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!