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Mega Man III Ever

Levels: Okay

Graphics: Good (palette change)

Music: No Change (shuffled)

Enemies: Eh (few changes)

Bosses: Okay (room changes)

Weapons: No Change

Castle: Okay

Difficulty: MEDIUM-HARD (Occasionally EASY-MEDIUM)

Comments: The defining trait of III Ever is annoyingly long platforming sections with low ceilings. This hack is obsessed with them, tossing multiple at you per stage, where a single mistimed jump will outright annihilate you. Due to this, you'll probably be like me and just beeline for Rush Jet, and then proceed to dominate over these portions whenever you can. There's not much else worth mentioning besides that; there are some cool-looking stages (Top Man, Spark Man) and the Spark Doc Robot stage displays some ingenuity... but that's about it. Music is vanilla, enemies are annoyingly durable, and (almost all) bosses retain their usual weaknesses, so you know the drill. Play if you want to challenge yourself with some hyper-demanding, kaizo-esque gauntlets (Wily 2 in particular is HARD no matter what you do), but folks wanting to maintain their sanity should probably steer clear.

Graphically, there are no special questions about the hack.

Here they changed slightly graphically, but according to a larger plan - the palette of levels. And, surprisingly, the palettes are good, pleasant to the eye.

Level Design is problematic. You, if you are lucky, will pass with problems - 8 levels of robomasters. And then - pain, unpleasant Level Design, dishonesty to the player - starting with the doc bots stages.

Although they introduced a variety of mechanics from the original, attempts to honestly complicate the game - in fact, it turned out that the stages became dishonest and unfair to the player. Why so? I do not understand.

Replacing the palette in hacks and slight changes in the graphic part of the hack - of course, this is good. But here the Level Design is clearly trying to be sharply dishonest to the player IN order to ARTIFICIALLY stretch this hack. I can't recommend it.

This is not one of those crazy over-the-top hacks with new music, new weapons, new enemy behavior, and custom tilesets for every level, and yet, it is extremely noteworthy. What the hacker does with palettes, and sometimes even level layouts makes almost every stage into a gorgeous work of art. I don't think I've ever seen Hard Man's stage with its default tileset in a way that really wowed me until I played this: emerald rocks, blue skies, and when you climb to the top of the level, you're greeted with a black sky dotted with pink stars, and that's your open-air arena for the boss, as well; it's breathtaking. Snake Man's stage is made up of blue snakes and a burning red sky. Gemini Man's stage is a little darker, and has mysterious red waters to explore. Top Man lives in some kind of futuristic binary wheat garden. The Doc Robot stages change from their originals, as well, my favorite being Gemini Man's gray crystal surface that turns to blue and green when you get deeper inside, and its cavernous Rush Marine sections are unbelievable. Even the Wily stages are mind-blowing; the first stage has a red/gray/black motif that ends in a lake of blood. Wily 3 has a heart-melting sky at dawn that serves as a backdrop for the boss fight, and the telepods in Wily 4 are in a black and magenta chamber. The music has been moved around a little, and it's a mixed bag, but most of it is neither here nor there. You'll occasionally get a song that ruins the atmosphere of the stage, like Gemini Man, but hearing the ending music as dawn breaks in Wily 3 is almost emotional.

The level design is mostly fair for the 8 robot masters, and the Doc Robots aren't too bad for the most part, either. My only gripe thus far is the second half of Needle Man's stage that's quite reminiscent of everyone's favorite snowboarding level, but without the courtesy of the robotic Regis Philbin shouting, "JUMP JUMP" "SLIDE SLIDE", but at least it's mercifully short; it's a great idea, but with a frustrating, slightly glitchy execution. Then, you get to the Wily stages... buckle your seat-belt, kids. The level design in the Wily stages can be described as hair-rendingly exasperating with tons of low-ceiling jumps into spikes, pits, or whatever other horrors you can conjure in your mind. There's a section where you have to shoot Hard Knuckle at some walls in Wily 3, and then get on Rush Jet, but if you step one pixel too far to the left, the walls respawn. Saves are highly recommended for the second half of the game. Still, I heartily recommend this hack, because every time I got frustrated, the hacker would follow it up with something to remind my why I enjoy it as much as I do.