Mega Man 3 has one of the most iconic soundtracks on the NES, and the story behind it is quite unique.
Harumi Fujita was already a legend at Capcom at the time, having contributed to titles such as Ghosts & Goblins and Final Fight. She was also the genius behind the NES Strider.
This made her the natural choice for Rockman 3 in 1989. She had worked alongside Tokuro Fujiwara for multiple projects, and he was the Producer for the title as it began rolling out.
Development for 3 is estimated to have taken around 13 months, and the story gets interesting right around 2 months before release.
The main planner of the game abruptly stepped away from the company in the Summer of the year they were planning the Fall release. This caused Fujiwara to step in from his executive role and a bright-eyed Keiji Inafune to step up from his artistic position.
They were tasked with finishing roughly 50% of the game in about two months.
The soundtrack had been coming along nicely as Harumi Fujita composed "Gemini Man" "Needle Man" and a portion of the "Staff Roll." Capcom was notorious for leaving sound design until the end, and Fujita was waiting for the development and art team to give her pieces to work with.
She was also at least 7 months pregnant at this time, composing music despite it becoming increasingly awkward to do so.
So the timing happened to line up that when Fujiwara and Inafune needed to step in to finish the crunch, Fujita understandably needed to step away. She was only gone for a short time, but it just happened to be a very, very hectic time for the Capcom legends.
Harumi Fujita's assistant and team member Yasuaki Fujita (no relation) was given the role of the main composer, matching the energy of his peers and helping create quite the legendary soundtrack in just a number of weeks.
It was a major team effort. Flaws and all they delivered a masterpiece filled with passion.
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