Rockman 3 - Alpha

Levels: Good

Graphics: Okay (palette change)

Music: No Change

Enemies: Good (few changes)

Bosses: Okay (few changes)

Weapons: No Change

Castle: Okay

Difficulty: MEDIUM (occasionally MEDIUM-HARD)

Comments: If you want to see how to get great mileage from relatively few tweaks to Mega Man 3, Alpha can show you how it’s done. It’s a fairly difficult hack that doesn’t go overboard on spikes or annoying enemies, testing you instead with its tricky stage design. Be forewarned that enemies and bosses received a boost to their HP & damage, so you’ll have to use everything in your arsenal or death will come quicker than you might expect. Thankfully Alpha offsets this by tossing out frequent E-tanks… which you’ll wanna stock up on, as the Doc Robot stages have none (and Shadow Doc Robot’s stage is a menace). Occasionally you’ll run into some boring filler screens and the Wily Castle goes overboard on difficulty (Break Man is an unfair SOB), but other than that Alpha is a pretty decent “hard mode” for MM3.