Mega Man 3 [NES] No Damage Playthrough

Played by Zenith.

There exists an exploit in this game where you only deplete Rush's Rush Jet energy if you are standing on him. So, if you jump repeatedly while flying, you can conserve your energy.

Magnet Man is a pushover, plain and simple. If you are wedged between him and a wall when he does his magnetism move, you can speed up the fight by jumping over his shoulder and doubling back. This make him think he came into contact with you (only checks against Mega Man's X axis, I guess), so he calls it a job well-done and ceases his attack.

The struggle against Shadow Man is, perhaps, the most difficult of any of the classic series robot masters. It is a trial of pure reflexes; there are no tells with him. At the outset, he will jump twice before either sliding into you or throwing his shuriken at you. Then, his pattern becomes: jumping three times of various height, followed by the aforementioned slide or shuriken toss. You need to make sure you keep enough distance from him to give yourself a chance to appropriately react to whatever move he has chosen. Cornering yourself in this fight means the end of the run. To make matters even more daring, I fought him with the Mega Buster, twice, when I could've used his own weapon against him the second time. Ordinarily, he is weak to Top Spin, but that weapon cannot be used without damaging Mega Man.

You can make your life easier, during the fight with Hard Man, by sticking to edges of the room when he hurls his Hard Knuckles at you. Ordinarily, if you dodge them the 1st time around, they'll fly past you and rebound towards you. However, they will fly off the screen when you stand at the edges.

The beginning of Snake Man's duel can be a little tricky, since there is one of two permutations he can choose to take. The first permutation is that he'll jump up in the air, at the center pillar, and fire off some snakes. Then, he'll descend that platform and do a little hop up to the platform near the entrance to the room. During that little hop, you need to slide under him. The second permutation is that he'll forgo jumping at the center or shooting out his snakes entirely and just make a mad leap to the entrance platform from the center pillar. In this case, you need to simply stand next to the central pillar to avoid contact damage with him. The tricky part is predicting which of the two he'll decide to choose and reacting appropriately. In the case of my run, he chose the second permutation twice. After that, easy-peasy.

The Doc Bot fights are often where the serious trouble begins, here. They are, essentially, the Mega Man 2 robot masters on steroids; bulkier and meaner than ever before. When you begin a no-damage run of Mega Man 3, you pray to the RNG gods that Air Man Doc Bot doesn't send out a particular pattern of tornadoes. Unfortunately, this time, the odds were not in my favor, but fortunately, I had a plan up my sleeve to handle this edge case. Miraculously, I actually managed to pull it off and weaseled my way out of the most BS attack in the game. The timing needs to be near perfect, so it's not something that I could repeatedly do without fail, by any means.

Not nearly as strenuous, but still quite difficult, is the initial leap over Heat Man Doc Bot's flame columns. Beyond that, though, is pretty standard fare.

Only 1 of 3 Holograph Mega Mans can be damaged. However, the damageable one will always initially appear at the uppermost teleporter, which hilariously makes the fight a breeze to finish with Search Snake.

0:00 - Intro
0:17 - Magnet Man's stage
0:35 - Proto Man fight
2:11 - Magnet Man fight
3:12 - Shadow Man's stage
3:30 - Proto Man fight 2
4:53 - Shadow Man fight
6:11 - Hard Man's stage
7:45 - Proto Man fight 3
8:20 - Hard Man fight
9:10 - Top Man's stage
11:09 - Top Man fight
12:06 - Spark Man's stage
13:38 - Spark Man fight
14:27 - Snake Man's stage
17:04 - Snake Man fight
18:20 - Gemini Man's stage
21:30 - Gemini Man fight
22:21 - Needle Man's stage
23:46 - Needle Man fight
24:42 - Shadow Man's stage 2
25:48 - Doc Robot (Wood Man) fight
26:53 - Doc Robot (Heat Man) fight
27:38 - Gemini Man's stage 2
29:07 - Doc Robot (Flash Man) fight
30:39 - Doc Robot (Bubble Man) fight
31:27 - Spark Man's stage 2
32:21 - Doc Robot (Metal Man) fight
33:42 - Doc Robot (Quick Man) fight
34:40 - Needle Man's stage 2
35:37 - Doc Robot (Air Man) fight
37:50 - Doc Robot (Crash Man) fight
38:22 - Break Man fight
39:13 - Wily stage 1
40:42 - Kamegoro Maker fight
41:20 - Wily stage 2
42:14 - Yellow Devil MK-II fight
43:43 - Wily stage 3
44:57 - Holograph Mega Mans fight
45:13 - Wily stage 4
46:07 - Needle Man fight 2
46:24 - Magnet Man fight 2
46:44 - Gemini Man fight 2
47:03 - Hard Man fight 2
47:29 - Top Man fight 2
47:47 - Shadow Man fight 2
49:05 - Spark Man fight 2
49:24 - Snake Man fight 2
50:05 - Wily Machine 3 fight 1
50:28 - Wily Machine 3 fight 2
51:06 - Wily stage 6
51:22 - Gamma fight 1
51:35 - Gamma fight 2
51:46 - Ending

Is all, really.