Megaman 3 Mysteries

Chapters:

Production Designs
Beta Information
The Well Known Controller-2 and Rush tricks
The Megaman 3 Prototype
Sprites and Graphics
The Megaman 3 NSF file sound secrets
Funtasic Facts

Production Designs

These characters were shown by Keiji Inafune himself in an internet interview. In that interview he flipped through several of his sketchbooks and one of the was the Rockman 3 sketchbook. Along with a sketch of Pinbot, these unused characters were shown. Scaling them up in Adobe and looking very carefully I traced along the blurred

I think everyone can agree this guy should be called "Devilman"! Hell, I think it's reasonable to assume his weapon is the flame whip as well!

I'm guessing "Gassman" for this guy. You can tell he's wearing a gas mask and my guess is that he was to shoot gas or gas bombs from that hole in his head.

I have no freakin' clue. I mean, your guess is as good as mine. This one was the MOST obscured of all the unused robot master sketches and it took close observation of many frames to perfect how this robot master looked like, but I think I have it to a close degree of accuracy. I dub him "Uglyman", because he is just so damn ugly!

I call this one "Inspector CreepyGuy" because he looks very creepy indeed. I can only guess at his intended role in the game. Most likely to tell that Wily stole Gamma (a position better suited to Dr. Light anyway).

Some concepts for enemies in MM3. Inafune notes that there seem to be a lot of weird ideas for this game. The snail idea would be brought back in MM4 and turned into a large boss (perhaps, at one point, there was an idea to bring in the small snail idea shown here) ... it seems like the snail behaves like the porcupine does in needle's level. Doc Robot is shown more menacing here than he would be in the refined sketches. The large robot beside him would be brought in for MM5. The robot beside him is an early version of the robot in Sparkman's stage; I guess they thought he'd be better off flying than stationary because that's is the largest thing changed in his design.

From R20. A sketch of the ... Rockbuster!?

Auto says that R20 says that capcom had an idea for a dog support animal that that became Rush. They wanted to continue that with other animals, but that wouldn't happen until MM5. How pre-Beat would have played is unkown.

The fabled Rush Drill. This actually lseemed to have lasted for a long time before being scrapped. More on this later.

Protoman went through a number of changes as he evolved. The helmetless look probably lasted a while because there's an old Rockman 3 commercial that uses this design (albeit with a red scarf and not a yellow one). Articafts of this still exist in the game, but ... more on that later.

Beta Information

Source: The Warp Zone. This comes from Nintendo Game Secrets which was written by Russel DeMaria and Zach Meston. This one would seem pretty interesting - Magnetman's and Sparkman's mugs being switched leaves MANY questions to plaque us (namely was there ever a Doc Robot Magnetman level).

Upon closer inspection you'll see it says "Mega Man 3" and not "Rock Man 3". Clearly this is not a screenshot of the Rockman 3 prototype. It is possible that the developers made a fake "screenshot" to show to magazines (it's a common practise to do so). It seems obvious that Magnetman's mugshot truly belongs in the corner as opposed to where it ended up (Snakeman's mug and Needleman's mug show similar odd angles, so it's possible that they were switched around as well).

As for whether there was a Magnetman Doc Robot stage, as stated earlier, there is evidence that there was in the tile data. But how far it was developed before it was scrapped is anyone's guess.

Since there probably was a Magnet Doc Robot stage it seems that the most reasonable explanation for the "Mega Man 3" in this screenshot is that the American graphical changes (such as they are) were made alongside their Japanese counterparts and not later on after the game's completion. It's possible that this is still a faked screenshot with American graphics, but it does give some insight into the development process of the game.

So, why was the Magnet Doc Robot stage switched with Spark? Maybe because Quickman and Metalman (who are emulated by Doc Robot) are MUCH more suited to Sparkman's stage than Magnetman's (because of the gears for, at least, Metalman). But this is just a guess on my part.

Chris Covell of (the aptly named) Christopher Covell Homepage has some amazing scans from Famicom Tsushin magazine circa 1990 ..... and with them some mind blowing info on Rockman 3 that he has agreed to let me put up in this article! The screenshots found in the article are more than likely completely unrelated to the stage select screen shown above.

This is a scan of the article on the game featured in the magazine. The text features some standard information, however it's worth noting that it mentions Rush's three forms as 1) a coil 2) a submarine and 3) a drill!

According to the Rockman 20th Annaversary artbook, the Rush Drill would have been used to drill ways through specific blockades in the game (a function that was reassigned to Protoman). Moreover, a translation of this article says that it would allow Rockman to move in the ground by drilling a hole in it (likely a misinterpretation or bad communication based on what it actually did).

Why they switched it to a Rush Jet in unclear, however it seem to have been done in a hurry since the Rush Jet works exactly like Rush Marine, except in all terrains ... including water (making the Marine useless). Moreover, Rush Jet is visually similar to Rush Drill, so it's very possible that the sprite was merely recycled as Rush Jet and that it's programming was tweaked and given to Protoman. This would mean that you must have Drill's energy filled before fighting Protoman, or that Protoman would drop weapon energy upon defeat. This might be a factor as to why it was dropped fromthe game.

Was Marvel VS Capcom's Rush Drill an in-house reference at this unused idea? Only Inafune knows for sure! Ironically, that Rush Drill bears a striking resemblance to Rush Marine!

Also, it looks like Megaman's health bar is always full in these scans! It seems most likely that the programmers made Megaman unkillable while they were working on the stages (that or that they were *master* Megaman players who never got hit even once which seems unlikely given the first Topman screen shot). This would explain the "zombie Megaman" glitch, they didn't remove the code which rendered Megaman unkillable properly.

Snakeman's realm remains virtually unchanged .... or has it? While the setting is identical to one of the large snake battles, the snake has a more robotic look in the beta! Also, the platform doesn't appear to be finished as it is still motionless at this point.

The change in Topman's level is startling! Why they replaced this with his boring final level design I will never know. Of note is the fact that this part of the level was changed for the final release. It seems likely that it was somewhere in the beginning, but no part corresponds exactly to where MM is standing. In fact only one of those platforms Megaman is on is still present in the final release of the game!

Sean Kelly notes:
Top Man stage change: they probably wanted lights to support the plantlife in the walls, they probably weren't satisfied with a first attempt at staticly drawn lights so they switched to an animated palette and started blinking the lights to make them come across as lights (and possibly provide a sorely-needed active element in the background).  The NES only has 4 background palettes, so animating one of them left them with one less for drawing non-animated background stuff (anything colored with the blinking palette would blink), so they had to remove background elements which they couldn't do justice to with only the non-animated palette entries (keep in mind each palette has only 4 colors, of which 1 is shared across all 4 background palettes).  If they realized they didn't like the end result, it may have been too late to redo all the graphics and cleanly remove the palette-animation code.  Or they may have already filled the tile space used for all that nice latticework and pillar with other stage graphics.  Perhaps it was lack of space for such detailed backgrounds which drove them to change to the final light panels which they then animated?  Who knows?

Although Covell didn't think this shot was worth mentioning (don't really blame him) it is slightly different than the finished product (likely to stop Megaman from simply using Rush Coil to jump over the cat).

"Lost a planet Master Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing. How Embarrassing!"

Behold the skies! As noted before, it seems that Geminiman's level (at least the first part of his world, from all appearances) was revised greatly before the final release of the game! Aside from the gravel ground, there are planets! And what planets! Big ones and little ones. However, there is more than meets the eye here, as Geminiman's level in the final release still has the large planet in the game with palette intact! It's right in there in the final game and it's plain-as-day when you view the levels through a level editor, but when you play the game through normally the planet is cloaked! It's the same case with Gemini's Doc Robot Stage.

Moreover, upon resizing the screenshot I find that the Beta planet is bigger than the one in the final release! It probably reuses some tiles to achieve this (which the final planet also does, although it's hard to tell).

This particular scene also doesn't appear in the game at all! The ground isn't level for one screen long at any point, especially where the big planet is supposed to be! The exterior of Gemini's level doesn't appear finished at all (although, judging from the other screen shot on the preview page, the interior is very finished as that scene appears exactly as it is in the final).

I must confess that I like the look of the final release better, despite all the mystery behind the beta version. The crystalline planet simply looks better than this rather plain landscape. although the giant planet ain't bad. More on the lost planet of MM3 later.

Magnet's room looks awfully ... BULE ... doesn't it? And the background looks very .... greenish. This scan is taken right off the back of the MM3 box! And before you blame the bluish tint on scan quality, Sparkman's level is also shown and is in proper tones of grey. I'd be more likely to blame photo delelopment on this one is the giant robot and purple tower and even Megaman himself weren't in their proper colors. In terms of stage develpment, I'd say this was from the alpha (a version fo the game very close to release) and not a true beta. Note how Megaman's lifebar is somewhat out of energy as opposed to being totally full like the above shots. Source of the screenshot (although I noticed it first *gushes pride*): The Warp Zone.

This magazine scan was from Super Juegos", an old Spanish publication (thank you, Tyqrus) found on htttp://www.retrones.net. However, it does include some unusual screen shots. I've skewed them to be about the same dimensions as screen shots taken from an emulator.

Needle's stage shows Harri Harri with an unusual head. The projectile is alo oddly elongated, but that could be (and probably is) a side effect of how the picture was taken.

Spark's stage shows another odd projectile, this time thrown by Hammer Joe. Quite probably, though, is that it's just an effect from taking a picture of a TV screen.

The Well Known Controller-2 and Rush tricks

To review:

Super jump, Navigate Bottomless pits - Hold right on controller two and not only will Megaman be able to jump high, but he will also be able to jump into and Navigate bottomless pits without dying, however if you wait too long you WILL die and sometimes Megaman does take damage while down there.

Slow-mo - Hold up on controller two for slow moving animation. Hold up and A to completely freeze the animation frame for every sprite on screen. Sprites in motion still continue to move, but you can still shoot them with the arm cannon; it is only the frames of animation that are actually stopped or slowed down, not the movement itself. This can be combined with the jump trick mentioned above.

Zombie Megaman - Jump into a pit. When you hear the death sound effect, quickly press right on controller two and get Megaman to jump out of there. He will have zero HP and thusly will not die from any more damage, but he will not be able to fire arm cannon either. Master weapons and Rush still will fire, though. Take an energy capsule to restore Megaman's health and allow him to shoot, however if you do this Megaman can once again die.

Turn a weapon energy pellet or capsule into Rush jet/marine - First, find a weapon energy pellet or capsule (pellets offer less energy however). You must have either Spark Shooter or Shadow Blades. Select either Spark Shots for Rush Marine or Shadow Blade for Rush Jet. After selecting the weapon press right and Rush will appear. Press A or Start and then pick up the capsule You'll have to fill up Rush's energy manually and Rush will not appear on the subscreen until you get him for real, but this will let you access Rush early on in the game.

All this info is taken from The Megaman Homepage. I'd feel a bit more bad about it, but it's not like it's new info to anyone. Why is this here? Because this is, most likely, left over data from the debug mode! Although the Rush tricks are likely just a bug. Also it lets us see the different ways they could test out a level - disable pits, enable long jumps, test animation frames by making them so slow that they're easy to see. Furthermore, the Zombie Megaman trick is easy to explain. Unlike other weapons, the Arm Cannon's value is ties directly to the value of MM's life. So, if your life runs out, so does the arm cannon! Naturally, this doesn't come into play in any instance except for the "Zombified Megaman" trick. The fact that these programmer's tricks are left in makes me wonder if the debug screen itself could be hacked into in some way.

Sean Kelly notes:
I'm guessing that the menu system is hardcoded and someone just goofed or forgot that column's check to test whether a weapon is obtained before selecting it.  For simplicity, it makes sense to have slots and meters available for all weapons all the time and to have all weapons fundamentally available for use all the time, but to keep a set of flags to determine whether weapons have actually been obtained.  Once a weapon has been selected, the main game shouldn't need to spend time caring whether you've acquired it when you try to use it- it's the menu's job to ensure the weapon is never selected if it hasn't been obtained.  Thus, if you somehow ~do~ select an unobtained weapon, since it was there for you  to use all the time provided you could select it, it's there for you to use and it has its own energy meter.  You just need to put some energy in manually, because it wasn't flagged as obtained when you entered the stage and consequently wasn't topped off from its default contents of 0.  Indeed, the default state is probably 0 energy on all meters with only Plasma 'obtained,' 'obtained' meters get filled at stage start, and at stage end the 'obtained' flag for a weapon is logical-ORed with whether the weapon's meter is not 0, hence the need for the ceremonial filling of a weapon's meter when you beat a boss.  While Rush items may be activated manually rather than by end-of-stage meter-fill in a normal game (3 special cases being easier to manage than 11), there's no reason to special-case them ~out~ of the end-of-stage check, and the loophole theoretically allowing any prematurely selected and filled weapon to be registered as 'obtained' at stage end is simply not closed for Rush rather than being explicitly opened as part of a debug cheat.

The Megaman 3 Prototype

Cart pictures courtesy of The Warp Zone. The first cart pictures was bought by a guy named Kap and has a different sprite for one of the boss sprites (although which one isn't mentioned and it's odd that it would since it's a simple translation). No additional info was given for the second cart. It's likely the first cart was used for the prototype rom dump.

Yes, my friends ... a rom of the Megaman 3 prototype was found and dumped! Don't get too excited though ... this is the Megaman 3 prototype ... not the Rockman 3 prototype.

Basically, this is the rom as it was being translated by Capcom. And while nothing has REALLY changed, there have been some glitches in the graphics thanks to the translation process. Still, it's an interesting look at one step in MM3's history.

3 guesses what's wrong with this picture?

Using Top Spin to defeat Shadowman. In this version, Megaman is frozen in the position he was in when he killed the RM.

He's stuck! (Using ShadowBlade to defeat a Doc Robot). In the final MM snaps back into position.

Using Rush Marine to defeat Doc Robot Bubbleman. In the final he just poofs out of Rush.

Megaman moonwalks away from toy-Wily! Weird thing is, he walks right in the final battle.

There's probably more glitches, but they all revolve around times when Megaman is forced to stop in place (as when he stops to listen to Protoman's catchy tune).

Sprites and Graphics

Submitted by Mike aka Kuja Killer. Apparently the Magnet Missile was supposed to turn and not just suddenly change direction. This sprite was later used in the Wily Wars.

Submitted by Mike aka Kuja Killer, an unused sprite of Snakeman. Nothing too exciting, but this is a sprite of Snakeman's tail pointing downwards while he's shooting / jumping. This sprite is never used as Snakeman's pattern does not allow for it suggesting that they might have programmed him differently at an earlier point.

In Megaman 3's game data, the room you fight Breakman in is NOT a totally separate level (like the Doc Robot stages), but rather a one screen extension of Hardman's room! I speculate that the inclusion of the Breakman fight was added in at a later point in the game's development, after all the other stages were complete.

Found by Mike Mcmahon. An unusual piece of data makes a part of Rush Marine black - exactly where the mouth ought to be - when shooting. It looks like Rush's mouth was meant to open when he fires arm cannon pellets as he does in later NES MM games. For whatever reason, Rush does not do this in the game. The bullets just appear where his mouth is. In the Wily Wars Rush also does not open his mouth to shoot bullets.

Hardman's tile data shows that the tiles for Wily's introduction. Other than that, nothing is interesting about it.

Although the "Breakman Blocker" is in Geminiman's level, it's graphics are in Snakeman's level! The data for their levels aren't even close. To add to matters, Snakeman's level borrows clouds from the first Wily level! So, maybe Snakeman's level originally had the "Breakman Blocker". Or (more likely) the "blocker" was added to Geminiman's level later on, but having run out of room in Gemini's level data, they replaced cloud data in Snakeman's level with the blocker data and then used cloud data from Wily level 1 with a different palette for Snakeman's level. Considering the size and structure of the "cloud" part of Snake's level I tend to think the latter was the case. (The screenshots used come from this site. Used without permission. I'm a bad boy.)

Still, I gotta wonder at the significance of Geminiman's level. There's allot of oddities surrounding it.

These are unused level tiles found in Sparkman's level. Maybe they were used for the pillars of garbage blocks and were changed later on, maybe they were for Doc Robot's level, I really have no idea. Reminds me of Dustman's level from Megaman 4.

Now, Magnet's level tile data is VERY interesting! Those happy faces MUST be an in-joke for unfinished portions of the graphics and we see some destroyed bits of piping and brumbling bricks. I've peiced together what must be some sort of trap.

What makes this interesting is that it opens up the possibility of a Doc Robot level. Doc Robot levels have a "destroyed" theme to them, for the most part (it can be observed in both Sparkman's and Needleman's levels). Furthermore, an old screenshot showed that Magnetman's mugshot was in the upper left hand corner at one point. Because of the words "Megaman 3" in the background I thought this went no further than the concept, but if these tiles remain in the game there may very well have been a Magnetman Doc Robot level at one point.

The image of Megaman's backside was found mixed in with the sprites that create the "got weapon" image in MM3. Mike Mcmahon has found that the frame data was at around $34700 in the rom file which is directly right after that image of Megaman from the Get Weapon screen (and title screen of the Japanese Rockman 3 version). Even though the sprite does exist in the game Mike found no code that would cause this image to come together. Mike states that it's a mystery to him because if the game had any code that would use this data...then there would be the following:
LDA #1B
JSR $F835
however, there's absolutely no such thing ... there's a "LDA 1A JSR F835" (which is what makes the original image show up for that get weapon screen) ...but no "1B".

While there's no official record of where this image belongs, we can narrow it down using logic. It might belong to the end of the game somewhere, as Megaman look to the sky at the end of the game. It might belong to an alternate version of the "get weapon" sequence. And it might belong to the title screen (as that is yet another instance of the "get weapon" image).

Placing the image at the end of the game was my knee-jerk reaction, but it really has no place to go; unless there's alot more that was deleted from Megaman 3. While it can be placed in the "get weapon" sequence, it really doesn't fit there (as Mike's image attests). However, it could easily be placed in the Rockman 3 title screen, where the same "got weapon" image was used. Furethermore, it makes sence that it would be placed there as it would allude to the end of the game (a rare bit of storytelling from the origional series). So, that's where I think it goes.

Gotta give props to Nekromancer / Heatman of Sprites INC for this juicy piece of info! Found in the same data block as the mugshots, "get weapon", password, and RM "named" screens, this is part of the "introduction to Skull Castle" sequence.

These are the in-game screenshots of the above sequence. Remember, the above sequence was NOT taken from a prototype rom, but from a finished version. At first I thought they had blocked off the above screen to produce this, but upon further investigation the rom contains a totally different scene that was used for the final, even though the beta scene is still intact!

If you look at the second screenshot (with Wily giving his famous eyebrows bit) you can tell this has noticeable different stars from the previous screen. I would suppose this means the screen with the moon was supposed to have been used here instead, but it was possibly taken out to make way for stars that can move (an effect used to create motion in the final sequence). Further support for this theory is that the stars look VERY different from Skull Castle's stars and also that Skull Castle was taken from a different sequence from the rom (it was with Light's Lab and the title screen).

"The Sky is falling!" Okay, not really. Sean explains:

The NES has 2 graphics layers- background and sprite.  Animated backgrounds, even simple parallax effects, must either be done by updating background tiles, updating palettes to make certain pixels visible/hidden, or updating scroll values.  The Gemini starfield effect, iirc, consists of some actual star tiles in the background, but also a number of star sprites in the sprite layer (the sprite stars disappear along with all other stage sprites when the pause menu is opened, and are drawn in front of the ground when they ~are~ visible).  The NES has only 64 sprites which can measure either 8x8 or 8x16 pixels, and only 8 sprites will be drawn on any given scanline, so when the screen shifts to the sprite-intensive explosion of the plug, they probably needed to reassign the sprites used for stars to other locations or get them offscreen so they wouldn't interfere with enemy and player prites.  This is probably why many or all stars disappear as you progress through the Gemini stage.  Also, the plug itself may interfere with the background stars.  Scanline catching and parallax can be tricky to code, and they probably didn't want to implement 2 different versions for one level.  The scanline separating the scroll position of the background stars from the scroll position of the ground can be no lower than the highest point on the ground because they're part of the same fundamentally static 256x240 image as the ground (imagine taking a picture in Paint, selecting only the top half and sliding it left or right relative to the bottom half).  For the main above-ground portion of the level, they want the boundary as low as possible to maximize the volume of stars, but on the plug screen, the plug may stick up above that level, meaning either they'd have to set a new parallax boundary or give up on the starfield.  With no starfield, they'd have the added plus of nothing to distract you from the Proto/Break transformation, which may have itself involved something drawn in the same screen as the starfield and, say, scrolled on vertically.

The NES has 2 screens worth of background 'canvas' which can be set to scroll either horizontally or vertically.  Some mapper chips can add 2 more screens and/or 2-axis simultaneous scrolling.  The fact that the Protoman scene is a marked screen change from the rest of the level may indicate that they change the background mirroring/scrolling from horizontal to vertical at that point.  Envision drawing the main level as the way it is in the cart level map- with a completely black starless background- and then in another image the same size, draw a starfield.  Copy the whole starfield image, lay it down on top of the background map at the lowest point at which it doesn't overlap ground, and slide it left and right as I mentioned earlier to get the starfield effect and explain why it's okay that the basic map background is flat black.   Envision drawing the plug scene as it is in the final game- with a black, starless background- but in your second screen draw a big ol' Independence Day vertical laser beam.  Imagine taking this image and dropping it straight down from above over the top of the background image.  Something like that could be worth sacrificing the starfield for.

So they blocked out the planet for the style of the starfield. The screenshot is provided by Vixt of RMPM, of the planet properly implemented in the Rockman 3 Endless hack.

Unused Proto/Breakman sprites. Interesting to note that, although they are contained in the same sprite block, Breakman has a DIFFERENT BODY than Protoman. I didn't splice on Breakman's head on Protoman's body for any of those sprites, they were all found like that in the game. Obviously, Break/Protoman was intended to shoot you while on the ground. Perhaps this was taken out to make the fight less challenging.

NES Boy has pointed out some very interesting sprites that I have sadly missed. While going over the Protoman tiles (as seen above) he discovered unused sprites of Protoman transforming into Breakman (also note that, while PM does stand still during Gemini's stage, his scarf does not move; probably because it is part of his transformation animation sequence)! It's hard to puzzle out, but the sprites are there in the top lines of code. This answers a question that has been bugging me a little bit since I started playing Megaman 3.

Namely why Protoman would bother with a Breakman disguise (why does he wear a little facemask and has only one eye when there is no conceivable reason given in the game). It makes very little sense. Some people think Breakman and Protoman are two different robots entirely because of this (similar to how many people think Megaman is not Megaman X because of that one letter after X's name ... which is the stupidest argument I've ever heard). However it still leaves us with thequestion of what exactly is us with the "Breakman" transformation and why he bothers with it.

More of the story behind Megaman 3 has been revealed since the first writing of the article. It reveals that Protoman was created with an unstable power core and was left unfinished by Dr. Light. Protoman then ran off and was found by Dr. Wily. Dr. Wily replaced his faulty core with a nuclear power core, temporarily fixing the problem. Out of gratitude Protoman served Dr. Wily, seemingly unaware of his being a total nutbag. Somewhere along the line Protoman discovers Megaman is his brother which is why he rescues him at the end of Megaman 3. He does not return to Dr. Light because he resents him for leaving him incomplete. At some point he decides Wily's a total duche and betrays him in Megaman 4.

So all that basically shows Protoman's modivation in Megaman 3. As for the why behind the transformation, we have a few facts to go on:

• Protoman is invulnerable to master weapons during his "Breakman" phase.
• Even though they attack power is the same, Breakman's bullets are larger than Protoman's.
• Rockman 3 Complete Works (for the Playstation) would count the Breakman battle as a Protoman battle.
• There is concept art of a helmetless Protoman beside a Breakman-helmeted Protoman.

This leads me to the conclusion that it is a power up. It makes much more sence with the concept art as part of the puzzle because Protoman donning a helmet is a much more dramatic turn than Protoman simply donning a mouth plate. However, it seems that this idea was watered down over time. Protoman's design changed to include the helmet, making the sprite's "transformation" a little ... rediculous. Moreover, the unused standing/shooting sprites and his lack of change seems to indicate that either he was powered-down or not fully programmed.

In addition to answering the minor question of Protoman's relation to Breakman, this answers what PM was doing in Geminiman's stage. It's most likely that he was transforming into Breakman! How do I figure this? It's because Protoman does absolutely nothing but stand still, making time for this animation to take place. His scarf doesn't even move - likely it was part of the cut transformation sequence. Also, the only place the Protoman standing still sprite is shown is in the Geminiman level, in every other level he starts attacking right away without any standing frames used. The only other time there's been a similar "pause" in game action was in Rockman World 2 where unused Quint sprites have been found showing that Quint was supposed to have poses before it was changed to just him standing there. So it must be in Geminiman's level that Proto "transforms" into Break. No other level has Protoman standing there except Gemini's level making Gemini's level the odd one out. Perhaps the "Breakman blocker" has something to do with it since it's very conspicuous simply standing there doing nothing. Mike Mcmahon Has found the missing transformation data still in MM3 and has hacked Geminiman's level to include it. Thusly proving it *is* in the game exactly as how I surmised it would be. *Download

However, it's also possible that Protoman was meant to transform in Doc Robot Gemini's level at one point, since there's a space where the "Breakman Blocker" could be put and also since both Doc Robot's level and Gemini's level are SO similar. It would make more sense in terms of plot and logistics. But there's no evidence to show that Protoman was meant to show up there, and he DOES show up in Gemini's level simply standing still for several long moments.

In the end, his "transformation" sprites were probably removed because of it; that it was kind of rediculous since there wasn't a great deal of visual change to Protoman's sprite (as opposed to how it would have looked with him donning a helmet MM2-style ... it was probably even meant to echo MM2's opening, and it's a shame it was cut because that would have been a neat tie-in considering Protoman is MM's brother and all). The Breakman battle is rather vestigial; containting only traces of a powered-up Protoman battle. Since MM3 was rushed, I kind of wonder if "Breakman" would have made it in the game at all had it been given more time in development.

The Megaman 3 NSF file sound secrets

Anyone whose listened to the Megaman 3 NSF file has heard several tracks of sound and music that's either not found in the game or that has been shortened. Sadly, NSF must is not popular in the community, because if it was many more people would know these secrets. What is an NSF file? For those who don't know it's the music part of a rom. Basically we're emulating only the music part of the rom and nothing else. This lets up find things that weren't meant

Protoman's Theme - Everyone knows that Protoman's theme song was originally longer. I think the credits were supposed to roll while Megaman started at Protoman's mugshot in the sky.

Protoman's Whistle - While most people know that Protoman's Theme was cut short, most don't realize protoman's whistle was also cut short! Probably because it's a little too long and would interrupt the flow of the game.

Wily's Castle - I was pretty surprised to hear that Skull Castle's introduction music was cut short! While it is pretty catchy, I can see it getting annoying to wait so long before moving on to the next level.

What's interesting is comparing it to it's two doppelgangers in the in-game NES MM3 tune, the in-game WW SC tune, and the game-ripped WW tune. Perhapse it's the emulator, bit the music for the Wily Wars plays MUCH slower in the game .... not that that's the point. You can tell that the actual tune is what the in-game NES version playes, but looped over and over. That isn't even a game-trick, that's just the tune. It's almost as long as the original, but not nearly as catrchy.

Unknown sound effect 1 - track 26 in the NSF file - somewhat difficult to distinguish, but this formerly unkown sound effect is a common bleep heard when an arm cannon shot bounces off a met's hat an such circumstances. Found out by Mega Man 5.

Unknown sound effect 2 - track 34

Unknown sound effect 3 - track 42

Unknown sound effect 4 - track 50

A note on "unused" tack 50 made by Andrew Sylvester:
One of the "unused sound effects" you have listed on your site actually IS used in the game! Track 50 (from the NSF file) is the one that
sounds kind of like a chime, similar to the sound of picking up a coin in Super Mario Bros. It's used in the game after you defeat a robot master and gain his ability, but whatever sound channel(s) it uses to make the effect are already in use by the sound effects of the new power's energy meter being filled up and/or the "blooping" sound of the weapons menu appearing on screen. Because of the NES's hardware, you can't hear both sounds at once -- BUT, if you play Mega Man 3 on the PS2/etc. Mega Man Anniversary Collection, you CAN hear it, since the system uses pre-recorded audio instead of generating the sound itself.

An interesting note indeed!

Unknown sound effect 3 sounds like it might belong to the Pickle Dozer ( the met driving the bulldozer). The rest sound like sound effects from the development stage of the game.

Funtasic Facts:

Facts that, although not really part of the development

• 
  Dr Right and Dr Wily have a symbol for when they collaborate on projects! It can be seen on batteries found in Magnetman's stage. I know I didn't notice this the first time I played though the game.
• The number of the Robot Masters are in is determined by the order their levels are set in inside the game. This can be seen by accessing the levels in any level editor program. First comes Needle then Magnet then Gemini, the Hard, then Top, then Snake, then Spark, and finally Shadow - just like the numbers say!
• The rom level order is the same as the teleport hatch layout - from the top right going down, followed by the two on the bottom, and finally followed by the top left going down.
• All of the Wily levels share the same tile sets! Only the pallets have changed.
• After the levels are over, there's still room left. In it are garbled bits of data and what appear to be bits of test layouts for bits of various stages with little or no changes. Just kibbles and bits and bits and bits. This is true for most all of the Megaman games, except for most of Megaman 1.
• 
  The left is tile data from the Megaman 3 rom and the right is tile data from the Wily Wars (which I got using Genecyst and an old computer). As you can see, the tile data in Megaman 3 is NOT the same as the tile data in Wily Wars. The unused sprites and graphics in MM3 do not appear in the Wily Wars (or Mega World) at all. Allot of streamlining seems to have been done in that game.
• 
  In MM3 Wily lifts off from some mysterious area. Judging from the previous scene (where Light talks to MM about Wily stealing Gamma), one assumes this is Light's Lab, but .... is it? In the Wily Wars it's actually Skull Castle .... but that doesn't make much sense. He lifts off from Skull Castle, zooms away and arrives ... right back in Skull Castle? Plus the NES sprite looks nothing like MM3's Skull Castle! Is it Light's Lab? Logic says yes, but official art of Light's Lab says otherwise. The sprite looks NOTHING like Light's Lab! However .... it does resemble MM2's Skull Castle (if you flip it around in paint that is). The lack of a skull could indicate the BACK of the MM2 castle. But what would Wily be doing in MM2's Skull Castle?? Perhaps this is a prior design for MM3's Skull Castle which Wily Wars corrected. Or maybe the MM2 castle was used as a placeholder until it was finished; which means the designers neglected to touch up this graphic. This, my friends, is the last true MM3 Mystery and it remains .... unsolved.

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