The third Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest is closed, and the grand total of level entries is...185.​ For comparison, that's twice the size of the last contest plus the size of the first contest. Or, to put it another way, that's more levels than there are in Mega Man 1-11 combined.

We judges are gonna die.

I asked for this, though. I saw how popular this contest was and knew what I was getting into. I'm a writer, a game critic, a game developer, a diehard Mega Man fan, an experienced player, and an authority on both the official and unofficial games; this is exactly the kind of thing I do for fun.

Beyond my personal enjoyment and satisfaction, this is a chance to do some good for the community. No doubt there are several aspiring game developers who have submitted to the contest—and speaking from experience, it's important for them to receive feedback that's comprehensive, fair, and encouraging. I intend to keep that in mind as I write my judge reviews. I'm already projected to be the "nice judge," but I can be just as critical and nitpicky as anyone. The key is remembering that this contest is for fun, and that there's a real person with real feelings and a desire to succeed on the receiving end of my criticism.

As the development team readies the first batch of levels to be judged, I'm bracing myself for a long winter of nonstop Mega Man...and really, that's no different from any other winter. For the last decade, most of my major side projects have centered around this franchise; I'm accustomed to the Blue Bomber being a daily part of my life. There was a span of several years where I was blogging every other day, contributing occasional articles to GameFAQs and GameCola, and keeping up with a personal journal; I can handle writing 185 short reviews in a couple months.

I have a colossal task ahead of me, to be sure, but I'm not intimidated by it. I'm looking foward to it. If I can find the right balance between judging and everything else I want and need to do, the next few months should be very rewarding indeed.

I have forgotten how to slow down and relax.

All throughout school, my pattern was to keep adding side projects and extracurricular activities to my weekly schedule—I'd start by joining a choir, then a theater group, then a church group... By the end of three or four years, I'd be so overburdened with activities that I'd burn out and vow to wipe the slate clean after graduation. Then I'd move on to the next phase of my life, be it a new school or the "real world"...and slowly start the process all over again.

For the foreseeable future, there is no "next phase" of my life. No more school, no grand plans of life-altering significance on the horizon. No natural stopping point where I can gracefully walk away from my commitments. "As soon as I finish what I'm working on now," I keep telling myself, "then I'll take some time to myself." But I never seem to finish. Projects that should only take a weekend end up taking weeks, if not months. Whenever one commitment starts wrapping up, another tantalizing one presents itself. I thrive on being productive and feeling like I'm making a contribution to society, so I want to do all these things. Yet one after another, every commitment in recent years has gone on so long that it's more like work than fun. I've learned to devote all my free time to powering through projects so I can finish before they stop being enjoyable.

Which, in turn, makes them not enjoyable. And they still take forever.

The other factor is that I need to finish my projects more quickly if they're going to remain relevant. I've got a blog post about the latest Star Wars movie that's been in the works since the week the film opened. I completely missed the boat on my annual New Year's Resolutions post. My stalled playthrough of Mega Man 8 surely would have gotten a boost in popularity if I could have released it in sync with the second Mega Man Legacy Collection. I'm frantically trying to get my Mega Man fangame released before the next big level design contest opens—because as I found with my Super Mario World ROM hack that should've been released a decade ago, even the most creative ideas will get scooped up by somebody else if you take too long to show them to the world.

But I'm also racing against myself. Five months after playing Chrono Cross for the first time, I still haven't finished the angry article I started drafting for GameCola about it...and at this point, I'm not sure I want to bother finishing it. Writing about the game was cathartic at one point, but now I've moved on with my life. Do I really want to reopen that wound? I think the only reason I'm still considering going back to it is to preserve this sentence, which took way too long to craft:

And with that, the sentence has been preserved. Now eliminating "The Ten Reasons: Chrono Cross."

Well, that's one less thing on my to-do list.

I'm taking this weekend to recover from self-inflicted stress. I'm not thinking about what I should do. I'm not pushing myself to finish anything I may start or resume. I'm going where the winds of relaxation take me. That I've spent today folding laundry, transcribing a dessert recipe into my recipe book, and reviewing fan-submitted captions on my YouTube videos might make it seem like I still have no idea how to relax...but these are things I want to do. It's making me happy to tidy up the all the physical and mental clutter I've been neglecting in my life. Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to go redeem this coupon code I found inside a cereal box.

I've been lurking around the World Wide Web since the days of dial-up, but it wasn't until my first post with Exfanding Your Horizons in 2008 that I established any kind of online presence. Before then, you'd never find anything of mine by accident—if you had my e-mail address, it was because I knew you in person and gave it to you; if you were on my Angelfire website (about which I remember nothing, other than that it was as much an eyesore as anything else from the Web 1.0 era), it was because I sent you the link. I had a brief flirtation with AOL chat rooms in the '90s, but such a presence is ephemeral at best.

The only public trace of my online existence was a website I created for a high school history project, which was ostensibly about the American Civil War, but which was secretly a playground where the popup text for hovering over Roger B. Taney's portrait was "Would you buy cookies from this man?" and where clicking on the conspicuous blank space at the bottom of the last page would make a picture of Boba Fett appear. It looks like the site has finally been taken down, but I was able to Google and Yahoo! my way back to it for a good many years after I graduated. Other than a stray photo or guestbook signature on someone else's site, you'd never know I was around before 2008.

Or so I thought.

On a whim, I did a web search for "Flashman85," my default handle for general geekery online. Don't ask me what possessed me to do this—I'm not even sure myself. The first several results were no surprise—my profiles on Twitch, YouTube, The Backloggery, Sprites INC, and a few other sites where I felt the urge to comment that one time. But then there was a review of Mega Man for the NES written by a Flashman85. Funny, I thought to myself. I've only ever reviewed that game on GameCola, under my real name. Let's see who this other guy is.

"To paraphrase a friend of mine," the review began, "Capcom's idea for Megaman was 'Mario with a gun.' Indeed, few would suspect how popular a franchise the Blue Bomber would become. The original game was similar to other NES games of the time, but it also had laudable properties that would help it to endure into the next century."

That's an odd coincidence, I thought. I also had a friend who described Mega Man as "Mario with a gun." And I'm definitely the only person on the Internet who uses the words "indeed" and "laudable." Who is this guy?

As it turned out, that guy was me.

Now, I've written a lot during my time with a keyboard in front of me. I may not be able to readily call to mind every post and comment I've virtually penned, but show me something I've written and I'll at least be able to recall a few details about it. Staring at this review—dated 2002, well before I really existed on the Internet—I had no recollection whatsoever of it. I didn't even recognize the website it was on. But there was no mistaking that this was my writing.

The shockingly low word count is what initially threw me the most. The whole review weighs in at a downright economical 231 words, which is barely enough for me to develop an introduction these days. However, it would be totally like me to spend almost 50% of the review complaining about Ice Man's stage. "'If you can beat Ice Man's stage, you can beat any Megaman game' is my motto." A little hint of Dave Barry there. I used to read a lot of Dave Barry. There were signs everywhere that this was me, notwithstanding Past Me's insistence on writing "Mega Man" as one word. Silly Past Me.

I looked around the site for other reviews that I had apparently written, and I found that I had covered all six of the NES Mega Man games. MM3 was no surprise: "My only real qualm is that many of the weapons go unused for most of the game." If I hadn't already caught on by then, my gushing praise for MM4 would have been a complete giveaway that this was me of 14 years ago writing all these reviews: "There is almost nothing for me to complain about in this fantastic game. Buy it. Now."

I've reread enough of my old material to know how far I've come as a writer since 2008, but it's surreal to jump back to 2002. There's little elegance to my old writing, but there's character. You can tell exactly how much I care about each aspect of each game—there's no veneer of objectivity and no time wasted describing anything that doesn't significantly impact my enjoyment of the game, no matter how important it might be for the reader to know. Most of the opinions expressed have remained unchanged in the last 14 years, but the way I express those opinions has evolved dramatically.

I still think MM1 is a classic, I still think people are too quick to label MM2 as easy, and I'm still a bit lukewarm about MM6 in the context of the rest of the series. I had forgotten just how wild about MM5 I used to be; my enthusiasm has cooled somewhat, but it's still one of my favorites. I'm less fanatical about MM4 as well; "Pure Excellence" is not a review title I would ever use anymore, even if the game remains my favorite. It's almost unsettling to hear myself describe MM3 as "one of the best Mega Man games ever." Perhaps you've seen my videos?

It's fascinating and almost a little bittersweet to read my own opinions from an era when I could like or dislike something without putting too much thought into it. Clearly, I was already attuned to certain aspects of game design, but I was capable of both zealotry and indifference without having to provide exhaustive support for my feelings. I've become so analytical that I need to understand why I'm having fun, and I clash so much with the mainstream nowadays that I need to be ready to defend my unpopular opinions at the drop of a hat. I'm too much a champion of separating fact from opinion to be able to share my feelings so unequivocally anymore. I envy Past Me for his ability to play something, enjoy it, write a quick blurb about it, and get back to having fun. He can keep his expository writing style (all the criticism I got from teachers about my essays is starting to make sense), but I wouldn't mind if some of that carefree enthusiasm were to come back.

If you'd like to open this time capsule for yourself, I present to you my old reviews of MM1, MM2, MM3, MM4, MM5, and MM6. Watch for the part where I continue complaining about Ice Man in a game where he doesn't even appear. That's so me.

Hoo boy. After five years of exile on the moon (as I frequently referred to it), I finally found an opportunity to leave. July was spent packing up the moon base and looking for a new place to live, but I managed to fit in a little time to keep some of my side projects going.

This Website:

I started writing up Series Opinions for two more Star Trek movies, and I performed some long-overdue maintenance on my Series Opinions pages in general. I introduced a new section for Mega Man fangames...or maybe that was in June. I officially need to add a "Last updated on..." tag to each opinion so I can keep track of what to list here! I guess you'll have to settle for a single blog post.

- Retrospective: June 2016

Games:

Hot off the heels of Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest is another fan-made Mega Man game featuring a level by yours truly—or, in this case, two levels. Cool stuff.

- Mega Man Endless

GameCola:

Although I haven't made any official announcement on the site itself, I've scaled back my GameCola contributions to the point where I'm more of a cameo-amenable former contributor than an active staff member. Our long-delayed year-end awards finally surfaced in July, and I contributed writeups for Chrono Trigger and the original Super Mario Bros., which won Best Game of 20 and 30 Years Ago, respectively. It should come as no surprise that I, a man perpetually behind the times, had nothing to do with the writeups for any of the games released in the year we were actually celebrating.

- The 2015 GameCola Videogame Awards (Part 2)

YouTube:

One last spurt of livestreaming before the moon base relocation yielded one of my better crops of fangame sampling.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Mega Man Fangame Sampler #11: Battle, X Night Shade, Atari, 9000
- Let's Play: Mega Man Endless (Blind, Live)
- Back for More: Mega Man Endless (Live)

The Backloggery:

GOG sale + a PayPal balance I keep forgetting about = time to pick up a couple discounted games I've had my eye on. I also gave SuperDanny Powered Up another shot, following a conversation with the game's developer, and I put enough effort into beating the game to warrant adding it to my backlog.

New:
- Day of the Tentacle Remastered  (PC)
- Mega Man Endless  (PC)
- Resonance  (PC)
- SuperDanny Powered Up  (PC)
- The Shivah  (PC)
 
Started:
- Mega Man Endless  (PC)
- SuperDanny Powered Up  (PC)
 
Beat:
- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze  (WiiU)
- Mega Man Endless  (PC)
- Star Trek: 25th Anniversary  (PC)
- SuperDanny Powered Up  (PC)

I expect August to be similarly sparse, but hopes are high that I'll be able to kick my side projects into high gear once my wife and I have finished unpacking everything and have finished jumping through all the other hoops involved in moving back to Earth from the moon.

One of my favorite blogging traditions with Exfanding Your Horizons was making up New Year's resolutions with my blogging buddy and then reflecting on them a year later. The blog went on permanent hiatus on the day we'd normally do our writing and reflecting, and I somehow never reinstated the tradition on this blog.

That's because, originally, this blog was little more than a place to get my writing fix until Exfanding came back from hiatus. Something temporary. I wasn't planning on setting down roots here and carrying on with traditions. This was the same thing I said about moving to the moon, and I've been living here since 2011. Somewhere along the line, this blog and my moon base became my home, and it's only recently that I've been treating them as such. I'd been waiting for the day where I'd resume business as usual, but this is business as usual. Time to stop looking to the past like it's the future. Time to look at the present and do something about it if it's not to my liking. What a good time to start making resolutions again.

"Resolutions" isn't the right word, though. Resolutions are promises you feel guilty for breaking. I prefer to set goals; goals are things you feel good about achieving. I've learned to set reasonable goals for myself that are general enough to accomplish, but specific enough to be meaningful. Here's what I have in mind for 2016:

Goal #1: Start and finish a YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 8.
Anyone familiar with the saga of Mega Man 7 knows how much of a stretch this one is. Each Mega Man video series I've done has taken longer than the last, so smart money says I won't accomplish this goal until 2020 at the very earliest. Smart money is inanimate and highly flammable, however, so you shouldn't listen to it. I've streamlined my recording process and am livestreaming on a regular basis, which keeps me in the recording spirit, so I believe I can make this happen if I keep at it.

Goal #2: Make serious headway on the video game my wife and I are planning.
We don't talk about it much because we want to keep the particulars a secret, but my wife and I are working on a video game. It's still in the planning stages, but I'd like to have at least a partially playable beta ready before the end of the year.

Goal #3: Run at least one D&D campaign, then learn a new tabletop RPG system and run another campaign.
Since I started playing in college, Dungeons & Dragons has been an endless source of stories and one of my favorite ways to spend time with people. Moving to the moon has put me out of touch with a regular group of players, but nothing says I can't host the occasional one-shot campaign for friends and family who are willing to hop on a rocketship and drop in for a weekend. I'm also looking to diversify beyond D&D, as my other tabletop RPG experience is quite limited, and there's a copy of the Serenity Roleplaying Game rulebook on my shelf that's been gathering dust for too gorram long.

Goal #4: Read 12 books.
I was an avid reader up until late middle school or early high school, at which point I started associating reading with work, rather than with leisure. I've since warmed back up to reading as a pastime, and I casually follow a number of blogs, but I'd like to get back in the habit of reading as an alternative to the electronic entertainment that dominates my life. One book a month doesn't seem unreasonable, especially if I include graphic novels, which totally count.

Goal #5: Get my Backloggery progress index into positive double digits.
It's only since 2014 that I've been finishing more video games a year than I add to my collection, but just barely. Net progress in 2014 was +5, and 2015 was a measly +2 (technically +3, if you count the game I sold in December but forgot to remove from my list until New Year's Day). Lest you think this is a "play more video games" goal, my intention here is to be more discerning with how I spend my time and money, trimming my collection down to only the games I truly want to be there.

Goal #6: Write like I used to.
There are three meanings here: write regularly, write positively, and write for myself. Writing is cathartic, and I want to look back on a year's worth of posts that I would want to read, even if I hadn't written them. I want to unearth the bright-eyed, happy little kid inside me who's been buried under the layers of anger, frustration, disappointment, and anxiety that have accumulated over the last few years of resisting the present instead of reshaping it. With GameCola on hiatus, it's more important than ever that I make this website feel like home, and writing like I used to may be the best way to do it.


Ta-dah! A half-dozen goals, and those are just the ones I'm writing down (I'll spare you the one about eating less fried dough this time). Ambitious? Yes, but not unreachable. These aren't only goals; they're lifestyle changes, or at least catalysts for such—and after the 2015 I had, I have never been so ready for change. See you back here in a year to assess my success!

2015 ended on a high note for me. Good time spent with friends and family, some of the best weeks of work I've had all year, plenty of vacation time, meaningful personal development, and a change of focus that I hope will lead to a joyful and productive 2016. You'll note one big absence on this list: GameCola.net suffered a catastrophic server failure early in the month—the day before the shortest review I've ever written got posted, as though the website couldn't cope with me writing anything of substance shorter than 700 words.

Normally we'd revert to a recent backup version of the site, but due to mysterious technical issues, the latest backup we had was from sometime in November. An executive decision was made to put the site on hiatus to give our webmaster time to look into recovering the lost data, but also to give the Editor-in-Chief time to work on GameCola 4.0, a revised version of the site with all the modern bells and whistles we've been missing. I'll no doubt write more about the situation as time goes on, but in the meantime, I've been devoting my free time to other side projects that have been languishing for too long.

This Blog:

It's good to be writing again on a regular basis, and writing more positively, at that. In addition to the posts below, which hopefully represent a return to the kind of writing I used to do for Exfanding Your Horizons in its heyday, I was busy working on my Series Opinions for Star Trek: The Original Series and Enterprise, which I'll formally link to once they're complete.

- Retrospective: November 2015
- Star Trek Beyond the Point of No Return
- Always in Motion Is the Future
- Running With Superheroes

YouTube:

One GameCola contribution managed to slip through, despite the main site being out of commission. In honor of the new Star Wars movie, I kicked off a playthrough of one of my all-time favorite games, and it's been helping me refine my livestreaming style. The third installment of Jedi Knight and the second Backloggery Choice stream are two of my favorites so far (if nothing else, watch the Paperboy section of the first video below).

Of course, no mention of YouTube videos would be complete without a celebration of the true, final, real end of the Mega Man 7 recording saga. One of the funniest things I've ever released, according to me, and a joy to assemble.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Backloggery Choice #2: Crystalis, StarTropics II, Metal Storm, Paperboy
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 1: The Force Awakens
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 2: Elevator Action
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 3: Confusing the Commentator

GeminiLaser:
- Mega Man 7: Audio Outtakes

GCDotNet:
- Hacks'n'Slash #10: Mario & Sonic Christmas Special

The Backloggery:

December is always a bad month for my struggle against the evil Bak'laag. Between Christmas, winter sales on Steam and GOG, and holiday travels that take me near used game stores, my game collection always seems to inflate around this time. At least my patience has run out for games that aren't worth my time; I'm abandoning bad and unrewarding games with a vengeance nowadays, and I've decided to go back to playing only the games I think I'll like—anything that's culturally worthwhile but not worth the effort is something I can watch someone else play on YouTube.

New:
- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze  (WiiU)
- Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition  (PC)
- Final Fantasy X  (PS2)
- Final Fantasy X-2  (PS2)
- Gun Metal  (Steam)
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis  (PC)
- LEGO Jurassic World  (WiiU)
- Mega Man Battle Network 5: Double Team DS  (NDS)
- Mega Man Star Force: Pegasus  (NDS)
- Rokko Chan  (Brwsr)
- Star Trek: 25th Anniversary  (PC)
- Super Smash Bros. for Wii U  (WiiU)
 
Started:
- Final Soldier  (VC)
- Gargoyle's Quest II  (NES)
- StarFox Assault  (GCN)
- Wario Land 3  (GBC)
 
Beat:
- Final Soldier  (VC)
- Gargoyle's Quest II  (NES)
- The Misadventures of Tron Bonne  (PS)
 
Completed:
- Final Soldier  (VC)
- Gargoyle's Quest II  (NES)
- Love  (Steam)
- The Misadventures of Tron Bonne  (PS)
 
Removed:
- Wario Land 3  (GBC)

That about wraps it up for 2015! Off we go into another year.

Long story short, 2015 has not been the greatest year for me. November was the first month in a very long time where I was both pleased with how things were going and looking hopefully to the future. I'm glad to be able to share with you some of the high points of this past month.

This Blog:

Hey, I wrote some things! I'm most pleased with the final entry—after looking back on a couple years of writing for this blog, I came to realize how constantly negative I've been, even after my one friend's comment about my "general bitterness commentary" caused me to reexamine my writing. I'm making a conscious effort now to be more positive in my writing. I miss being fun and friendly and optimistic, and it's within my power to be like that again. I still reserve the right to complain from time to time, but I'll try to do it with a smile.

- Retrospective: October 2015
- I Think You Overestimate Their Chances
- Lessons From Livestreaming: Deponia
- The Next Trek

GameCola:

Things are ramping up behind the scenes at GameCola, and most of my time has been spent updating our staff wiki and drafting up internal e-mail correspondence, despite the five articles below making me look like I did anything of substance on the site itself. I'm also getting back into the habit of writing full reviews, which you'll see in next month's Retrospective; I hadn't realized how much I've needed my writing fix, and churning out fluff posts about archival videos has not been meeting that need. This has been a very productive year for me at GameCola, but I've fled too far from the beefy posts that energize me in an attempt to free up time to work on other projects that energize me in different ways. Time to get things back in balance.

Columns:
- Featured Game Soundtrack: Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
- Q&AmeCola: Games or Game Series We Are Most Thankful For

Podcasts:
- GC Podcast #90: A Not-So-Spooky Halloween – Part 1
- GC Podcast #90: A Not-So-Spooky Halloween – Part 2

Videos:
- GC Podcasts #58-60 on YouTube: If You Die in Real Life, You Die in Mike & Jeddy’s Top 10 Bonus Games

YouTube:

More old podcasts, the conclusion of a livestream series that sparked one of the posts mentioned above, and one of my favorite livestreams to date. I feel like I've finally hit my stride with livestreaming, and I've got a couple ideas for easy-ish prerecorded videos that I may bust out during my December vacation time. We'll see.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Deponia (Blind Live Playthrough) - Part 4: They'll Need a Crane
- Deponia (Blind Live Playthrough) - Part 5: Hungry Like the Whale
- Mega Man Fangame Sampler #5: Rokko Chan, Hard Hat: The Rebellion, Quint's Revenge
 
GCDotNet:
- Hacks’n'Slash #8: Thanksgiving Special
- Off-Topic Podcast #3: The Thirties
- The GameCola Podcast #85: THE The GameCola Podcast

The Backloggery:

I've reached a point in my gaming career that looks an awful lot like where I started. When I first got into gaming, it was all about having fun. If I liked a game, I kept playing it; If I didn't like a game, I stopped playing it. Around the time I signed up for The Backloggery some six years ago, gaming was only partially about having fun; it was also about the cultural experience of these games that other people enjoyed, and about finally getting around to all the games I had bought or been given that were collecting dust on a shelf.

A couple years ago, I began to move past my compulsion to play every game, even the bad ones, to 100% completion. Over the last couple months, I've moved past my compulsion to play the bad ones to any kind of completion. Life's short, and there are things I'd rather do with it than subject myself to completely avoidable tedium and frustration. I'm also acknowledging that there are some genres and series I might enjoy if I gave them a chance, but require too much of a time investment to determine whether they're worthwhile for me. From now on, I'm watching playthroughs on YouTube of anything that seems worth experiencing but not worth however many weeks or months of my life to conquer on my own.

Don't be offended if a game you got me or a game you love ends up on my "Removed" list. All that means is that I gave it a chance and I'm not eager to go back to it, same as any movie or restaurant or anything I take a chance on. Unless we're talking about Cruis'n USA, in which case I wouldn't mind keeping it on my backlog if the game cartridge weren't only useful as a paperweight [glares in the direction of the PAX East 2010 vendor who assured him every game was tested to work].

New:
- System Shock 2  (PC)
 
Started:
- Nintendo Land  (WiiU)
- Rise of the Robots  (SNES)
 
Beat:
- Deponia  (PC)
- LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4  (Wii)
 
Removed:
- Cruis'n USA  (N64)
- Hexen II  (PC)
- Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire (VGA)  (PC)
- Rise of the Robots  (SNES)
- Rome: Total War  (PC)

Great month! Looking forward to December being even better.

I am astounded by how productive I was in October.

This Blog:

OK, so this is a bad example to start with. But in my defense, I have four posts in draft right now, and I swear I worked on at least two of them.

- Retrospective: September 2015

GameCola:

GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY! So here's where all my blogging time went.

Columns:
-Featured Game Soundtrack: Scurge: Hive
-The Lost Art of Good Game Design: Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings
-Q&AmeCola: Games Ruined by a Game Mechanic

Podcats:
-Hacks’n'Slash #9: The END DAY: A Tale of Love
-GC Podcast #89: When Jeddy’s Away the Cats Will Play

Videos:
-GC Podcasts #24-26 on YouTube: Mike Ridgaway Gives 2010 Pink Cowboys a Brain Aneurysm
-GC Podcasts #27-29 on YouTube: Jeddy’s First Slumber Party Among Men
- GC Podcasts #30-31 on YouTube: Don’t Age, Metroid

YouTube:

I don't think I've ever had this many videos to share in such a short span of time. Livestreaming on Twitch has proven to be a great morale boost, an opportunity to get my social fix, and a source of near-effortless new video content. Getting to watch my fellow GameCola staff members continue to try out my Super Mario World ROM hack is a hoot, and I'm nearly caught up on old podcasts being ported to YouTube—and am finally getting to some of the new ones! And, HOOORAAAAY, my Mega Man 7 recording project is officially done after, like, a billion years! Well, I technically have one bonus video left to produce, but that one's a bit of a secret, and should be much easier than any of the others...

Flashman85LIVE:
- Deponia (Live Blind Playthrough) - Part 1: Fly Me to the Buffoon
- Deponia (Live Blind Playthrough) - Part 2: Divining for the Fjords
- Deponia (Live Blind Playthrough) - Part 3: The Settings Menu! And Maybe Also Some Gameplay.
- Mega Man Fangame Sampler #3 - Part 1: Super Fighting Robot, Origins
- Mega Man Fangame Sampler #3 - Part 2: SuperDanny Powered Up
- Mega Man Fangame Sampler #4: Eternal, Revenge of the Fallen

GeminiLaser:
- Mega Man 7 - Bloopers, Glitches, Tricks, and Version Differences

GCDotNet:
- Hacks’n'Slash #9: The END DAY: A Tale of Love
- Off-Topic Podcast #2: Giant Squid Scenes
- Super Impossible Mario World - Part 2: We've Got a Sassy Moral Compass

The Backloggery:

I even made great progress through my video game backlog. My wife picked up GameCola Editor-in-Chief Emeritus Paul Franzen's new FMV visual novel, so I couldn't resist taking that for a spin; it's nice to be able to add a new game to the list and finish it in the same evening. Livestreaming Deponia on a regular basis is keeping me from pulling another Longest Journey, though I'm glad I chose to finish up Mega Man: Rock Force on my own time rather than on stream; that last level took way too long to beat. I also tackled two games that have been in my collection awhile, gaining a newfound appreciation for GoldenEye by comparison with TWINE, and wrapping up the Leisure Suit Larry series—at least, as far as I am likely to play, given that Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust really don't count, and that I've already got three other iterations of the story Reloaded tells. Lastly, I did some housekeeping, removing things I may never muster the ability or interest to finish (and the LEGO game is open-ended to the point where it probably shouldn't have been on the list in the first place).

New:
- A Stranger Comes Calling  (PC)
 
Started:
- A Stranger Comes Calling  (PC)
- Deponia  (PC)
- LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4  (Wii)
- Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!  (PC)
 
Beat:
- 007: The World Is Not Enough  (N64)
- A Stranger Comes Calling  (PC)
- Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!  (PC)
- Mega Man: Rock Force  (PC)
 
Completed:
- A Stranger Comes Calling  (PC)
- Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!  (PC)
 
Mastered:
- A Stranger Comes Calling  (PC)
 
Removed:
- Conquest of the New World  (PC)
- LEGO Creator  (PC)
- Maniac Mansion  (PC)

Whoo! Great month.

Even I need a break from my own rambling preambles every now and again, so I'll cut to the chase: Here's what I was up to 'round yon Internet in September:

This Blog:

Hey, I wrote something aside from the monthly Retrospective. I count that as a victory.

- Retrospective: August 2015
- Making a Collection Worthy of the Legacy

GameCola:

My goodness. I'm a real staff writer again.

Columns:
- Featured Game Soundtrack: Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos
-Q&AmeCola: Making A Non-Mainstream Game Mainstream
-The Lost Art of Good Game Design: Mega Man Legacy Collection

Comics:
-Sprite Flicker: Dumber Munchers

Podcasts:
-GC Podcast #88: When this Podcast Hits 88 Miles Per Hour

Videos:
- [NSFW] GC Podcasts #21-23 on YouTube: Zach’s Lost YouTube Grab Bag

YouTube:

Oh boy, was I prolific. Amazing what a little livestreaming and archive diving will do. And let's not overlook my perpetually in-progress Super Mario World ROM hack that went public for the first time in the form of a blind playthrough. For one thing, you get to see me put my money where my mouth is when I critique game design. For another thing, it's a great opportunity to watch how quickly I can get people to say they hate me.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Backloggery Choice #1: Kirby's Adventure, VVVVVV, Space Quest: Vohaul Strikes Back
- Mega Man Fangame Sampler #1: Day in the Limelight 1, Rock Force
- Mega Man Fangame Sampler #2: 2.5D (Beta), Rocks!, Day in the Limelight 2
- Mega Man Legacy Collection Blooper: Wood Man's Revenge

GCDotNet:
- Super Impossible Mario World - Part 1: You're Doing It...Right?
- The GameCola Podcast #36: Boring Gaz Problems
- The GameCola Podcast #37: This Thing Came Apart
- The GameCola Podcast #38: Too Many Podcasters

The Backloggery:

At the end of September, I sat down to play Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings. Expect an upcoming "Lost Art of Good Game Design" column to explain how that went. Although I gave up on the game, I was looking forward to the satisfaction of removing it from my Backloggery with extreme prejudice. Turns out I never put it on there in the first place. Turns out I'm really bad about ensuring my Wii games make it to my Backloggery; following the example of Donkey Kong Country Returns earlier this year, I discovered yet another game I somehow failed to list.

Expanding my collection further was a generous gift from one of my YouTube fans, and one of the fangames I tried out on a livestream was enjoyable enough for me to add it to my list—a rare honor for a fangame, and a welcome surprise for me. I also finished up the Challenge mode of the Mega Man Legacy Collection (continuing to poke at a few of the challenges I knew I could do faster), and I finally freed up the adventure game slot in the rotation of games I'm currently playing. They weren't kidding when they called it The Longest Journey; most adventure games take me a couple days, not a couple months.

New:
- Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures  (Steam)
- LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars  (Wii)
- Mega Man: Rock Force  (PC)
 
Started:
- 007: The World Is Not Enough  (N64)
- Mega Man: Rock Force  (PC)
 
Beat:
- Katamari Damacy  (PS2)
- Mega Man Legacy Collection  (Steam)
- The Longest Journey  (PC)

If only every month could be this busy, I'd be a happy bee! And a busy bee. "Happy bee" sounds silly.

I'm still here, I swear! Let me prove it to you. Here's what I was visibly up to online in May:

This Blog:

I seem to have fallen away from blogging. Part of it's that my lunch breaks, which are normally prime writing time, have grown shorter and fewer due to the demands of the new job I've been working for the last couple months. It's also gotten more challenging to use the Weebly post editor in the last year or so; I'm a big fan of em dashes, but the keyboard shortcut to produce one inexplicably kicks me out of the post and loses all my progress since the last autosave. Remembering to copy/paste one of my favorite punctuation marks is a small but obnoxious way to throw off my writing groove, and my e-mail subscriptions are still showing up with the same light text color used on the website and not the dark color I've specified that would make the text legible. I love writing, but conditions are not ideal right now.

- Retrospective: April 2015

GameCola:

...That being said, I still do a fair amount of writing. I'm trying to keep my GameCola participation to transferring old podcasts to YouTube, editing the occasional article (mostly from the archives), and writing short articles that can be hammered out in a day and polished up in less than a week. Participating in podcasts and video commentary, as always, only requires as much effort as it takes to show up. So I've got a lot to show for myself.

Columns:
- The Lost Art of Good Game Design: Lufia: The Legend Returns
- Q&AmeCola: Classic Games Remade for Virtual Reality
- Q&AmeCola: Your Personal Theme Song

Podcasts:
- Process of Elimination RPGCast – Part 2: Save the World with Money

Videos:
- GC Family Game Night Returns!
- [NSFW] Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward Playthrough – Part 3: Everyone Dies, Including the Commentators

YouTube:

Nothing new to report, but some old to report. As previously mentioned, I've been dusting off some ancient GameCola podcasts, and I happened to appear in a couple of them this time around. These are from the days when the podcast format was still in flux, and before I started to hit my stride (which happens in the 20s, so we're close). I'm almost to the point where I'm ready to pick back up with Mega Man 7 bonus video recording; the break has been refreshing, but I'm starting to feel that pull again...

GCDotNet:
- Podcast #12: Cap’n Eric
- Podcast #13: The Unlucky Podcast

Comcastro:

A newcomer to this lineup, Comcastro is a fairly new website with, among other things, podcasts about business, politics, the entertainment industry, and geek stuff. I was invited to participate in an interview about my YouTube work and Mega Man in general, which of course digresses into deceptively erudite absurdity.

- Podcast 38: Gemini Laser – In Depth Retro Nostalgia, Is Mega-Man Allegory for the Russian Revolution?

The Backloggery:

My online gaming backlog has become a hub of social activity, so I've been keeping chatty with my fellow Backlogger...ers. I've also been busy curating my collection. Lots of new additions: My wife gifted me with some games she thought I'd enjoy from a bundle she picked up; I continued my mission to collect any Mega Man games I don't yet own (which I didn't realize was a mission until reviewing my purchases over the last two months); I snagged a review copy of something from GameCola; and I had a bunch of Club Nintendo points burning a virtual hole in my virtual pocket. You might notice a new abbreviation on the list, "VCH"; I think that's short for "Virtual Console Handheld", now available to me on my New 3DS, courtesy of my company's generous employee rewards system. I am officially as modern a gamer as I've ever been.

New:
- 3D Classics: TwinBee  (VCH)
- About Love, Hate and the other ones  (Steam)
- Dustforce  (Steam)
- Hogan's Alley  (SNES)
- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga  (WiiUVC)
- Mega Man Star Force 2: Zerker × Ninja  (NDS)
- Mega Man Star Force 3: Red Joker  (NDS)
- Mushroom Men: Truffle Trouble  (Steam)
- Radar Mission  (VCH)
- Rise of the Robots  (SNES)
- The Last Tinker: City of Colors  (Steam)
- The Silent Age  (Steam)

Started:
- Grim Fandango Remastered  (PC)
- The Silent Age  (Steam)

Beat:
- N+  (NDS)
- The Silent Age  (Steam)
- Ys Book I & II  (VC)

Completed:
- Mega Man Powered Up  (PSP)
- Mega Man X8  (PS2)
- N+  (NDS)
- The Silent Age  (Steam)
- Ys Book I & II  (VC)

Mastered:
- The Silent Age  (Steam)

This space for rent.