I actually just played through Resident Evil 3 myself, too (on the Dreamcast, though). I finished it around 5 AM (Eastern Time). I bought it back in 2000, but I never got far in it, and I'd always end up restarting it over and over again. It was the one of the few Resident Evil games I hadn't finished (others are remake and Zero, haven't played any spin-offs).
I loved how you always had to be ready for anything, because sometimes you'd walk into a room and there'd be just basic zombies or nothing, and then you go through it again and there'd be Hunters or spiders or who knows what else. And sometimes Nemesis would just suddenly pop up, too. Outside of save rooms, you really gotta stay on your toes in that game. You never know what's gonna happen.
And stuff like codes to unlock stuff and some item placements can be different if you died and loaded up again, so you can't entirely rely on whatever you saw before.
It's a really damn good game. And yeah, that dead Tyrant cameo was nice. Hah.
