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  • Game-Breaker: The Screw Crusher is a borderline example. On the one hand, it does massive amounts of damage and uses very little energy...but on the other hand, it's the last weapon you get in the game, and the only weapon that can harm the Wily Machine's final form, forcing you to conserve at least some energy for the final battle.
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks!: This game can get downright unfair in places, almost to the extent of Mega Man & Bass. It happens as early as Spark Man's stage and as late as Dust Man's stage, which is borderline Platform Hell. It's perhaps unsurprising that despite having the same level of polish as its two sequels, III is more or less only remembered for Punk and its own ruthless difficulty.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Unlike its NES counterpart, Spark Shock can freeze any number of enemies at once and lets you switch to damaging weapons to finish them off
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike: Granted, anything would have been harder than the previous game, but it's still very difficult all the same, even by Mega Man standards.
  • So Okay, It's Average: While it has more polish than Dr. Wily's Revenge and especially II, it's also more formulaic and far more unreasonably difficult than IV or V. Amusingly, it's also this to Mega Man 3 and the PC game bearing the same name, as it's definitely not as fondly remembered as its NES forerunner, but also nowhere near being the utter atrocity that its PC namesake is.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: This is seen as an improvement over its immediate predecessor, if nothing else.
  • That One Boss: Punk is absolutely insane. He can kill you in just three hits, is immune to all weapons save for your Mega Buster, and spends most of the fight either immune to damage or tossing out Screw Crushers that can block your shots. But the most dangerous aspect of this fight is his wheel attack, where he'll bounce up and down before suddenly charging at you from a random height. There aren't any tells or hints as to what height he'll attack from, and the speed he charges at means that it's hard to tell if you're supposed to jump over him or slide under him until it's too late.
  • That One Level:
    • Dust Man himself may be a bit of a joke, but getting to him is no laughing matter at all. Like his stage in Mega Man 4, nearly every pit has Up'n'Down enemies launching up in an attempt to knock Mega Man in, and there's a trash compactor section that can instantly kill him. Unlike that version, this one is longer than average, has far more pits and spikes, the trash compactor is longer than before, the smaller screen makes it easier for Mega Man to get hit since most enemies retain their large NES sprites, and there are numerous pixel-perfect jumps that must be made or else death follows, one even requiring Rush.
    • Dive Man's stage is much more stress-inducing than his original NES stage, thanks to the smaller screen making it easier to jump into spikes on the ceiling. Furthermore, the floatier physics of the Game Boy games make performing precise jumps underwater without dying more difficult, and the stage makes you do these jumps fairly often. The enemies are also particularly annoying, with aquatic Mets shooting as soon as they're vulnerable and Mantans doing obscene Collision Damage.

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