Famitsu Issue 0111 (October 12, 1990)

I agree that those scores are way too low for Mega Man 3, however...

I have to say Kitsune when I spent $50 of money I saved up for Mega Man 3 as a kid and it was a massive disappointment. It wasn't too hard; in fact I beat it within a day. The music was great for sure, but it was one of the biggest "Oh no, all of my money is gone" moments as a kid. "That's it? I liked Mega Man 2 better." I ended up trading it a few months later for the PC version of Maniac Mansion. Monetarily it was a terrible deal, but I still have that same boxed copy of Maniac Mansion and all of the inserts as one of my prized possessions.

Personally. I'll always remember Mega Man 3 as being life lessons in both managing money and expectations, haha!

On a whole, I think people recognize 3 as a good mainline Mega Man game but admit that the rushed feeling is there throughout the entire experience. 

@TresHombres I've certainly been burned buying games A LOT worse than Mega Man 3.

Perhaps it puts things in perspective to say that Famitsu rated the original Mega Man one point HIGHER than Mega Man 3.  And even Mega Man 2 only got a 28 out of 40 from them.

I'm not a collector, but some time in the late 90s/early 00s, I walked into a Wal-Mart and there was a big discount bin where I found a $5 sealed copy of Mega Man 2.  No idea what crack it had fallen into - I assume some employee found a copy that had fallen behind a shelf for ten years.  But like I said, I'm no collector.  And I'm not an eBay seller, either, so I bought and opened that sucker.  Still, I'd happily trade it for a complete boxed copy of Maniac Mansion, no doubt.

When you said "...been burned buying games a LOT worse" you are correct! And heck, I didn't learn my lesson, because 4 years later in 1995, after working hard at a job, I finally saved up enough money to buy a game. And what did I buy? Did I buy Chrono Trigger? No, I spent $79.99 in 1995 money ($157 in 2024 USA Dollars) on Mega Man X2. A great, fun game that I beat in 2 days. "Why didn't I rent this?" was my question I kept asking myself. 

And man, you are so right. The absolute worst game I ever got, one that was so bad I felt an immense level of guilt about the money my parents spent on it, was Deadly Towers for the NES. I still feel bad about that game. It was really hard, the music was awful, it made no sense, it was just plain bad. Also 720 Degrees on the NES. A middling port of an already threadbare arcade game. And man, did I feel terrible when my sister Sharon saved up her hard earned money and bought CastleQuest for me. CQ wasn't the worst of the worst, but I just didn't like it, but I played it because I felt bad that she spent so much money on it, haha!


 

@TresHombres I don't know if it was the absolute worst game I owned, but one of the most disappointing games I ever got as a kid was Rambo for the NES.  The badass shot of Stallone firing his machine gun on the cover had me pumped for action, but then I discovered that 90% of the game is running back and forth killing snakes with a knife.  So lame.  But in those days, it wasn't unusual to buy a game based on its cover.  It's not like you could check Nintendo Power for reviews, since there weren't any.  And I didn't have any rich friends who owned tons of games so I could try them out first.  Every game purchased or received as a gift was a total roll of the dice.

Luckily I never had enough money of my own to buy video games as a kid, so I didn't feel the pangs of guilt over spending my own money on a stinker.  But it sucked getting a terrible game for a birthday present knowing it was all you were going to be able to play until you got something else at Christmas, or vice versa.

I'm convinced that this childhood dearth of games is what led me to buy ALL the games once I had a job and could afford to.  Well, maybe not all the games, but let's just say that from the N64/PS1 era through to the following XBox/PS2/Gamecube era, not only did I own all those systems, but I bought so many games I still probably have at least 60 or 70 that I've never played even once.  Add PC games to that and the number of games I own yet have never played is probably at least triple that.

And THAT excess of wasted money is probably what led me to stop playing games altogether around 2005 or so.  I've literally never laid hands on a single console or game post-Xbox/PS2/Gamecube.  The last time I played any game period was when I played the original Tomb Raider on PC back in 2020.  So I can safely say gaming is purely a thing in the past for me. 

Yet here I am, scanning mags.

I actually loved my copy of Rambo (nes) . Navigation was a pain, but I liked the Zelda II elements it borrowed.

The WORST games I regret buying were Star Wars: Masters of Tera Kasi (ps1) and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (360). I got them at full price, but I was so disappointed. I sold Quake Wars back to GameSpot a few days later for $22 (list was $50) -- I just wanted to get rid of it.

We have a similar story, but I was lucky enough to have a few rich classmates who got every game they asked for, would get bored with them, and I would eventually be able to convince them to let me borrow their games. Also we were lucky to have some very cheap rental places in my area back then. Our local grocery store would rent games for $1 per day, which seems impossibly cheap in retrospect. 

However once I started work full time and had disposable income, I started going overboard with buying games. In fact I hit my absolute peak back when I joined RetroMags in 2009ish. I've now pared down to my absolute favorites and revisit each one about once per year.