Mega Man III, known as Rockman World 3 (ロックマンワールド３) in Japan, is the third Mega Man game for Game Boy, released in December 1992. The game continues the quest of the protagonist, Mega Man, in a never-ending struggle with his long-time nemesis, Dr. Wily. As with previous Game Boy releases, the game incorporates gameplay elements and bosses from two sequential Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games: Mega Man 3 and Mega Man 4.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.11.4
- Aims for fastest time
- Heavy luck manipulation
- Takes damage to save time
- Uses no passwords
Improvement
This is an improvement to the published movie [722] GB Mega Man III by Bag of Magic Food in 23:02.10 by 225 frames, or 265 gameplay frames.
The published movie appears to have a shorter time, but this is actually inaccurate: it uses a different, less accurate framerate (flat 60, as opposed to BizHawk's more accurate 59.7275005696058), and VBA's definition of a frame is different, counting multiple loading frames as only a single frame. Because of this, a lot of frames are "added" in loading screens in BizHawk compared to VBA.
Regardless, this run beats the previous one in gameplay time, and that is what matters most.
Comments
- About the Game:
- Pressing UP on the D-Pad ends a slide immediately!
- Rush Jet movement is fixed.
- Half-charged Buster shots are wider than uncharged or full-charged shots, sometimes I use this to get a hit on the enemy earlier, as it travels faster than uncharged shots especially if there is no time to do a full-charged shot!
- Sliding does reduce lag in some situations - What´s interesting sometimes a slide cancel before a Lagframe removes it; that´s why i sometimes do slide cancels in some spots.
- In boss battles where I use the Buster, I alternate charged and non-charged shots on Game Boy, the boss invulnerability time is so short and the charge-up time is so long that it actually saves time to fire a small shot after every large shot!
- Like the NES games is based on, this game waits until all the Robot Master explosion bubbles are off the screen before Megaman collects his weapon. So I try to end each fight with the robot as close to the center of the screen as possible without wasting time. In addition, the game also takes away your ability to control Megaman the instant the boss takes its last hit, so I have to get him into the center at the same time! Luckily, this game engine lets you keep drifting forward through the air after losing control, so I can abuse that by ending fights in the middle of a jump.
Now as for the order: Well, obviously, it's based on weapon effectiveness. Shadow Blade is nice in that it does decent damage to most things, even the other two bosses in the first ring. It also uses only half a unit of energy per shot, which gives me 38 shots without refilling. And I can aim it upward, and it travels fast with boomerang action, so it's pretty versatile. The main weakness is that I can't aim downward, but Search Snake is too slow and weak, and I won't get Screw Crusher until the last level. And Spark Shock just freezes things. So beyond that, Gemini Laser is basically the most useless weapon. It uses 2 units per shot, giving me only 10 shots, and it moves extremely slowly on Game Boy.
Stage by stage comments
- In all stages Noxxa & I improved the subpixels, other improvements are listed below.
Shadowman
better Bossfight with better Lag management!
Sparkman
I found out by accident, that you´re able to slide through the top of a Block/Platform if you´re at the right y-position, therefore we were able to save a lot of Lagframes in the up-down platform section, due to not activating all platforms!
Snakeman
better Stage with less Lag in the Snake fights!
Geminiman
optimized Bossfight killing Gemini right in the center: losing some time due to more bullets on screen but saving more than enough frames for killing him in the middle and getting the Boss bubbles out earlier!
Wily1
4 Lagframes were removed due to better refill grab after the Suzy fight!
Dustman
Improved the Boss fight, making him jump around reduces Lag!
Skullman
Changed the Buster shots in the beginning, reducing Lag!
Later in the Stage I kill one of these spike-head enemies before i use my last 2 Rush coils, that way it saves more Lag!
Diveman
Little bit of a Route change in the end of Diveman, I take the Health refill earlier, since refilling magically reduces all the Lagframes that occur there to a minimum, that hole swimming pool of enemies is a terrible Lagfest.. i don´t know what to say more about it.
Diveman fight is really strange, i figured out that activating the last Skullshield 1 frame earlier or later may or may not add up to 20 more Frames before you teleport out.
Drillman
First real Route change, instead of using Buster all the way I decided to try out the Skullshield which is also the RTA strategy, if used correctly you can reduce all of the Lagframes until the Bombs appear.
After that we use Rush jet to take a little shortcut below that Hammerjoe.
Drillfight is a little more Lagfree that´s about it!
Punk
Most of the fight is Lagreduction and hitting the last fullcharge earlier!
Wily2 Watercastle
We didn´t change too much, but optimized a lot of Lag here; I really tried my best to get the Screw Crusher in this Stage but it´s really not worth it unfortunately even though it kills most things in 1 or 2 hits compared to the Shadowblade
I used the Rush Jet one more time after that spike section to access the next room early saving me a lot of Frames, Nach told me that it lagged way too much when they did it, but for me it saved almost 20 Frames.
I changed earlier to Shadowblade to remove that junk block that comes down saving me Lag and the jump onto it - i have to get additional refills but it´s worth in the long run.
Table of improvements
Frame counts in bold pertain to gameplay improvements.
Note that VBA's definition of a frame counts multiple loading frames as one, so the movie frame count appears shorter than the actual movie length. This table uses AVI dumps of both movies for a more accurate comparison.
| Stage name | frames | total |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-Shadow Man (loading) | +5 | +5 |
| Shadow Man stage | -5 | 0 |
| Shadow Man boss | -10 | -10 |
| Pre-Spark Man | +2 | -8 |
| Spark Man stage | -51 | -59 |
| Spark Man boss | -8 | -67 |
| Pre-Snake Man | +3 | -64 |
| Snake Man stage | -16 | -80 |
| Snake Man boss | -4 | -84 |
| Pre-Gemini Man | +3 | -81 |
| Gemini Man stage | -5 | -86 |
| Gemini Man boss | -23 | -109 |
| Pre-Wily 1 | +6 | -103 |
| Wily 1 | 0 | -103 |
| Pre-Dust Man | +3 | -100 |
| Dust Man stage | -13 | -113 |
| Dust Man boss | -12 | -125 |
| Pre-Skull Man | +3 | -122 |
| Skull Man stage | -13 | -135 |
| Skull Man boss | -2 | -137 |
| Pre-Dive Man | +3 | -134 |
| Dive Man stage | -9 | -143 |
| Dive Man boss | -3 | -146 |
| Pre-Drill Man | +3 | -143 |
| Drill Man stage | -19 | -162 |
| Drill Man boss | 0 | -162 |
| Pre-Punk | +5 | -157 |
| Punk | -17 | -174 |
| Pre-Wily Marine Base | +4 | -170 |
| Wily Marine Base | -55 | -225 |
| Wily Machine | 0 | -225 |
| Total | -225)) | |
| Gameplay total | -265 |
Here a Frametable for all the Stages in comparison.
I really enjoy watching the Megaman 4 NES Stages and so will you, namely Dust,Skull,Dive,Drill and the Wily Watercastle.
If you have played this game for yourself you will know how hard these Stages are ( and long^^ ) but to see them getting dominated like that by Megaman is truly intriguing.
- What could be improved?
well this game has random Lag and therefore you might be able to squeeze some Frames there, otherwise Noxxa and I did a really good job improving Subpixel to a nearly perfect point.
BIG THANKS GOES TO:
NOXXA : my Megaman GB friend and buddy, without him some Strats, Stages or everything would have gone down the drain, thanks so much for being that BIG HELP!!
Nach : Thanks for giving me insight of what you did remember and for being helpful along the way!!
As screenshot I´d suggest:
GoddessMaria: Mega Judging III!
GoddessMaria: Very nice work from both Authors on improving the previous movie! Entertainment was spot-on and audience response was positive!
Accepting as an improvement to the previous movie!
feos: Back to multi-claiming!