The last of three Mega Man X games on the Super Nintendo, Mega Man X3 was published in 1995 by Capcom.

Mega Man X3 starts the same as the previous two games: you get a playable prologue with a few surprises, then you get access to the usual eight protagonists via a menu. In this game the main bad guys are: Blast Hornet, Blizzard Buffalo, Gravity Beetle, Toxic Seahorse, Volt Catfish, Crush Crawfish, Tunnel Rhino, and Neon Tiger.

The designers were not short of a few ideas for this game, so it contains a few new elements. Biggest of all is the ability to play X‘s sidekick, Zero. He’s the guy in the red outfit with the long hair. Early on in the game you take control of him and even have a boss battle with him. It’s pretty exciting stuff.

Actually, there seem to be quite a lot of boss battles in this game – there are two in the prologue alone… But that’s okay because the boss fights are always well thought-out, balanced, and fair in Mega Man games.

Graphically, Mega Man X3 is another stunner, with brilliant use of colour and clever parallax scrolling. The level where you climb the outside of an airship at sunset (with the tower in the background) is absolutely epic. Musically, the game is wonderful too.

All three Mega Man X releases on the Super Nintendo are classics of their time. If you like platform shooters you’d be well advised to check them out.

More: Mega Man X3 on Wikipedia