I personally own about 230 NES games, and I'd hate to tell you but SMB3 is one of the easier games. I personally find the first SMB to be harder.

As far as ALTTP goes, well that's just a great game. It's challenging yes, but god it's fun and rewarding when you finally figure something out. I mean that was such a huge game back then. At first I thought I might be close to beating it after collecting the first 3 things, and then they throw 7 crystals at you!!

I hate to sound like an old fart(I'm only 19), but this seems to be a problem with kids and games these days. The games are getting easier and easier added more checkpoints, more save points, and more lives. Sure it's nice, but where's the challenge. Most games don't have things that challenge you like they did back then because kids these days have too short of attention spans and will probably just say screw it.

I remember playing through ALTtP with my older brother when I was a kid, and we really had to think and talk some things through, because we didn't have the internet to go to.

Of course there are challenging games these days, but they are far and few between. It almost brings a tear to my eye when I watch my 7 year old brother play mega man 2 and after many tries he finally can beat a boss or two. And then the next week I watch him blaze through the monkey boss in Twilight Princess.

I guess in all this rambling what I'm trying to say, keep trying to beat it, it will get easier. And I'm also saying that I miss the NES/SNES era. lol

You're only 19 and you have 230 NES games!?!? Damn you're gonna pass my ass! I'm wasting my head start! I'm 24 and I only have 300 NES games!

That's so rad you have a 7 year old brother rocking Mega Man 2. I was 6 when that beautiful gem came out. Such a masterpiece. Definitely harder than any Mario, but not as stupidly hard as the first Mega Man. That game was just as bad as Battletoads of the last level of Ninja Gaiden.

All the NES Megaman games were pretty fun thanks in part to their difficulty.   Though I do think they got easier with each increment.  Megaman 5 was probably the easiest of all NES Megaman games.

Megaman 3 was pretty hard in the "fight the old Megaman 2 bosses" levels. Harder than MM2 was originally, IMO.

MM3 was the first one I played. I remember saying "who is that thing that floated into this other boss?" then getting pwnd hard.

And then I learned that you had to beat 2 bosses before you got a password.

ARGH

...best Megaman ever. 

 I remember walking into the Water Temple in Master Quest and thinking "man, this dungeon was really hard back in the 1st quest. Oh well, I don't have the longshot so I can eliminate maybe half the rooms here, right?

And then the game handed me the Longshot right off the bat.

>_<

*Turns off Gamecube, cries self to sleep* 

Best NES Megaman ever.  Best Megaman ever has got to be X2.

@Chadius, haha, I dreaded even walking into the Water Temple in the Master Quest.  The best, IMO, was the Spirit Temple.  They really turned that temple on its head, you ended up navigating it in ways that were so far removed from the original -- yet the geometry and room connectivity was exactly the same!  It's like doing the challenge levels in Portal.

Megaman 1 was by far the hardest of them all. I think megaman 2 was my favorite megaman followed closely by 3 then it kinda went downhill

I don't agree with any of your points.

1. I remember LOTS of variety.
2. It wasn't too hard. It was so that you could play it for months. Which was wonderful.
3. The Map was an important evolutionary step in the Mario series. It completely changed the feel of the game: Whenever a new map opened up, I felt like I entered a new country. You could anticipate what was awaiting you, there was a unique theme to every world. You could take different routes.

But I agree that SMB3 is not the best Mario game there ever was. I think it doesn't feel quite as "groovy" as SMW or Yoshi's Island. Whenever I replay it today, I always have to adjust to the somewhat slower handling of Mario. Flying with the cape was more fun than the racoon tail, too.

But still, one of my fondest childhood memories :)