sprites seen in the game's data. It also adds some QoL improvements such as the quick weapon switch (press select) and makes the epilogue music end properly rather than cutting it off. Overall, this hack is needed for better enjoyment of one of the greatest Mega Man games ever.

The very first difference players would've noticed, is the inclusion of an actual Opening Sequence. The artworks of main characters are very nicely drawn and to the point I almost mistaken it to some of the works from Capcom themselves. Similarly, the Wily Castle discovered scene gets an improvement by mixing the final rendition with unused variant, which is fairly good.

The next plus point is inclusion of fast weapon swap function. Although the fast weapon switch is not as convenient and manageable as the Rockman Complete Works version on PlayStation 1, it's at least implemented and functional, making it one of the most major improvements over the original.

Then it comes to the removal of slowdowns. Honestly my impression about slowdown removal is mixed as Doc Robot Quick immediately became irritating without the influence of slowdowns, but at least it offers a more speedy, more generally acceptable overall tempo like in the Rockman Complete Works version.

There're more minor adjustments serves as QoL fixes, but my most favourite would be tweaking the play length of Proto Man whistle theme at credit so that it (finally!) gets a complete one loop. This helps players feel more achieved after beating the game, while in the original it cuts abruptly right before boss information scene of 8 bosses, makes an impression of the game being somehow rushed. There're also some tweaks to walls and stage structures in order to prevent conditions that would cause softlock, I appreciate the work done by those talented people behind this hack.

Recommended to all Mega Man fans, all 2D action fans and everyone in the rom hacking community (or rom hack collecting fans) as this hack is well worth for one or two tries with all these improvements, it offers to us one possible rendition of what Mega Man 3 NES could've been if with more polish and more segments of work period before it was released, and truly demonstrated that there's still potential on the good old NES 8-bit structures.

Mega Man 3 is one of my favorite games that I have finished so many times that the stages are like muscle memory. So a hack like this brings a lot of things to the table to make it even more of an enjoyable game then it was before. It fixes bugs and adds features that new and old fans will love.

First is the intro. Every Mega Man game starting with 2 had a story intro except for 3. Now added is a fantastic intro sequence which is fantastic.

Next is the use of the select button to scroll through weapons. This was feature was first present in the SNES classic, Mega Man X, so its very welcome here. It makes me wish it was in all 6 NES Mega Man games.

Also sound effects were added to various parts of the game that complete the game in a lot of ways. The Doc Robots all have their sound effects from Mega Man 2 and Protoman now has his own firing sound effect. An alarm now tells you that you cannot use an Energy Tank if you have full health. Very welcome indeed.

There are two things that some purists may or may not like. First is the DING sound effect added once Mega Man has collected the energy from a defeated boss, and acquires their weapon. While this sounds like something from Mega Man X, and adds a little flair, it can be jarring to someone who has played the game countless times. Also when you collect a power up in the game, it no longer freezes to allow your energy to refill. Instead it is instant, and almost feels out of place if you've played many other Mega Man games.

Both are easy to overlook however. There are many other improvements that really make this hack shine. You won't fall from ladders, Rush doesn't disappear when pressing start, and there was no slowdowns in gameplay at all.

If you are looking for something that will make Mega Man 3 complete, this is highly recommended.

EDIT - Having tried the latest version, I still highly recommend this hack. However, I personally think some of the changes took a bit more liberty than I liked such as the location of the Boss life bar, the DING sound effect, Spark Man's added freeze animation, and the life refill being instant. Fortunately there is a text document allowing you to HEX edit all of the changes to your liking. I would prefer if those specific restorations were given in the form of IPS patches to be applied after the fact, but they were relatively easy to change back.

Where do I even begin with this hack? There's almost too much to adequately praise in a just a normal review, but I guess I can hit the highlights (though others have clearly done so in the reviews below). I really love the visual details restored from the original game's cut content, as they help flesh out the game's world more than ever before. I LOVE the new (beautifully animated) intro, as it breathes new life into the game's story and buildup. I fully appreciate how virtually all lag has been removed, making Mega Man 3 a much smoother playing game. And I could go on and on about the less noticeable changes, but I don't need to in order to say how truly phenomenal this improvement hack is.

What I would really like to address in this hack is the implementation of some gameplay changes. As you may have read in other reviews, some individuals feel that this hack goes too far in altering the game's mechanics (albeit in minor ways). What I feel some people fail to understand is that this hack is NOT "Mega Man 3 - Bug Fixes and Content Restoration." This is "Mega Man 3 IMPROVEMENT," meaning that the hack author tried their best to implement some changes that they felt *improved* the core gameplay. These changes are going to be subjective based on the hack author's opinions about the way Mega Man 3 plays, and (contrary to what some may think) each one of these changes serves a purpose. The weapon hot-swapping is meant to allow the player to avoid sifting through a pause menu to find a specific weapon. The weapon icons that pop up when hot-swapping are meant to help the player identify what weapon they're selecting at a glance, especially if they are not familiar with Mega Man's weapon recolors. Boss health bars are now on the opposite side of the screen, fully differentiating them from your health and weapon bars. Picking up weapon and energy refills now happens instantly, efficiently stopping these refills from interrupting fluid gameplay. And that's the point of these changes: all of this is meant to improve the *flow* of Mega Man 3.

In getting so caught up in issues of "consistency" and "purism," some reviewers seem to have ignored the massive amount of time and effort put into this hack in order to make Mega Man 3 a smoother experience. This is not your vanilla Mega Man game, so I believe it's unfair to expect this hack to restore some cut content, fix a few bugs, and nothing else. Making an "optional," minimal patch is a beast unto itself, as the author would have had to keep two separate patches updated over the course of several years. As this hack stands now, it's easily the definitive version of Mega Man 3. It does so much to fix the glaring issues of the original game while also improving upon the more stagnant aspects of its gameplay. Not only does this hack have the potential to bring new players into the series, but it goes above and beyond in giving existing fans a reason to play Mega Man 3 again.

The Mega Man series is my favorite gaming franchise, and I love the Classic games to death. I've played all of the Classic entries by now, and I believe that Mega Man 3 is one of the best in the series. However, I know that it has a mixed reputation among die-hard fans, so I'm very grateful that this hack exists to (undisputedly) bring it back on top. I urge those interested in playing this hack to try it without expectations, and I believe players will be pleasantly surprised at how much better the experience is.

I said that version 2.2 is with a bug. The bug was that the enemies and Bosses were blinking and could break the game. They fixed it. Now it is playable and just as enjoyable as before. Megaman does not blink when he received damage. But let it be, for it makes the game even a little more complicated and trains the players - be extremely careful

Hack is notable for the fact that everything that came under the "cut" was returned here. This is felt by another MM3 that could.

Another function presented from the MM10 game - the SELECT button - is responsible for switching the character's abilities. Bugs from the original - almost all have been fixed, but a couple have remained. platforms from the Snake Man level - they can also send you to the pit ... But this is not so critical, because you can jump and avoid fate.

Under the fixes and got abilities. Ability from TOP MAN - now does not immediately spend the entire lane, which infuriated and disappointed. Additional animations, for example, with Magnet.

And other improvements, as with PROTO MAN. That's all, because others have come out and therefore I will say this: "I recommend it"

I don't have enough of a history with Mega Man 3 to have an opinion about all the changes here. But what I've noticed is all good. Especially the slowdown fixes. This hack works well on real hardware - I've tested it on an Everdrive and made a repro cartridge. Also recommended is combining this with the refill hack!

I immensely appreciate what this hack ATTEMPTS to do, which is conceptually simple: finish Mega Man 3, a tragically rushed entry in the series. However, just as tragically, what could've at long last been the definitive Mega Man/Rockman 3 goes several steps too far, gives you no option to dial back the changes, and becomes unrecommendable to series purists.

It does, indeed, offer some very welcome improvements. The notorious lag is almost entirely absent; I've wondered since 1990 what it'd be like to fight Wily's first form without the game behaving as if it's attempting to lift a 2-ton boulder. The Top Spin (which is a rather impractical weapon in the first place) can now be used freely without fear of your weapon bar instantaneously depleting. You'll get to see all the unused graphics and hear all the unused sounds, which breathe new life into the game. At last, "Wiley" and "Right" are "Wily" and "Light." And while I'm normally not in favor of taking artistic liberties in an improvement/restoration patch, the added intro sequence is undeniably pretty cool. I think MM3 has the most epic intro track of any game in the series, and seeing Rush formally introduced just as the music picks up made me feel like I was playing the game for the first time again.

However, it's on that note—artistic liberties—where this hack ultimately shoots itself in the foot. One of the first things you'll notice is that all boss energy bars have been inexplicably relocated to the right side of the screen. I fail to understand how this could be considered an improvement in any way. It's not only inconsistent with every other NES entry in the series, but we can reasonably assume that boss energy bars originally appeared next to yours so you'd only have to check one part of the screen during battle. You now have the ability to toggle weapons with the Select button, you can exit stages, and Mega Man remains in place after unpausing. Are these all things Capcom SHOULD'VE thought to do by the third game? Absolutely. However, they did not. Remaining in place after unpausing is the only of these features to appear in the NES games, and it wouldn't appear until 5. It also introduces a problem: with Mega Man remaining in place after an unpause, so does Rush. This is inconvenient at best during a number of sections in the game.

There are several other instances where we leave the realm of "improvement" and enter "level hack" territory. The Doc Robot stages have been altered to be easier. In Gemini Man's stage, Proto Man inexplicably dons his Break Man mask right in front of Mega Man (which doesn't make narrative sense) and the tadpole eggs dance. As far as I know, we have no indication that either of those things were originally intended to happen, nor do they serve to improve anything. Finally, the most glaring inconsistency with the rest of the series: gameplay no longer pauses during energy/weapon refills—the refill just happens instantly. I find this change the most confusing of all. It not only breaks consistency with the other NES entries, but with nearly every iteration of Mega Man. Why remind the player for literally the entirety of the game that they're not playing the real deal?

If the creative changes were optional, I'd have no problem with them whatsoever. They're not. I think something labeled an "improvement" patch ought to do nothing more than correct obvious errors, restore censored content, and restore inexplicably omitted graphics/animations/sounds within the original code, where we know with at least a reasonable amount of certainty they would've been. This hack steps well outside boundaries. I hope we eventually see a version which makes any creative changes optional, because this would otherwise be a gem.

Mega Man 3 is one of my favorite games in the classic series. It was my first, and I admit that leaves me with some nostalgia goggles for it, but I can go back and play it any time. I never really noticed how many minor issues the game had at the time.

That is, until I found this hack.

I've been using this romhack for a while now, but have yet to leave a review until now. MM3 Improvement has replaced vanilla MM3 for me. Using select to cycle through weapons is fantastic. The added sound effects breathe new life into the game. Seeing the Gemini Man planet restored is terrific. All of the little bugfixes add up to a great experience. And the new intro cutscene is gorgeous. This hack took a game I already loved and made it even better. And it makes me so glad to see so many Mega Man 3 romhacks, including Mega Man 3 Revamped (a new favorite of mine), use this as a base. Highly recommended!

This month has been a great month at least for me when it comes to Mega Man hacks, since two of my all time favorite Mega Man games got two brand new hacks. However, before I review one of them, I wanted to review Kuja Killer's Mega Man 3 Improvement since one of the hacks I will be reviewing next is built on top of Mega Man 3 Improvement.

Mega Man 3 is my favorite game in the classic series of ALL TIME, I remember playing this game when I was a kid and falling in love with the game. The music is awesome, the inclusion of Rush and Proto Man were brilliant! Being able to not only to fight the new robot masters for this game but also the ones from the prior game as well? Something that would not be seen again until Mega Man 10 with the weapons archive, blew me away as a kid. While the game is very easy compared to the other NES Mega Man games, it did not take away from the fun the game.

However, for many years certain things about the game began to bother me, such has the game having no intro what so ever. The title screen looking so empty, MM2,4,5 and 6 all had something on the right side of the screen to add some flair but not MM3. Why is it messed up when you highlight on Shadow Man on the stage select screen? It was almost as if the most ambitious title of the 6 Mega Man games on NES was the one that suffered in presentation. Even worse, over the years players found many things hidden away in the game such as musical tracks that never play completely such as the ending theme "Whistle Concert", sound effects, and hidden graphics such as the planet in Gemini Man's stage. Leaving some gamers like myself wondering "What happened?", years later the art book "Mega Man: Official Complete Works" would shed some light on the production. In the art book Keiji Inafune would describe the production and making of this game as extremely difficult, and says that MM3 has been his least favorite game in the series to work on I would have to say it shows since it feels somewhat rushed.

That is where Kuja Killer's hack comes in to the rescue! The work they put into this project is simply AMAZING! Not only were they able to restore pretty much almost every thing that was in the game that was hidden, such as Mega Man being on the title screen, animations for rush, the planet in Gemini Man's stage and a city when Wily flies away in his saucer along with some nice looking parallax scrolling. They even gave the game a brand new intro giving the game the presentation it deserved when it originally came out! This is now my preferred way to play Mega Man 3 and can not really see myself playing the original version again.

The only small issue I have with this hack is the boss lifebar being moved to the right like the the X series. This makes the game, presentation wise stand out from the other NES Mega Man games in a manner I do not prefer. I wish Kuja Killer would either add an optional patch if someone wanted to move the lifebar to its original position or include in the readme file how to move it back. Since a few years ago they explained to me how to move it back and it was pretty simple once you know where to go, besides that this hack is truly a masterpiece!

Thank you Kuja Killer!

This hack basically finishes Mega Man 3. It adds what Mega Man 3 should have had. Missing sound effects, cutscene songs being cut off, missing or unused stage graphics. This hack puts it all in.

However, while this is certainly the definitive way to play Mega Man 3, the reason for that is the things that were missing being inserted. The liberties the creator took are pointless at best, annoying at most. Health recovery no longer pauses the game to show your health bar filling up. The worst offender is the boss health bar, which is now shoved to the right side of the screen. Not only is this very inconsistent with the other NES Mega Man games (as another review has stated), it also forces the player to pay attention to more parts of the screen. Whereas in the original, you could look at the top left and keep a close watch of both your own remaining health as well as the boss's, in this hack, you have to look both left and right, which takes longer. This feels like a handicap to me, as you have to do this in the middle of a boss fight.

I would really appreciate an optional patch that restores the boss health bar location on the screen.

I have to congratulate the makers of this hack, clearly a lot of work went into it and I don't want to take anything away from that. But I honestly think they've overcompensated but this game's rushed development.

The first thing I have to point out is the intro. On paper, this was a good idea. The original game's title screen theme made it obvious an intro was planned but cut due to time constraints, so this was a nice addition. But here's the thing: it's way, WAY too long. It's a wall of text copypasted straight from the manual, and it lasts over a minute. It's just too wordy and not at all like what Capcom would've done. It's so long that it has to separate the two halves of the title theme, ruining its pacing. Compare this to MM4: it tells the entire origin story of Mega Man PLUS the plot of the game itself, and that only took 30 seconds longer. Is the plot of MM3 really so complicated you can't condense it any further? There's so much fluff that it feels slow and boring to read.

That's the most glaring issue, but I have some problems with the scope of this hack. Inserting unused sound effects and sprites, fixing slowdown and glitches, all that's fine. What's not fine is some of the other unnecessary changes.

Why are there weapon icons over MM's head and a button to cycle weapons? None of the other NES games have that. If I wanted that feature, I'd play Complete Works. Why are the boss gauges on the right, instead of being consistent with every other Classic game? What's the point? Why is the delay/health increase from getting pickups not there anymore? It's present in every game so this is going to throw off your groove if you're a veteran. It just feels weird, and it doesn't look good aesthetically for it to increase instantly. Why does Proto Man transform into Break Man on Gemini Man's stage, but not any others? Why does he do it at all? Isn't the whole point of the "Break Man" thing to conceal his identity?

This hack does nothing to fix some of the actual glaring issues of the game, like Doc Robot stages not having enough checkpoints or original layouts and music, or the Wily stages feeling empty and unfinished. Instead it adds things that nobody asked for. The positives outweigh the negatives, but I really wish the team behind this hack would rollback some of these more unnecessary changes and maybe look towards shortening the intro.

For years, I've always found Megaman 3 enjoyable on its own, but this hack provides such a huge quality of life improvement that I could never go back to the original. Being able switch weapons on the fly makes for much smoother play, and the new opening screens fit seamlessly into the game. Being able to freely revisit and exit beaten stages is also a welcome change, as are the handful of bug fixes and additions of unused sounds and graphics.

This improvement hack pushes the game's build state to what is probably the most complete it will ever be, and it does so much without detracting a single ounce from the overall look and feel of the original. Hats off to kuja killer for what is easily a 10/10 rom hack.

Playing this hack makes me smile! The flow of the game is better, and some bugs that happens in the original game were fixed, well, it is the one of the best Megaman 3 improvement that it is in the romhack community!

I must absolutely agree with the evaluations that have been given of this project. I absolutely LOVED this game!! What Kuja Killer has done here has completely breathed new life into a game that many considered (including myself) to be one of the pinnacles of the NES series. The changes that he's made go beyond simply the aesthetics of the game. The entire pacing of the levels have been changed, for the better, although none of the level design has been altered. It was like playing Megaman III NES for the first time all over again. Definitely worth the download and definitely has replay value!!!

As a huge Megaman fan, I am delighted to see this excellent hack.

While not a new levels/graphics hack, this one aims to fix virtually everything that was wrong with the original Megaman 3. Bugs, glitches, debug leftovers and general errors in the code have been ironed out, and some useful general changes have been added to improve the game. 

There are small graphical fixes instances with parallax scrolling, including that weird glitch near Shadowman's portrait on the robot master screen and the star field moves at a different pace, creating a better sense of depth in Geminiman's stage.

As with Megaman 4 onward, you can re-enter stages alrady beaten, although the boss doesn't reappear, and exit the stages too by opening the weapons menu and then pressing select.

Best of all, you can now change your weapons on the fly using the Select button, which in the original game doesn't get used at all.

Using Select to change weapons (and access Rush abilities) changes the gameplay by making the game much faster and more fluid than the original game. No more hitting start and sorting through your gear to find Rush Coil - just press Select until Megaman turns red!

Unfortunately, as it stands now, the script hasn't been altered at all, meaning all spelling errors are still present. Hopefully this can be fixed in the near future.

If you're looking for a superior version of the old classic Megaman 3, you just found it.