200. Mega Man 3: The Robots are Revolting (Rozner Labs, MS-DOS, 1992)

After playing through the lifeless port of the first Mega Man on MS-DOS, I figured I might as well put the series out of its misery and play through the only other Mega Man DOS game, Mega Man 3: The Robots are Revolting. I'm not even going to make fun of that subtitle, but you are correct if you surmised that there was no Mega Man 2 for DOS. This game was actually not even a Mega Man game initially, but an original DOS platformer from the developer of the first DOS Mega Man, who was asked by Capcom to throw a Mega Man skin on it.

Mega Man 3 definitely improves on the first DOS Mega Man from a technical perspective. There are at least twice the frames of animation on Mega Man, plus the world is rendered in way more than 4 colors. Gameplay is also a bit smoother, though it still feels very sluggish compared to console Mega Man.

This game at least boasts an updated roster of 6 robot maters, who are now just slightly revised designs of actual Mega Man bosses. Each level is much longer and less linear levels a real Mega Man level, and the game suffers for it. Instead of having a straightforward platforming / shooting challenge, you instead have a huge labyrinth of dead ends and uninteresting enemies to fight. Because this was not originally developed as a Mega Man game, the enemies do not share the signature cute design of that series, instead mostly looking like Duke Nukem (non-3D) rejects.

For all of its flaws, the original DOS Mega Man at least had a fair number of checkpoints through pretty short levels that you could often just brute force your way through, which I actually had more fun with. Neither game is at all satisfying to play, and both are tedious and frustrating in different ways, but I usually prefer a game that wastes my time less.

1/5, a sprawling tedious thing that is even worse than its predecessor