This is the early/beta U.S. version of Rockman 3. This was the beginning of the development of the U.S. version of the game, which started soon after the final Japanese version was released. Shown on this page are the differences between the U.S. prototype and the U.S. final, which are mostly extra glitches due to the somewhat quick porting at this point in development.
These machines don't blink when they are being put together, unlike the final. This is also present in the Japanese version.
This machine will appear as soon as Mega Man land's in this area. In the final, Mega Man needs to be at the edge of the platform he's standing on for the machine to appear. This is also present in the Japanese version.
Getting the Top Spin. The colors for part of Mega Man's helmet is incorrect.
Every time a robot master is defeated in the Prototype, Mega Man gets stuck in his attacking position until the robot master's explosion sprites are completely off the screen.
When Mega Man lands in the area in Shadow Man's, Magnet Man's, and Hard Man's stage where he battles Break Man, he gets stuck in his "running start" position.
Using Top Spin to destroy Shadow Man, Mega Man not only gets stuck but his sprite also gets glitched until the robot master's explosion sprites are off the screen. This was fixed in the final.
Sometimes if you get creamed by a boss, Mega Man's "attacked" sprite (well, the "sweat" anyway) will show after he teleports back into the stage.
From my Mega Man 3 prototype videos on YouTube. Sometimes in the Prototype, if too much appears on screen, sprites will glitch or other sprites will appear for a split-second. For example, in the first screenshot the cat's head is displayed incorrectly and in the third there are two Mega Man's. These split-second sprite glitches are fixed in the final version.
Defeating the Doc Robot that has Bubbleman's abilities with Rush Marine in the prototype will cause Mega Man's sprite to glitch.
Mega Man runs while Break Man shows up in Gemini Man's stage. He appears to be running, but doesn't go anywhere (like Shaggy and Scooby sometimes do in the Scooby Doo cartoons).
While getting clobbered in Gemini Man's stage, Mega Man suddenly became invisible and got stuck. After about a minute the screen started to scroll to the left and stopped at the beginning of the stage, as shown in the last 2 shots.
After firing a few shots at the first cat in Top Man's stage, the cat's tail disappeared (and no this wasn't a sprite flicker, the tail actually vanished). 0_0
Woah. This area in Spark Man's stage is very glitchy. In addition to the usual sprite flickering and slowdown, nearly the entire area changed color! Even Mega Man changed. I'm surprised the game didn't lock-up, since there was at least 6 sprites on screen, massive flickering, a huge drop in framerate, and nearly all the colors were incorrect. Sometimes Mega Man will be invisible as well. Note that the level will have it's original colors if you go down to the next area and opening and closing the sub-screen will cause Mega Man and Rush's face to turn purple (though their bodies are in their correct colors), all of which are shown in the third screenshot.
No signs of the stage changing color in the final. I'm surprised Capcom USA's testers managed to find this huge, occasional glitch and fix it in the final. What's even more surprising is that the final version locks-up here when too much is on-screen (when using Rush) and the prototype doesn't!
