I have a history of letting small commitments snowball into massive undertakings. OH JOES! was a 2-month project that took 2 years. My YouTube playthroughs of the NES Mega Man games were a 3-week project that took 3 years. More recently, Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level (MaG48MML for short) was a 2-day project that has lasted over 3 years and counting.

MaG48HMML (48H for short) was conceived as a shakedown cruise for Megamix Engine, the game engine that would be the basis for the larger and more involved Make a Good Mega Man Level 3 (MaGMML3 for short). The plan was to hold a small level design contest during the summer of 2018, get the levels judged quickly, and crank out a simple game showcasing those levels. When submissions for MaGMML3 opened in the fall, the judge feedback and technical improvements from 48H would help participants make better levels. I was already a judge and devteam member for MaGMML3; I had no time or intention to get involved with 48H beyond submitting a level.

However, those plans fell apart. 48H attracted more contestants than MaGMML1 and 2 combined, the levels took years to judge (well overshooting the submission period for MaGMML3), and the final game was hardly simple. I became massively involved: I wrote ~75% of the non-cutscene dialogue; designed a weapon tutorial and a section of the fortress; provided extensive playtesting and proofreading; fixed (or attempted to fix) numerous glitches; made corrections or modifications to several art assets; programmed more things than I thought I was capable of, including what is arguably the biggest Easter egg of the game; conceived or helped plan countless major and minor aspects of the game; wrote copy, edited judge bios, commissioned artwork, and hosted downloads for the website; and helped revive the project when it was nearly dead—twice.

Also, I submitted a level.

Several weeks before the contest opened, I discovered that I had been added to the 48H devteam chat on Discord. I hadn't requested a devteam role, no one had asked me whether I was interested, and I knew basically nothing about the project. I didn't even have an official role; "any help you wanna offer would be appreciated" was the direction I got. I now appreciate what it's like to be a summoned monster in a Final Fantasy game. As long as I didn't have to do anything, I had no problem being on the devteam to discuss ideas. I spent enough time on Discord already; what difference would one more channel make?

The rapid-fire conversations that transpired over the next month were riotously funny, and they shaped the foundation of the game. Almost nothing had been planned at that point, aside from the premise of giving contestants mystery boxes full of randomized assets with which to build a level in 48 hours, and we had a field day shouting out ridiculous ideas that somehow stuck. Of course, several ideas didn't stick (aimable Spark Shock, a Wily Assist weapon that shoots out a flustered-looking Dr. Wily at a 90-degree angle, GIANT CARDBOARD BOX WILY MACHINE - FOR PHASE 2 HE UNFOLDS IT), but the ones that did stick were agreed upon quickly and amicably.

Mega Man wins a free cruise, but it's secretly a distraction so Dr. Wily can do evil deeds without Mega Man coming after him! (Unanimous agreement.) Let's name the ship the Elroy, after MaGMML community member Cruise Elroy! (Unanimous agreement.) Actually, forget Wily; the villain should be box-themed! (Dissenting suggestions of Crystal Man from Mega Man 5 embezzling money from Wily, then Clock Men from Challenger From the Future, then these characters as part of a series of fakeouts leading to the real villain). The single absolute worst level should be on some dingy old raft floating behind the cruise liner, circled by sharks! (This elicited a "lmao".) Even in their rawest state, our ideas weren't too far off from their final form.

Before long, we started discussing the contest rules. As a judge for MaGMML3, a soon-to-be contestant for 48H, and a professional editor, I felt a strong obligation to ensure the rules were as clear and comprehensive as possible. I volunteered to copyedit the rules document, which soon turned into me taking the lead on incorporating feedback and finalizing the rules. Once that was squared away, the contest opened and I got to work on my level. Regrettably, I forgot to pencil in a rule mandating that I win the contest, but that's hindsight for you.

To make the most of my 48 hours, I requested my mystery box on a Friday night after dinner. I had nothing planned for the weekend, I was in good health and good spirits, and I had a few friends on standby for playtesting. Conditions were perfect. My plan was to stick with the first box I was given (unless it was utterly unusable), wait to see what I got before starting work on the level (I felt like planning the architecture and aesthetics in advance was against the spirit of the contest), and craft a "normal" level that might feel at home in an official Mega Man game (not too long, not too wacky).

It was more like a 30-hour level, really. I slept at least 6 hours a night, lost 20-30 minutes every time I compiled a test build, was waylaid by a series of asset issues (eg, monkeys falling through floors) that required devteam intervention, and spent entirely too long futzing with a laser gimmick that was long on possibilities and short on documentation. I also didn't count on how long I'd spend trying to get Rain Flush to block lasers (to no avail); getting the volume balance and loop point right on the music; and fine-tuning so many precision-oriented puzzles that were fine on paper but messy in practice, due to the nature of the assets involved. Fortunately, the nature-themed enemies and military-themed gimmicks made it easy to decide on an overall visual theme; and it took no time at all to pick Dyna Man as the boss, given how well his vaguely military aesthetic, incessant hopping, and use of explosives fit with the rest of the level.

There's plenty more I could say here, but in light of everything else, my participation as a contestant is almost insignificant. Those 48 hours were fun and memorable for me, and I'm proud of what I accomplished in that time, but my level is 3 minutes of entertainment in a game that takes upward of 20 hours to complete. My level came in 18th place, neither anyone's favorite nor anyone's least favorite, not sufficiently noteworthy or contentious for people to ever bring it up in conversation—except to comment on the music. The real legacy of "Base in the Boondocks" is bringing "Portrait of a Ghost Ship" from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood to the 48H jukebox and inspiring one question for the music trivia sidequest.

After submitting my level, I stuck around the Discord server for another 8 months. I provided advice and playtesting for other entrants during the rest of the entry period, and I continued to weigh in on devteam matters, but planning discussions soon began to taper off. By the end of March 2019, I was so busy judging for MaGMML3 and so little was happening with 48H that I decided to leave the server, with a standing offer to return if anyone ever needed me for anything specific.

Ten months later, I reached out to ParmaJon, the contest host, to see if I could help out with anything for 48H—hub design, NPC dialogue, etc. I was nearly finished with judging for MaGMML3, so I figured I could spare some time to help push 48H along to the finish line. The answer was yes, so I rejoined the server and started skimming through devchat to get caught up.

48H was in almost exactly the same place I had left it.

Granted, one judge had almost finished judging, and another was relatively close behind. Planning had begun on the weapon tutorials, some important technical stuff had happened with the game engine, the map function was being developed, and a couple tier hubs were in the preliminary stage of design. There had been some changes to the composition of the devteam, too. But we're talking about a game whose main content was thrown together 18 months ago in the span of two days, and we still didn't have screenshots to put on the website. From the perspective of anyone on the outside, 48H was dead in the water.

Perhaps more accurately, 48H was rudderless and functioning with a skeleton crew. ParmaJon was a judge as well as the contest host, and judging was drawing focus from leading the project. Any planning that had been done was scattered across multiple Discord conversations and Google Docs. Several devteam members were simultaneously working on MaGMML: Episode Zero, which was nearing completion, and/or MaGMML3, which was still very much in progress. In short, hardly anyone was available to work on the game, and hardly anyone knew what to work on in the first place.

With ParmaJon's blessing, I started developing a master design document, pulling together everything that had already been planned or discussed and filling in any gaps with my own suggestions. (I've saved a copy here, if you're interested.) I also suggested that we designate someone to make day-to-day decisions in ParmaJon's stead. It took two weeks for us to iron out the design document and less than a day to get CSketch on board as game design lead.

Suddenly, 48H was back on course. Devchat was more active than it had been since the contest closed, and the project felt exciting and relevant again. Although a few of my favorite ideas from the design document didn't make it into the final game (namely, Mega Man's cabin being like the Sky Room from Command Mission, and BomBoy from the Battle Network games running a mystery box shop), I wasn't precious about my suggestions. The purpose of the design document was to organize past discussions, spark new discussions, and give us concrete tasks to work on, and that's exactly what it did.

Around that same time, I got a copy of the judge EXE and played through all the entry levels. If I was going to be involved in planning the game, it behooved me to know what the bulk of the game was going to be like.

It was going to be terrible.

In their submitted state, without Skip Teleporters or Beat or anything else that the final game offers to mitigate the difficulty, the entry levels were torturous. I could count on two, maybe three hands the number of levels I genuinely enjoyed. 48H's tight time limit amplified some of the pitfalls of amateur (and even professional) level design that annoy me most, and it didn't help that I was already pretty burned out on Mega Man after judging 170-odd levels for MaGMML3. Consequently, I was very vocal in devchat about introducing features that would sand off the rough edges and balance the difficulty of the entry levels.

One such feature, which we were already working on, was a series of weapon tutorials. What better way to give players an advantage than to help them fully understand the tools at their disposal? I called dibs on the tutorial for Homing Sniper—I had some ideas about how to elevate the training to something more than "mash the attack button to win"—and I made it a point to playtest all of the other tutorials as well. Aside from participating in all the usual devteam discussions (which now concerned the Box Cartel fights, possible postgame content, and whether to let players unlock extra checkpoints), my focus was entirely on the weapon tutorials during this period; everything else seemed to be under control and moving smoothly.

Once again, I decided to hang around the server for about 8 months (until mid-October 2020) before taking my leave. All the weapon tutorials were finished or just required finishing touches, and there wasn't really anything else I could help with. I was trying to cut back on Discord use and focus back on MaGMML3 as well. As before, I left an open invitation to call me back to the devteam if I could help with anything else in the future.

When I checked in with ParmaJon and CSketch a month later, it sounded like the game was almost finished, aside from judging. The devteam really only needed help with graphics and programming—two things that were best left to the experts. The only thing left that suited my skill set was NPC dialogue. It was still too early to start writing anything, but I could at least do some prep work.

Knowing that most of the NPCs were going to be regular stage enemies, I set up a sprawling spreadsheet so we could keep track of which NPCs were available, where in the game we wanted to put them, whether we needed to create custom sprites for them, and any notes or suggestions. By the time I was done trawling through the enemy/miniboss lists of every Mega Man game we were likely to pull from, there were well over 500 NPCs on the list, not to mention Duo, Reggae, and several other named characters who might show up. I even included Daidine, a spinning platform from Mega Man 5, because "The fact that this spinning platform has an actual name makes me want it to be able to talk".

Another month went by before I formally rejoined the team—not to write NPC dialogue, but to help design a section of the fortress at the end of the game. It's MaGMML tradition for each judge to make their own fortress level, but only ParmaJon was in a position to do so, and in a limited capacity at that. It fell to CSketch to design the first fortress level and co-design the second with ParmaJon. The third and final level was an independently collaborative effort involving the entire devteam, meaning that we all got to create our segments in isolation before smashing them together.

To start creating our segments, we selected one of the unused mystery boxes from the entry period—I picked mine at random from the master spreadsheet, but others chose the specific one they wanted. As development progressed, I started noticing a fair amount of overlap in the assets we all were using for our segments. In the interest of showcasing a wider variety of assets (and giving players a reprieve from too many segments where they were required to shoot the terrain), I set up a spreadsheet so we could keep track of our progress and which assets were used in which segments. I threw out my box and rerolled until I got something novel that I could work with.

First reroll: "Your choice of a destructible block". Pfft. I was trying to avoid shooting the terrain. Next.

Second reroll: Venus Waterfall Spawner. Ah yes. The janky gimmick that had become a running joke, on account of it showing up in an alarmingly high number of boxes and being the bane of the programmers' existence. NEXT.

Third reroll: Wave Man Jet Ski, Cricket, Bikky Bomb, Tamp, Nombrellan. I could work with this. And so I did.

Development of our so-called Final Box levels was slow but steady. I provided as much feedback on everyone else's levels as possible, going so far as to fire up Mega Man V for Game Boy and thoroughly examine the physics of the bubble floor gimmick, which was implemented differently in Megamix and causing playability issues. By the beginning of February 2021, my Final Box level was finalized. Two months later, I hadn't started any new projects, and I was having second thoughts about sticking around for that other thing I had offered to do.

"If we need dialogue for any of the weapon tutorials, I can help with that," I wrote. "If we reeeeeally need help with other NPC dialogue, I'll consider it, but I had previously mentioned the possibility of un-volunteering myself if we had enough people to cover everything. I'm not as confident in my ability to write snappy dialogue for random NPCs, and it's been very challenging lately to work up the energy to get back to my creative projects. But if it's the difference between the game launching on time and the game dragging on even longer, I can give it a shot."

After a little bit of discussion with the devteam and with my wife, I was persuaded to try my hand at NPC dialogue after all. Nothing had been written outside of the weapon tutorials, so I had my pick of every tier in the game. I started with Tier 5, the minigolf course—I enjoy minigolf and had been watching a lot of Holey Moley at the time, so that was the natural first choice. It took me all of four days to pick out and arrange the NPCs, write dialogue for them, and implement their sprites.

A little over a week later, I was ready to mute the 48H server and get back to working on MaGMML3 unless someone pinged me for something. Any last requests before I disappear again? Well...okay. I guess I can write a little more dialogue.

I gave the devteam a few options and let them decide which tier I should do next. They chose Tier 3, the dining hall, which was perfect because I love talking about food. This one took longer—slightly under a month—in part because I got a little more ambitious and asked for both programming help (for the Hologran gag) and custom NPC sprites for a few enemies from Mega Man 7 and 11 who needed to be redrawn in an 8-bit style.

Afterward, I announced that I had it in me to do one more tier. I went with Tier 9, the ice skating rink. I love ice and snow aesthetics; figure skating is one of my favorite sports to watch; and I thought it'd be good to break up my tier claims so that if someone didn't like my writing style, they weren't stuck with me for multiple tiers in a row. I started work toward the end of May but didn't finish until early July, due to life craziness and some unexpected graphical and programming needs.

As my work on Tier 9 was nearing completion, I realized I had finally hit my writing stride. I could probably manage one more tier, if not a few more tiers; despite how exhausted I was from multiple multi-year Mega Man projects, I was having fun. However, I wanted to balance "helping finish the game" with "hogging all the fun stuff," so I asked the devteam about who else actually had an inclination to write NPC dialogue. Half a dozen people were interested, but burnout and busyness were very apparent. Spade_Magnes was working on Tier 6 (ballroom) and had finished Tier 2 (cargo hold) after picking it up from snoruntpyro. The main deck and passenger cabins were at least partially reserved for CSketch and snoruntpyro. Otherwise, everything was up for grabs, and it really didn't matter who took what. We all just wanted to get the game out the door.

Spin Attaxx claimed Tier 10 (water park), and I put Tier 8 (library) and Tier 4 (engine room) in the queue for myself. My plan was to keep churning out NPCs until we ran out of tiers or someone told me to stop, whichever happened first. Tier 8 took me only three or four days, and I knocked out Tier 4 in a single weekend. I was bolstered by positive feedback from the team; they seemed to like what I was doing with the NPCs, and any critiques were basically always constructive and beneficial. This part of development was easily my favorite: the project had a sense of momentum; I was fully in my comfort zone; and I felt good about what I was doing, because of both personal satisfaction with my work and recognition from the devteam.

My next claim was Tier 1 (lifeboats), which was a one-day project. As with all the tiers, however, I would go back later to finesse the placement and creation code of the NPCs and polish the dialogue. Tier 1 was attached to the main hub, which was being updated frequently for one reason or another, so I had to make sure no one else was working on that Room file in GameMaker Studio when I was. The last thing I wanted was having my local changes overwritten in a dreaded merge conflict when pushing my work back to the master file, so I suggested we implement a system where anyone who wanted to work on the main hub had to announce it first, in case anyone had unpushed changes. This system mostly worked.

Now that I was mucking about in the main hub, I started thinking about what players' first impressions of 48H would be. After the intro cutscene, you step onto the deck of a gigantic cruise ship and have free reign to explore. Where do you start? Is the ship easy to navigate? What areas might you overlook? Player experience had already been on my mind (see: the Giant Telly in Tier 3 who checks in on your emotional state after playing "Megatroid", the Puyoyon in Tier 4 who subtly reminds you to visit the costume shop on your way out, all the NPCs in Tier 1 who try to prepare you for the disasters you're about to deal with), but this is where I started taking on focused projects to make the game more player-friendly.

We had discussed adding some info-oriented NPCs, so I created Iota to explain what 48H was all about, a Jamacy in Tier 2 to warn players about a level with broken ladders, and multiple NPCs to guide players around the ship. I created a Junk Golem NPC to provide hints about where to find new sidequests and how to complete them. To make the main deck less overwhelming to new players, I followed through on a plan to lock some of the cabin doors until later in the game.

Because ParmaJon didn't want a traditional shop, players needed ways to stock up on E/W/M-Tanks that didn't involve grinding in the entry levels. I added an emergency M-Tank dispenser to ensure players wouldn't get stuck on the Box Cartel fights, when the entry levels are blocked off. I also created a Mad Grinder who would supply free E-Tanks and W-Tanks based on sidequest progress and Energy Element collection, respectively. It's all too easy to chug E-Tanks instead of applying actual strategy, so I wanted to encourage players to try special weapons, pursue sidequests (and their rewards), and not get hung up on any one level in the early game, and then to shower them with tanks in time for the endgame and postgame.

Furthermore, I suggested we reinforce Joseph's explanation of Junk by stationing an NPC outside his cabin who would give you Junk to trade in. I also argued strongly against starting the game with a mandatory scavenger hunt to find Beat before accessing the levels; to me, that felt like a contrived and needlessly restrictive way of ensuring players would explore the ship and obtain a special weapon that the levels weren't designed around. Although I was overruled both times, I found other ways to influence the player experience. For the Beat search in particular, I moved the invisible barriers to more organic locations, and I revised the generic "I shouldn't go that way" message to a fairly blunt reminder/hint about what you should be doing.

I was more successful about suggesting changes to the sidequests, which were being developed relatively quietly—I didn't know they existed until May 2021, and there weren't any real opportunities to get involved with them until July. After I tried out the music quiz for Funky Fresh Beats, I pushed to include a screenshot with each question, to make the sidequest accessible to deaf players and to anyone playing with the volume off. Because screenshots were too much of a hassle to implement, we agreed on text hints, which I wrote. I also made a few suggestions that stuck for the Mutual Attraction and Poltergeist quests; for the latter, I even recolored the ghost sprite (being obligated to use a canonical color for the Rotom Pokémon it was based on) so that it wouldn't blend in with the background as much.

Love Survivor was the sidequest I influenced most. For a very long time, the cruise ship was going to have a casino, either as the location for Tier 7 or as a standalone area (in the space that the Kickboxing Club now occupies) with minigames to play. The original premise for sidequest, then dubbed "Red or Yellow", was to help fashion boutique co-proprietor Bol'o raise money to pay off an enormous debt to a mafioso called Don Loath (a tip of the hat to Lex Loath from The Misadventures of Tron Bonne). Doing so would require cheating at a casino game where the objective was to guess whether a light would turn red or yellow (an inside joke apparently inspired by a Vinesauce video poking fun at a game called Color Fun).

The casino was scrapped in January 2021 to reduce the devteam's workload, and it was several months before we discussed relocating and redesigning the sidequest. Tier 3 (dining hall) had some unused space that was inaccessible to the player, which could easily be remodeled to accommodate a quest. This inspired me to outline a new quest, which made it into the final game with only one change: Don Loath (who never even received a character design) became Master Reddorgold (whose name is not a reference to "Reddit Gold", but rather a nod to the sidequest's original title). A kitchen stealth mission wasn't my only suggestion, though; I also pitched a Donkey Kong Country–inspired level using dining carts in place of mine carts.

A week later, I formally committed to writing all remaining NPC dialogue in the game. I was the only person adding to the main hub, several passenger cabins were still vacant with nothing planned, and nobody else had claimed Tier 7 (art gallery) or Tier 11 (sky deck). I was least enthusiastic about Tier 7 and had been hoping someone else would take it, though. The tileset contained sculptures and paintings (by eviemaybe and Protty) that I wanted to acknowledge in the dialogue—except half of them referenced things I didn't recognize, and by that point it was taking all my brainpower to write what I knew, let alone what I didn't know. And there was a major deadline approaching: first test build of the whole game for our internal playtesters.

I had about one week to power through Tier 7 and add as many NPCs as possible to the main hub and cabins. Nothing said I had to rush, but the longer it took me to get my work loaded into a test build, the less likely it was that people would see it. This was especially relevant for the deck and cabin NPCs whose purpose was to guide the player. Tier 11 was still in the process of being tiled, so I didn't even bother with that one yet. I'm not entirely satisfied with the dialogue I produced during this time, but "not entirely satisfied" was to become my mantra for the duration of the crunch leading up to the game's initial public release.

By the beginning of August 2021, new playtesting builds were being released about once or twice a week (soon to become once a day), a release trailer was in development, and I was rapidly running out of time to finish everything on my to-do list. The team wanted to ensure a summer release, given the cruise ship theme. Summer, as I pointed out, would last until September 22. They wanted it by the end of August—when I would be unavailable for several days. Eventually we settled on end of August as our internal deadline, with a few days of buffer before the release date of September 4 that was ultimately announced to the public.

My eagerness to get this project out the door had finally caught up with me. Leading up to the crunch, I kept taking on small assignments to ease the burden of more specialized team members. The artists were busy, so I cleaned up the subtle color inconsistencies between the special weapon icons, and then loaded them into a tileset so I could add them above the weapon tutorial teleporters. The programmers were busy, so as much as possible, I tried to figure out how to code complex NPC behavior for myself. I was already spending all my free time on 48H before the deadline was announced; the only way I could crunch any harder was to start sacrificing sleep, aspirations, and quality—and I won't even go into the Big Life Stuff that started vying for my time. The weeks leading up to release were physically, mentally, and emotionally brutal, and they turned my experience with 48H extremely sour.

My key mistake was not communicating to the team just how much I actually had planned for the initial release. I wanted to bring my perspectives as a professional editor, MaGMML3 judge, and fangame designer to the parts of the game I hadn't yet seen. I kept coming back to seemingly finished projects to polish things up and incorporate playtester feedback. I was still working on NPCs for the main hub and cabins, but because I had added any NPCs in the first place, people assumed I was done already. I hadn't even started on Tier 11, which would end up taking over two weeks to finish. And that's to say nothing of all the Easter eggs I was working on, or the Butt Mode cheat that I got involved with at the last minute.

As we entered September, mere days away from release, show-stopping technical issues began to arise. A key devteam member's computer died at an incredibly inopportune time. We kept discovering game-breaking issues and applying fixes that we didn't have time to properly playtest. The only person who could set up the online leaderboards on our usual server was unexpectedly unavailable. On top of that, a couple sidequests and noteworthy cheats were still being developed, and I still had a lengthy to-do list. No way was this game getting done on time.

By September 1, the devteam was discussing the possibility of delaying the release. By September 3—late enough in the day that it was already release day in certain time zones—we came to an agreement that a delay was necessary; the question was, how long? A few devteam members—myself included—voted for "until it's ready", but the final decision was to not keep the public waiting, saving any nonessentials (which included most of my to-do list) for an eventual patch. Release was pushed from September 4 to September 6, just long enough to lock down the most pressing technical issues.

As the guy in charge of the MaGMML website, I did as much as I could to prepare in advance for release day, such as gradually adding screenshots to what would become the download page. As soon as the judge scores were finalized, I commissioned Phusion—who did website art for MaGMML1, 2, and 24H as well as intro cutscene art for OH JOES! and MaGMML1 Remastered—to once again create art celebrating the first-place level for the download page. Once the story was fully locked down and we knew exactly what features the game would have, I wrote copy for the download page for the devteam to review. By release day, all we really needed were download links and one final sanity check before going live.

Release day was hectic and exhausting, owing to miscellaneous setbacks and delays. After the download page went live, I waited just long enough to confirm that there were no immediate issues with the download links or the game itself, and then I dropped off the face of the planet for the rest of the day. While other devteam members were celebrating, I was taking all the time I could to decompress and recharge before getting back to work. For me, the crunch wasn't over.

Given the general public's tendency to quickly find ways to break a brand-new game, I correctly guessed that we'd need to release a patch to 1.01 almost immediately, and then another small patch to 1.02 within a few days. If I acted quickly enough, anything I had planned for initial release could still be a part of people's first experiences with the game. After that, there was no telling how often we'd release additional patches, if at all, so it behooved me to get everything done ASAP.

While I labored away at the rest of my to-do list, I checked in regularly to see what people in the MaGMML Discord server were saying about 48H. Compared with the initial public response to OH JOES!, it was a joy to discover that all my time and effort had apparently paid off. People were sharing screenshots of NPCs I made that they liked, posting video playthroughs containing positive feedback about my design contributions, and talking favorably about the game as a whole...at least, until they started discovering the sidequests.

"Where is Tomothy Daddy?" "What other level is spicy?" These kinds of questions started dominating the chat, and I had no idea what they meant. When I wrote the Junk Golem's sidequest hints, I often had to go off of secondhand information from the devteam and an outdated sidequest planning document; I had yet to play many of the quests for myself. A few days after release, I started playing through all 16 sidequests, and suddenly my priorities shifted. After playing Credit Where It's Due, a tricky scavenger hunt, it was clear to me that players needed more hints, better hints, and reminders of critical information that was given once and never repeated—and they needed them now.

Unbeknownst to me, the day I played Credit Where It's Due was the same day version 1.02 was slated to be released. After outlining my proposed changes to the devteam, I scrambled to implement them—the team wasn't expecting to address any scavenger hunt complaints until version 1.1, but they were happy to include my edits in this patch if I could finish in the next hour or two. The dialogue that I hammered out is serviceable, but there's minimal personality and no humor to it. The patch went live shortly after I pushed my changes, and I haven't heard a single question about Tomothy Daddy since.

Most of the team basically went on break after version 1.02. I kept crunching. I devoted almost every free minute of an entire weekend to Goody Two Shoes, a riddle-based scavenger hunt, first playing through it (which was exhausting) and then planning and implementing a complex network of hints and reminders about where to go next (which was beyond exhausting). I had to dig into the code to understand how each step of the quest was triggered, figure out which NPCs would supply hints, write appropriate hints for each step, program the hints to only show up at the right time, and then test all of that. I also tidied the existing dialogue for the quest and fixed up the black splotches that lead you to your destination—in "Running Down a Drain", for example, the trail inexplicably went cold for several screens, as though you overshot the target.

I pushed my changes on September 19, just over a week after 1.02 was released. Although I loosened my pace a little bit, I stayed focused on getting through the rest of my to-do list as fast as reasonably possible. I scrapped a few ideas that I was now too tired to bother with, touched up the weapon tutorials, added new NPCs and tinkered with old ones, implemented cabin numbers to help players navigate the main hub, and refined/expanded the Butt Mode script.

The farther we got from the release of 1.02, the more the 48H devteam server felt like a ghost ship. People were burned out, busy with other things, or no longer checking in because their obligations to the project had been fulfilled. A few others were working on updates alongside me, but by the end of November, it started to feel like the project was adrift again. I prodded CSketch for a time frame until the next patch, and that set into motion a flurry of activity, which ultimately led to me taking the lead on a couple rounds of targeted playtesting and getting the updated game ready for public release. Version 1.1 went live on December 18, 2021—which means we had been sitting on my changes to Goody Two Shoes for three months. I haven't heard a single question about any of the riddles since.

If you look back through my social media posts, you'll notice I didn't promote 48H until version 1.1 was released. As far as I'm concerned, 48H wasn't done until 1.1. I wasn't about to encourage the general public to play a game I was still actively helping to develop and beta test. It bothers me deeply that most people have experienced a version that was rushed and incomplete, and that the earliest iterations are the ones immortalized for future generations on YouTube and Twitch.

Now, though? I recommend 48H whenever there's an opportunity. I'm proud to share this game with others. I'm proud of the entire devteam for making this game happen in the first place, let alone making it look so professional and polished; proud of myself for the quantity, variety, and quality of work I contributed; and proud of my fellow entrants for pulling off over a hundred MaGMML-worthy levels within (or just barely over) the 48-hour time limit, even if I'm prone to complaining about them. I enjoy seeing people enjoy 48H.

As of this post, devteam discussions are infrequent and rarely pertain to the game itself, chatter about the game seems to have died down on Discord and YouTube, and bug reports have all but ceased. Effectively, this ship has sailed. Of course, no game is ever truly done, least of all one that can easily be patched. In fact, a modest number of changes have already been pushed to the GitHub repository in anticipation of another patch. I have one or two more Developer Diaries to follow this one, some updates I might like to add to the MaGMML wiki, and plans to start livestreaming the game once I can commit to a semi-regular streaming schedule. It's been a long voyage, and I expect it'll be awhile longer before I return to shore.

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On November 28, 2018, level submissions for Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 3 (MaGMML3) came to a close. After a generous seven-day grace period for late entries, we had a total of 186 levels. That's almost twice the number of levels in MaGMML1 and 2 combined.

Our new contest motto was, "The judges are gonna die."

The devteam loaded the entry levels into a standalone executable "game" for the judges to play. This consisted of a small hub with a teleporter used to access the levels, a costume selector in case we didn't want to play as Mega Man (Flash Man was still in the works, so I picked Roll), NPCs of the judges for comic relief, and infinite E-/W-/M-Tank refills. To maintain blind judging, the levels were randomly numbered instead of identified by creator name, and any in-level material that obviously gave away the creator's identity (eg, self-insert NPCs) was temporarily redacted.

The devteam needed several weeks to load all the levels and test them for basic functionality. Two levels were cut before they even reached the judges, one for being irreparably broken in its construction and one for containing a note threatening the judges to give the level a good score. In an effort to get us judges playing and discussing as quickly as possible, the remaining levels were added to the judge EXE in batches of 30 or so, with each judge receiving a randomized playing order for each batch. Although I didn't argue it strongly, I was a proponent of waiting for all the levels to be loaded; I felt the benefits of playing in batches didn't outweigh the potential for bias inherent in all of us playing the levels in more or less the same order.

Still, I had a system in place to minimize bias on my end as much as possible. After playing all the levels in batches and seeing the best and worst the contest had to offer, I would go back and replay everything in a newly randomized order (ignoring batch divisions), scoring and reviewing as I went. Afterward, I'd compare scores to ensure everything felt correct and consistent, replaying individual levels again if necessary.

In terms of specific process, I knew I wanted to:

• Record my blind playthroughs for future reference and eventual upload to YouTube
• Approach my blind playthroughs as a regular player and any subsequent playthroughs as a playtester
• Jot down notes as I went, to supplement the observations captured in my recordings
• Go for 100% completion without asking for hints, unless I was hopelessly stumped

Playing as often as my schedule (and the batch release schedule) allowed, and taking breaks when I started feeling tired or cranky, it took me 50 hours and 48 minutes spread across 2 months to clear the first round of playthroughs. During that time, I continually fine-tuned my process.

In the beginning, I was recording multiple levels in a single video, being a little lax about revisiting levels right away to search for missed secrets, and playing mainly for my own enjoyment. By the end, I was recording each level separately (which made it MUCH easier to track down footage later), diligently verifying 100% completion before moving on, and playing with more critical intent—in addition to playing for fun, I was checking screen transitions and testing the feasibility of a buster-only run, saving myself the trouble of doing so on a replay.

Aiding my process were a couple quality-of-life improvements along the way. First, the implementation of a map feature in one of the later batches. Second, the realization that the cheat menu had an option to show invisible collision objects, saving me the trouble of leaping into every spike pit to determine whether the creator had pulled a Magnum Man and placed spike tiles but not spike objects. Third, the revelation that noclip mode had been accessible via a hotkey this whole time, which facilitated more efficient playtesting and relieved the burden of redoing sections I'd already played into the ground.

Despite my livestreaming, recording, and playtesting experience, going through these levels was unlike anything I'd ever done. It's one thing to play levels of varying quality and character in the context of a finalized MaGMML game—the level scores, tier placement, creator names, and nearby NPCs give you a sense of what you're in for, and it's fine to let your gut reactions define your opinions. It's another thing entirely to experience the levels completely blind, in a random order, relying solely on what the levels themselves tell you about their length, difficulty, stability, and so forth, all the while maintaining a consistent process to ensure fair and impartial judging.

I encountered plenty of difficulties. On more than one occasion, I set out to play "one more level" before taking a food or sleep break, only to discover 20 minutes later that the level was not going to end anytime soon. I'm not particularly photosensitive or subject to motion sickness, but a few levels made me queasy with their gimmicks and visual effects—not so much that I couldn't finish, but enough to make judging uncomfortable. Due to programming oversights in some of the contestants' custom objects, I triggered a handful of hard crashes and had to make up lost progress (usually before learning about noclip mode).

I had to switch my player avatar when I discovered at a most inopportune time that Roll didn't have any custom sprites created for Rush Bike, so she simply turned invisible. With the devteam making updates to the engine between batches, it wasn't always obvious which glitches were newly introduced and which should've been caught by the level creators, so I started a running list of issues to raise with the devteam so I could judge Functionality fairly. The FIRE button on my controller got progressively stickier as time went on, eventually spreading that stickiness to the JUMP button, effectively rendering the controller unusable.

Oh, and I was sick with an upper respiratory infection for almost the entire duration. I had already decided not to perform for an audience while recording my blind playthroughs—after all, these recordings were personal reference material first and public entertainment second—but I would've preferred not to sound like a plague beast when I talked. This didn't affect my playing ability, but there were a few mishaps early in the recording process where I muted my microphone in order to privately cough up a lung...and then forgot to unmute. I captured all the most important observations in my written notes, but I regret not having those initial audio reactions preserved for the level creators to hear.

Of course, my initial round of playthroughs wasn't all hardships. I actually had fun. Lots of fun. There's a reason why I'm so invested in this contest series, and a reason why I livestream Mega Man fangames: I am fascinated by the things people come up with when they set out to make a good (or deliberately mediocre, terrible, or ridiculous) Mega Man level.

I laughed at the sight gags and comedic dialogue. I marveled at the diversity of level concepts and the sheer amount of cleverness and creativity on display. I relished the sections that meaningfully put my platforming and problem-solving skills to the test. I lost myself in the immersive atmosphere created by the music and graphics. I was bemused by the zany, inexplicable design decisions and mind-bogglingly obvious playtesting oversights. I enjoyed trying to break people's levels—and sometimes, I enjoyed being denied that pleasure because the creators actually anticipated my nonsense.

Compared with any previous MaGMML, the highs were higher and the lows were much, much lower. I was proud of the levels that took to heart all the advice and feedback coming out of these contests, and I writhed in pain at the levels that clearly did not. Through it all, even when a play session wore me out, I remained excited to see what was next.

Of course, I knew what was next, in the "big picture" sense. Next was replaying, scoring, and reviewing these levels. This had been merely a warmup; the real judging was about to begin.

That's it for now! Once the contest results are announced, I'll upload my blind playthrough videos to YouTube and update this post with a link.

Story navigation: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
​
​One of the first tasks that Mick Galbani, ACESpark (AKA Davwin), Shinryu, Pachy, and I undertook as a judge staff for Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 3 (MaGMML3) was to test out the rubric we'd be using to rate the entries. This was the same rubric we'd used in the judge application process, but now the goal was to determine whether the categories were weighted properly. For this, a larger pool of levels would be needed.

The hosts (Mick and Davwin) selected two levels from each tier of MaGMML1, a game whose contest rubric is universally recognized as pants. If desired, we were allowed to play the MaGMML1 Remastered versions of those levels (same design; different game engine). Even though Remastered hadn't been released yet, the levels in question were in good enough shape to be loaded into a standalone executable. Five levels from MaGMML2's unrated Tier X (which sounds dirtier than it is) were also selected. To avoid bias, we opted to omit any levels made by one of us judges. We also excluded the entry levels from MaGMML2, given that Davwin was a judge for that contest and used a rubric that wasn't too far off from the new one.

We played and scored these levels according to the new rubric—but no reviews; just ratings. I shared my personal rubric breakdown (the one I used for the judge application) with the group, in case they found it useful. Together, we refined the subcategories as follows:
​
Design - X/35
Introductions - X/5
Challenge design (deliberate, clear, meaningful, fair) - X/5
Challenge progression (↑ complexity/difficulty, challenge arcs, climax) - X/5
Focus (coherent theme, manageable roster, nothing over/underused) - X/5
Architecture (logical, efficient, unobtrusive) - X/5
Player consideration (length, layout, checkpoints, power-ups) - X/5
Ability Balance (abilities shine without destroying the challenge) - X/2
Name (does the level reflect the title) - X/2
Perfectible (no damage w/ buster only, or else with acceptable forced weapon use) - X/1
 
Fun - X/25
Totally subjective rating - X/10
Recommendable (would you recommend this to someone else) - X/5
Highs (do the best parts boost the level) - X/5
Lows (are the shortcomings forgivable) - X/5
 
Creativity - X/15
Originality (have I seen anything exactly like this, i.e. sections copied from other levels) - X/5
Novelty (does this offer a new gameplay experience, or does it feel similar to other stages) - X/5
Impressiveness (am I surprised or wowed) - X/5
 
Aesthetics - X/15
Graphics - X/5
Music/Sound - X/5
Atmosphere/theming - X/5
 
Functionality - 9/10
Stability (flawless construction; no glitches) - X/5
Feasibility (can the player reliably complete each challenge) - X/5


Armed with this updated rubric breakdown, I came up with some scores that should cause anyone who's played these levels to raise an eyebrow. As before, the numbers in parentheses represent the individual subcategory scores. Feel free to skip ahead; I won't stop you.

(That last one's a picture of the rarely seen MaGMML1 Remastered rubric test hub, in case you were wondering.)

​Organizing the total scores from lowest to highest (giving more priority to the level with the higher Design score, in the case of a tie), here's where everything placed:

(34) City War
(48) The Quickening 2
(52) Wily Combo
(58) Level
(58) Napalm Forest & Caves
(59) Midnight Snow
(60) Coyote Man
(62) Mega Man World
(64) Wily Fortress VR
(64) Thunderclyffe Plant
(65) Glass Man
(71) So Good
(72) Chroma Key
(74) Metallic Ocean
(83) Research Facility

Some questionable scores, to be sure. But I've seen some bad fan-made levels, so the bar is set pretty low for getting at least a couple points in any given category. Also, I tend to focus more on the things that ruin my Mega Man experience than the things that go above and beyond to make it superb. There are other factors influencing my scores, but these are the ones that most concisely explain how I came up with these numbers.

I have a vague recollection of us judges comparing notes and averaging all our scores to see where these levels would've placed in MaGMML3. Oddly, I can't find any record of this discussion in the Discord logs, so maybe it happened over voice chat. Whatever the case, we did establish that the main rubric was solid enough to use for the contest. Whether we used the more detailed breakdown was up to us.
​
When it came time to start rating and reviewing MaGMML3 levels, it quickly became apparent to me that the more detailed breakdown needed more tweaking. I found myself agonizing over categories that were too specific to apply to less conventional levels, so broad that they overlapped unfairly with other categories, or simply no longer of great interest to me.

For one thing, my interpretation of Creativity inherently penalized levels such as Wily Combo and Napalm Forest & Caves, which are centered around callbacks to the official Mega Man games, and unfairly rewarded the likes of So Good and Mega Man World for using non–Mega Man assets. For another thing, the Recommendable subcategory of the Fun score was all too close to MaGMML1's wildly subjective Other Person Fun Factor score (ie, how much do you think other people would enjoy the level).

So, I tinkered with the subcategories until I had something that was (a) comfortably easy to fill out, (b) consistently applicable across all level types, and (c) more accurate to what I was actually looking for in these levels.

Design - X/35
Introductions (clear, appropriate) - X/5
Challenge design (deliberate, meaningful, fair, reasonably perfectible) - X/5
Challenge progression (↑ complexity/difficulty, challenge arcs, climax) - X/5
Focus (coherent vision, manageable roster, nothing over/underused) - X/5
Layout (logical/efficient architecture, obvious pits, safe transitions, sense of direction) - X/5
Player consideration (length, checkpoints, items, disability awareness, niceties) - X/5
Weapon consideration (balance of freedom and challenge, limitations inform the design) - X/3
Name (does the title fit the level) - X/2
 
Fun - X/25
Totally subjective rating - X/10
Highs (do the best parts boost the level) - X/5
Lows (are the shortcomings forgivable) - X/5
Contest appropriateness (should other people be expected to play this) - X/5
 
Creativity - X/15
Novelty (does the level offer new experiences, or present old experiences in new ways) - X/5
Potential (does the level adequately explore the potential of its various elements) - X/5
Impressiveness (am I surprised, charmed, impressed, or wowed) - X/5
 
Aesthetics - X/15
Audio (appropriate, enjoyable, tolerable, music looped and implemented properly) - X/5
Visuals (clear, legible, appealing, unobtrusive, polished) - X/5
Atmosphere (theming, story, overall feel) - X/5
 
Functionality - X/10
Construction (appropriate structural object use, polished programming, no surprises) - X/5
Feasibility (is the level beatable without risk of getting stuck or crashing the game) - X/5

​
This proved to be a much better breakdown. There were still some oddball levels that threw me for a loop, but the total scores I was assigning finally felt right.

I originally had level layout under Player Consideration, but I realized that all the structural elements should be together in the same category. Proceeding safely and confidently through a level is a function of the architecture, layout, screen transitions, and graphics working together to guide the player. Player Consideration should be reserved for questions such as, "Did you remember that players with color blindness, motion sickness, epilepsy, or a hearing impairment may want to enjoy this level?", not, "Did you remember that players prefer not to die instantly when attempting to exit a room?"

Whereas the old Ability Balance category required me to pick apart the individual usefulness of every single weapon in a roster full of redundancy, and Perfectible required me to determine if it was technically possible to do a no-damage buster-only run (ugh), Weapon Consideration allowed me to step back and compare overall experiences with and without special weapons. Is the player allowed to try different strategies without being excessively rewarded or punished? This was also a way to score the appropriateness and intentionality of what weapons were enabled, disabled, unlockable, or infinite.

Recommendable morphed into ​Contest Appropriateness—essentially, a measure of how much the level deserves a skip teleporter. My rationale is that if a level is skippable, it's obviously not fun enough for a general audience to put up with whatever problems warranted the skip. Whereas MaGMML1's Other Person Fun Factor was a haphazard guess at what other people might like, this was a safeguard against my personal preferences allowing a level to reach the top tiers without being fully accessible to the average player.

Originality was unsustainable; I was spending entirely too much time analyzing every screen, testing my memory for any identical setups across hundreds upon hundreds of other levels. What I really cared about for Creativity was the overall experience, what the designer created with elements old and new. I replaced Originality with Potential, something that is hugely important to me—it's one thing to come up with new ideas; it's another thing entirely to go anywhere with them.

I wanted Functionality to pertain solely to the technical aspects of level design. When I initially worked out the category breakdowns, the glitchy spring platforms of Magnum Man were foremost in my mind for Feasibility. Realistically, whether the player can reliably complete each challenge is usually more of a Design question—and a question that can only be answered by more repeat testing than my schedule and sanity would ever allow. Thus, I recalibrated the breakdown to focus on easily quantifiable items in the same vein as glitches and collision object mishaps. Does the architecture line up safely across screen transitions? Are boss projectiles destroyed along with the boss? Is the level free of any and all softlock potential? Etc.

I came to realize that some overlap was inevitable. A low Player Consideration score, for instance, goes hand-in-hand with a low Contest Appropriateness score, because a long level with no checkpoints or power-ups is a prime candidate for a skip teleporter. A high Creativity score is almost guaranteed to secure a good number of Fun points from me. Good screen transitions are highly important to me, and different aspects of their use are covered under both Design and Functionality. And that's okay. The purpose of the rubric is to help the judges translate their complex opinions into a simple, quantifiable, universally applicable format, not to force apart certain elements that are inherently intertwined.

Besides, reorganizing my subcategories was only one part of the scoring process. The plan was always to compare scores at the very end and adjust as necessary, with or without a more detailed breakdown. If there were still problems with my interpretation of the rubric after 170+ levels, I'd have a chance to resolve them.

Fun, right? And this was just the first step in the judge process. Wait until I tell you about playing and writing reviews—after the results are announced, of course.

AnimeNEXT 2018 was the first time in years where I was fully able to unwind, relax, and enjoy myself on vacation, and it remains one of my all-time favorite convention experiences. I've seen enough sequels to know that the second time isn't guaranteed to measure up to the first, so I had no illusions that the 2019 convention would be anywhere near as magical. Still, my wife and I secured tickets and spent several months planning and getting psyched for AnimeNEXT 2019.

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Now, then. Convention stories!

LODGING

My wife and I have been staying at bed & breakfasts since our honeymoon. Usually we select a B&B based on some combination of unique character (eg, a castle built from found materials, Halloween decorations out the wazoo), scrumptious breakfast options (eg, a rotating menu prepared by a legit pastry chef), and fun perks (eg, cats on the premises, homemade shortbread at all hours). When my wife booked the Carisbrooke Inn, only three things mattered: it was close to the convention center, reasonably priced, and still available.

Had we not been conventioning, we would've gotten more out of our stay. But the designated breakfast times of either 8:30 or 9:30 AM didn't mesh well with our optimal timing for getting into costume and getting out the door. The paper-thin walls put a damper on coming back from the convention around midnight and discussing our plans for the next day at normal volume levels. And we certainly weren't around to take advantage of the free wine at 5 PM.

Our particular room met our needs: it had a comfortable bed, a full-length mirror for checking costumes, enough space for us to lay out all our stuff and maneuver around each other, and a place to sit. Parking was offsite in a tiny lot around the corner, but the neighborhood seemed safe enough and the weather was nice. Overall, our stay was fine, just not ideal for the weekend we had planned.

One anecdote worth sharing: We were showed to our room by a summer intern, who had some difficulty demonstrating how to turn on the TV. When it finally came on, there was some infomercial about—I swear I'm not making this up—butt surgery. With color diagrams. And either he didn't notice or was unsure how to turn it back off. My wife and I had to hold in our laughter for a good 2-3 minutes while he finished giving us the tour of our room with the TV on at full volume.

FOOD

Our meal planning at last year's convention is best described as "winging it." That is not to say we only ate chicken wings; nay, my vegetarian (now vegan) wife would have protested. Rather, we failed to scope out food options in advance—basically the opposite of how we normally plan our trips.

Last year's impromptu dining decisions took us to Tun Tavern (more my kind of place), where I bumped into the host of the fun voice acting Q&A panel we had just attended; to Cavo Crepe Cafe (more my wife's kind of place), where we hurriedly ate outside as the staff started to close up shop and the wind nearly swept us away; and to one of the many food kiosks at the convention center, where I ate a mediocre pizza. Wait, I wasn't going to tell you that last story.

This year, we identified several restaurants within 10 minutes of the convention center, making note of their business hours. Given that my wife only eats during a convention if (a) she's about to pass out, and (b) there's nothing else of interest on her schedule, I knew I'd be fending for myself a lot of the time.

Still, my wife and I joined up for a hearty Saturday dinner at Los Amigos, a Mexican restaurant that appealed equally to both of us. We also had a supremely enjoyable Thursday dinner at The Continental. I had French onion soup dumplings, which were incredible. We loved the decor: our "outdoor" table (technically indoor, because we were in a mall) was next to a fire pit on a little island surrounded by water, and the rest of the restaurant was some combination of the original Star Trek, original Battlestar Galactica, vintage Doctor Who, and a David Lynch film. Very cool.

We also had breakfast together every morning. The B&B had a set menu of a half-dozen options—pancakes, eggs, bacon; all the usual fare. This was fine for me, but my wife was restricted to avocado toast because she's a filthy Millenn—I mean, uh, vegan. Actually, my wife informs me it was avocados and oatmeal. Either way, our hosts were very accommodating, and the orange juice was on point, so that's what really matters.

I ended up having all my other meals at the convention center, but I was smart this year: instead of sodas and greasy grub, I opted for Powerade and vaguely healthy sandwiches (vaguely healthy in that there was a lettuce leaf on top). Physically, I felt much better this convention, what with being properly hydrated and not traveling everywhere with a lead stomach.

SUMMARY

I think that pretty much covers everything. AnimeNEXT 2019 was—oh, I guess I missed some stuff.

COSTUMES

Well in advance of the convention, I had agreed to doing a couple's cosplay with my wife. She reckoned that we'd have more fun and be more recognizable as two characters from the same series. We both had our demands: I required a costume that was relatively easy and unobtrusive; she wanted something that didn't require a wig. We settled on Dr. Mikhail Cossack and Dr. Noelle Lalinde, two scientists from the Mega Man franchise (the latter from the Archie Comics continuity).

The costume components were easy enough to assemble. I had a pair of brown shoes that looked fairly accurate, and a pair of fake glasses left over from the Lowery Cruthers cosplay I did for a Jurassic Park/World movie marathon some months prior. I don't mean to brag, but I own a pair of khaki pants. I found a perfect tie and shirt at Goodwill. I picked up a lab coat from a uniform store—not the cheapest costume piece I've ever bought, but it opens up numerous future cosplay options. My hair and beard were already the appropriate length and easy to style.

I forget what all my wife had to do to pull together her costume, though I suspect there was some sort of Sailor Moon transformation sequence involved (or maybe just lots of sewing).

Now, my wife's intention was to bleach her hair, cut it to the character's specifications, and dye it the appropriate color. She had hassled with transporting, styling, pinning, and enduring the weight of two different wigs at the last convention, and she simply did not have the patience or energy to go through that again. Unfortunately, there was a mishap when she trimmed her own hair. And then another mishap when she attempted to salvage it for a secondary costume that fell through. Instead of looking like a comic book character, she turned herself into Little Lord Fauntleroy.

With tears in her eyes, she drove off into the sunset looking for a place that would sell her a wig.

Of course, costumes alone wouldn't be enough for anyone but the most diehard Mega Man fans to recognize us on sight. We needed props. So my wife went to work on a plushie (well, a round cat toy strung with wire and covered in fabric) of Beat the robotic bird, laminated fold-out "photos" of my fictional daughter (including official art, manga and comic book panels, and a screenshot from OH JOES!), and name badges for the both of us (complete with fake bar codes made of inverted tiles from Pharaoh Man's stage in Mega Man 4). I think everything turned out pretty darn well.

I don't think I've ever gotten so many requests to have my picture taken at a convention. A few times, people called out, "Hey, Dr. Light!" to me—and though I always set the record straight about who I was, I was happy they at least got the right franchise. My wife pointed out that Mega Man 11 was still fresh in people's minds, and young Dr. Light isn't too far off from Dr. Cossack if you're just going off of memory. Maybe that's a costume for another convention.

​My wife also went to the effort of drafting an essay written from the perspective of her character, and putting it in a binder with robot schematics on the cover. Although she didn't end up doing so, she toyed with the idea of hamming it up and handing out copies of her essay to random conventiongoers to warn them of the dangers of making robots seem too human.

We took a break from cosplaying on Saturday; my wife needed a respite from the wig, and I thought I'd be happier in street clothes for a day. Although my neato Super Metroid shirt got a few comments, I was surprised to find that I missed the recognition (and extra pockets) of the costume. I was also a little chilly at times; the Atlantic City convention center cranked up the air conditioning the appropriate amount for hordes of people in costume in the middle of summer. Good on you, AC. I reprised my role as Dr. Cossack on Sunday, while my wife changed into her alternate costume, "Woman Who Can't Even With This Wig Anymore."

THURSDAY/FRIDAY

After standing in line (a comically long line extending the entire length of the convention center, down the stairs, and back up the same stairs) to pick up our badges on Thursday night, we spent some time poring over the program and schedule. I had already downloaded the Guidebook app (a precaution after last year's scheduling problems), but I was pleased to discover that the print schedule completely matched up with the online one, at least for everything I wanted to attend.

Unfortunately, everything I wanted to attend was distributed in the worst way possible. Either there was absolutely nothing of interest, or 2-6 really compelling programs all happening at the same time. I had wanted to see the film Summer Wars, for example, but it would've required me to give up a panel on Lupin III (my favorite anime franchise), dinner at a reasonable time, and two competing events that I was tossed between. And if I gave up on Summer Wars after a few minutes—which would be consistent with the "not really feeling this" and "can't read the subtitles from my seat" reasons I had for abandoning videos the previous year—the Lupin panel would be half over and probably filled to capacity anyhow.

So, here's how my Friday went:

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water: I wasn't thrilled about starting my day with random video programming, but the dealers' room wasn't open yet, and most of my other options were introductions to things outside my sphere of interests. So, I watched an early '90s adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It filled the time just fine, but I wandered off after two episodes to go find my wife.

Anime Car Show: I think it's cool that there were half a dozen cars on display from Initial D or with anime-themed decals all over. But Doc Brown's DeLorean, KITT, and my personal vehicle when it's carrying newly purchased dessert are about the only cars my wife and I get excited about. The fact that we showed up, even briefly, to look at cars that didn't travel through time, talk to the driver, or contain dessert should indicate how our morning was going.

AnimeNEXT Family Feud: Family Feud is my favorite game show and one of my favorite TV shows in general. There was no way I was missing this. Disappointingly, the organizers were running on little sleep due to unforeseen circumstances, hadn't had a chance to test the technical equipment, and kept forgetting how certain elements of the game were supposed to work. The pace was slow, and most of the questions were either too broad ("Of all the Gen 1 Pokemon, which would you want for a starter?") or too narrow ("Name a Devil May Cry character with white hair"), and the majority were gaming questions instead of anime questions. The high point was playing rock-paper-scissors against our fellow audience members to gain a seat on stage, and tying about a dozen times in a row with the person behind me. Ridiculous. Also, I lost.

Dealers' room and artist alley: With nothing else on the schedule until early evening, I strolled through aisle after aisle of manga, plushies, keychains, tiny boxes from Japan containing models of the Fisher-Price Enterprise from Star Trek (2009), and any other merchandise you can think of. As with last year, I didn't want to bring home much more than a book full of sketches (more on that later), but I allowed myself a few purchases over the course of the weekend—mostly video game art prints for myself, but also a Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai art print for a friend, and a few varieties of Pocky to share at my workplace.

Lupin the 3rd With Various Guests: This panel was hosted by Richard Epcar, Lex Lang, and Ellyn Stern, who had lent their voices to various Lupin III dubs over the years. Now, I've only ever watched Lupin (and most anime, for that matter) with subtitles, but I was hoping that my passing familiarity with these people (who've played bit parts in such favorites as Heroes of Might and Magic III) and our shared interest in Lupin would be sufficient to enjoy the panel. In retrospect, I really should've gone to Summer Wars; there was a lot of discussion about the Blue Jacket series on Cartoon Network that I haven't seen, and it seemed like Ellyn and Richard weren't in sync about how structured or serious the panel was supposed to be.

Companies That Knew Nothing About "ANIME FAN WANTS": This was a treasure trove of hilarious horror stories and unbelievable anecdotes from now-defunct companies in the anime industry. George from Land of Obscusion regaled us with tales about everything from DVD production ("No, we totally didn't charge money for a DVD set that just sloppily ripped a fan translation from the Internet") to subtitles ("Hey, when you translate this anime, could you avoid using words with the letter 'Y'? The keyboard I'm using to type the subtitles doesn't have a functioning 'Y' key"). Tight presentation of interesting material.

AMV Contest Screening: I missed the first half because of the previous program, but my wife saved me a seat. I arrived in time for the beginning of the Dramatic/Serious category, which hit me right in the feels with the likes of "Parallel" (Violet Evergarden + "Restless Soul" by Flor). In the Artistic category, I was captivated by the psychedelic "Pachyderm Panic" (Puella Magi Madoka Magica + "Pink Elephants on Parade" from Dumbo). "The hero we need" (Astro Boy + "Captain Underpants Theme Song" by "Weird Al" Yankovic) was an amusing surprise in Fun/Upbeat, and funnier (to my tastes, anyhow) than anything under Comedy. Shockingly, last year's trend of everyone using the same two songs from The Greatest Showman continued unabated.

AMV Sing-Along AFTER DARK: Our first choice was the too-popular-to-get-into panel on hilariously bad anime, so we settled in for a less restrained version of the family-friendly AMV sing-along that cheerfully capped off last year's convention. Notably, this was not labeled as an 18+ panel, but it was late enough that the hosts felt comfortable with just giving a warning before any video with questionable content. There were gems such as "Clubbin' with Lupin" (Lupin III, One Piece​, and others + "Jack Sparrow" by Lonely Island feat. Michael Bolton), plus a few of the bawdy AMVs you'd expect from an "after dark" panel, but there were also some horrifically gory ones. Like, "how did my child get into this without a wristband" gory. And I am supremely squeamish. I spent what felt like a quarter of the sing-along looking away from the screen.

Richard Epcar's Famous Outtake Panel (18+): I think this is what I wanted out of the Lupin panel earlier in the day. Richard Epcar, accompanied by Lex Lang, showed a multitude of voice acting outtakes (audio paired with the video clips they were trying to dub) from Lupin III and other anime they'd been involved with. I could've done without so much locker room humor; my favorite outtakes were the flat-out silly ones, with actors catastrophically stumbling over their lines, making up random nonsense, or breaking the fourth wall with absurd observations about the show.

Thursday/Friday cosplay photos:

This was hastily taken as my segment of the snaking registration line curved around a corner, briefly matching up with where these cosplayers were. Left to right, we have Rin Hoshizora, Nozomi Tojo, Umi Sonoda, and Maki Nishikino from Love Live!

Serendipitously, our first cosplay encounter of the convention proper was with a character from the same franchise as us. Metal Man from Mega Man 2 is pictured here with two random nerds.

Shizuo Heiwajima and Izaya Orihara from Durarara!! stopped to duke it out.

The crew from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid was in attendance: Quetzalcoatl, Elma, Fafnir, Tohru, and Kanna.

It's great to see a whole family (or else a bunch of convincingly familial strangers) cosplay together: Ryuko from Kill La Kill; Flynn Rider from Tangled; and Dr. Eggman, Cheese the Chao, and Miles "Tails" Prower from the Sonic games. Eggman's hand gesture summarizes my feelings toward the accuracy of these costumes.

My wife tells me these are Red Blood Cell and Macrophage from Cells at Work. I tell my wife that she can watch shows like this without me because blood is icky.

I was impressed by this superb Brock and Steelix from an obscure series called Pokémon.

I saw more cosplayers from The Seven Deadly Sins than from any other show I recognized, and it was fun scrutinizing the differences in construction and detail between similar costumes. I held out on taking any photos until I found a group, and Meliodas (and Hawk), King, Escanor, and Diane were kind enough to oblige.

Final Fantasy VII's gloriously polygonal Cloud was one of my favorite cosplays of the convention. So clever.

I'm glad to see that good ol' Vash the Stampede remains a convention staple some 20 years after Trigun stopped airing.

Kirby's King DeDeDe would like to ask for your place in line. Best not to argue with that hammer.

SATURDAY

By the time we got back to the B&B, it was technically Saturday. Our biggest mistake was staying up past 2 AM trying to reassess our initial program selections now that we'd been conventioning for a whole day.

Even without getting up early to don a costume, I was exhausted when I woke up. In large part because of that exhaustion, Saturday ended up being the least enjoyable day of the convention, though not without its high points.

Experiences as an Anime Singer Songwriter With Shihori Nakane: Although I was unfamiliar with this person's work, hers was the one and only morning program that wasn't an educational workshop of some sort (tough luck if you're not interested in crafting, cosplay, or putting your brain to work before lunchtime!). I'm glad I tagged along with my wife; I got to hear some fun stories, including one about meeting the legendary Yoko Kanno. Nakane idolized Kanno and was giddy and nervous when meeting with her to collaborate on a song. Kanno introduced herself by offering a bag of snacks to Nakane. Awestruck, she thought to herself, "God gave me snacks!"

AMV Contest Screening: As the arts and crafts programming continued into the lunch hour, I got caught up on the AMVs I had missed the previous day. Trailer/Parody is usually my favorite category, but this crop of AMVs relied on being familiar with a bunch of series I've had minimal exposure to. Romance/Sentimental gave my feels no chance to recover from the previous day, assaulting me with "Happy Little Clouds" (various series + "Bob Ross Remixed" by Melodysheep) and "Chihiro in Wonderland" (Spirited Away + "C'mon" by Panic! at the Disco). Action didn't seem as action-y as usual, but I enjoyed "The Deciding Moment" (Haikyu!!, Ace of Diamond, and Kuroko's Basketball + "Seki-ray" by Gackt). I'll refer you to this playlist for all the AMVs I didn't mention; there were a lot of good ones.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: "Slice of life with a sci-fi twist" is one of my favorite anime genres, and my wife and I enjoyed this tale of a girl...well, you read the title. Lots of clever surprises and fun character interactions, and the ending gave us plenty of conversation fodder. Probably the best part of the day for me.

The Anime Bubble of 2008: What We've Learned: We apparently learned nothing, because I have no recollection of this panel, aside from showing up late and taking a photo of some cosplayers on the way out.

Why Visual Novels: Tales from a Beta Tester (18+): I'm not into visual novels, but I play one on TV. I mean, uh, I know people who make visual novels, I have actual beta testing experience, and I'm interested in behind-the-scenes stories from the video game industry. Mike (I think his name was Mike) was an engaging presenter, and his stories were funny and insightful. He described the workload (tens of thousands of words to review), the wide variations in how tester-friendly games might be, and how testing games with naughty content isn't as glamorous as it sounds.

AnimeNEXT Match Game: After Dark (18+): We attended this last year, and it was the highlights of the convention: Match Game but with audience members participating as the characters they were cosplaying. At that time, voice actor Bill Timoney was on the panel and brought a sense of humor and professionalism that elevated the whole thing. This time, I arrived late and missed the introductions, so I had no clue who was on stage. If I hadn't read the description, I wouldn't have recognized the program as a game show; participants were rambling about NSFW topics (and after Epcar's outtakes, blunt sex jokes were wearing thin for me). I left after maybe 5 minutes.

New Cutey Honey OVA '94: Either I got the wrong room or they switched what they were showing, because this OVA about a crime-fighting android looked an awful lot like a grossly underage busty girl undressing before a grossly underage boy. I left after maybe 5 seconds.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Scenes: Regrouping with my wife, I resigned myself to random video clips for the rest of the night. At its best, the panel was a parade of share-worthy videos, such as a very cool animated Star Wars short film called "TIE Fighter" and the supremely absurd "Daffy Duck the Wizard." Just as often, however, it was a prolonged introduction from one of the four hosts, or an uncomfortably gory clip that once again had me closing my eyes. I'll add that this was not labeled as an 18+ panel. We left around midnight; there was another hour to go, but my exhaustion had finally reached its limit.

Saturday cosplay photos:

I appreciated the double dose of Samuel L. Jackson, with Nick Fury from The Avengers and Frozone from The Incredibles.

Princess Daisy is ready for some Mario Tennis. I saw a number of good Mario cosplayers, but I was especially excited to see one of my mains from an underappreciated spinoff series that I love.

Compared with last year, the total population of non-anime cosplayers dropped by half. I suspect Nick Fury had Thanos flashbacks and used his cosmic pager to summon Captain Marvel's Captain Marvel to the convention to help.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS IS, BUT IT'S AWESOME apparently it's Garuda from Final Fantasy XIV.

With Hunk and Voltron from Voltron: Legendary Defender on hand, I knew the parking garage would be safe.

I ate lunch with All Might and Katsuki Bakugo (as influenced by Best Jeanist). I don't know what those words mean; my wife told me to say them.

Lastly, two characters I could identify unassisted: Little Witch Academia's Atsuko “Akko” Kagari and Diana Cavendish. I also spy Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid in the corner trying to sneak into or out of this photo.

SUNDAY

I wish we could've started with Sunday's programming; this was the convention I was here to attend. An eclectic assortment of options, timed neatly enough to minimize awkward gaps, gave me the freedom to attend whatever I felt like without agonizing over what I might miss.

How to Panel 101: As a Minor Internet Celebrity™, I've long considered applying to host a panel at a video game convention where people might recognize my work. I've recently been given opportunities to present at small local events, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to brush up on the basics. This presentation was invaluable. A lot of the advice was common sense, but the way the information was organized really helped to emphasize the importance of having someone proofread your application to host a panel, practicing your presentation, and preparing for every worst-case technology scenario.

Creatures in Features with Voice Actors Lex Lang and Sandy Fox: Hands-down the best part of the convention. The first half alone would've been one of the best panels I attended, and accessible even to people with no prior knowledge of these people. The affable hosts discussed how they got into voice acting; some of the roles they've played; and their involvement in loop groups, who fill in all the grunts, gasps, background chatter, and animal noises (you wouldn't believe the training involved for animal noises) needed to flesh out the sound in movies and TV shows. They talked about how Amy Jo Johnson, the original Pink Power Ranger, contributed to getting into that line of work. They played clips from some of the movies they've done and pointed out where you can hear them; Sandy cheered as the candy spectators in Wreck-it-Ralph, and it turns out Lex is my favorite velociraptor in Jurassic World.

The second half is what made this panel truly special: the audience was invited to do the looping for a scene from one of the newer Planet of the Apes movies, with the takes recorded and edited on the spot. A few people were background apes, and Lex coached them on how to grunt and ook convincingly. One person was a more prominent ape who got to shout. I was Breathing Man, as we called him—some poor schmoe who wandered into the jungle for the express purpose of breathing heavily and gasping at apes. I'm plenty comfortable with voiceovers, but I'm definitely not a natural when it comes to nonverbal reactions. Still, between thinking back to my theater days and getting some fantastically supportive coaching from Lex, I eventually produced some usable noises. When everything was spliced together and the music track was added, you could've convinced me that I was watching the actual movie. So, so tremendously cool.

Anime Openings & Endings THE MAN Doesn't Want You to See: I was tossed between this and a workshop on learning to play hanafuda. However, we wanted to wind down with something passive, I recalled how much I enjoyed last year's panel on the best anime openings of the '80s (including one from Kimagure Orange Road that was logistically fascinating), and I saw that George from Land of Obscusion would be hosting. This was an entertaining collection of footage that never made it stateside due to licensing or other issues, such as the Astro Boy opening that doubled as an advertisement for Glico (the Pocky people), or the trio of openings where composer Rui Nagai kept getting in trouble for ripping off other people's songs.

Animation in Anime: After a final run through the dealers' room, where I realized I'd blown my chance at getting a Ridley amiibo, I joined my wife for our final program, already in progress. There were two other panels I was considering attending, but I saw that this was co-hosted by Evan Minto, who ran two of the best-presented panels that we attended last year (one about the evolution of faces in anime, and one about the various appearances of burgers in anime), so that won me over. This was a discussion of the techniques and processes that bring anime to life, and I was especially interested in the part about visual continuity. Apparently, each scene in a show or movie might be done by a completely different animator. My favorite moment was, when discussing the importance of checking for quality and consistency, this image was left up on the screen:

This makes me laugh every time I see it.

Sunday cosplay photos:

We weren't able to get a clear shot of a fantastic Alex Louis Armstrong cosplay from Fullmetal Alchemist, so you get nothing.

ARTWORK

...I'm sorry; I glanced up at that goofy screencap and started laughing again. What am I talking about now? Oh yes. Artwork.

Last year I brought a sketchbook to the artist alley and solicited doodles from anyone who was willing. This year, I brought the same sketchbook (plenty of pages left to fill!) and a pocketful of dollar bills. My wife, herself an artist, said that even though these doodles weren't formally commissions, it'd be only fair to thank the artists with a little financial support. So, until the allotted cash ran out, I went around artist alley asking folks, "If I give you a dollar, would you draw me a doodle? Anything you want; wherever there's a blank spot is fine."

There were still many blank spots among the doodles I got in 2018. To save you the effort of comparing these images against the ones in the previous convention recap, my wife has drawn yellow boxes around any new doodles on old pages.

Most people were receptive to the proposal; a couple were busy or just watching the booth until the artist returned. One artist wanted some time to think and had me come back later; another couldn't decide what to draw, which prompted the first suggestion I've ever made (RWBY, specifically, after looking at what was on display) since making sketch collection a habit.

One girl who was a convention attendee saw me soliciting sketches, and she asked if she could draw something. The woman with her (I'm assuming her mother) apologized and tried to dissuade me, but I was more than happy to give the girl a dollar for the boxy little robot she drew.

Instead of drawing his own doodle, one artist thought it would be fun to add to someone else's doodle. Apparently he does this all the time. I'm still not sure whether to be amused or annoyed that I paid a dollar for a breath puff.

I wasn't choosy about the artists I solicited; I started on one end of artist alley and systematically worked my way across, circling back to a booth later if it was too crowded when I got there. I've found that the sketches I receive often bear no resemblance whatsoever to the art on display, so I even asked the people selling jewelry and sculptures to contribute.

I'll stop yammering for a while and let you get on with looking at sketches.

I like how it looks like the ghost is spooking the doodles to the right.

Important note: these are gay bees. The artist said so.

These last two are best viewed in the sketchbook itself; the scanned images don't give the full "flip book" effect of looking at the first one and then turning the page to see the second one appear directly behind it.

SUMMARY

Overall, I enjoyed AnimeNEXT 2019, but it ranks just below average among my convention experiences. I'm grateful that the convention staff listened to last year's feedback about the print schedule, and the program booklet was organized much better than before. I was pleased that every video I watched had subtitles where I could see them. Any other improvements from last year were ones my wife and I introduced: costumes that were more recognizable and fun to wear, planning out our meals better, downloading the Guidebook app to supplement the print schedule.

I wasn't a fan of how the programming was distributed; awkwardly staggered start times and too many panels appealing to the same audience at once (especially when they dominated an entire hour block) made it hard to be satisfied with my choices. My wife reports that most of the many concerts she attended didn't do the performers justice—too large a stage for just one person to command. I intend to have a word with the convention organizers about how graphic violence doesn't suddenly become appropriate for all ages after 10 PM.

Perhaps the biggest lesson for me was that the presenter is more important than the material being presented. Shihore Nakane was interesting because she's fun to listen to, not because I had any connection to her work. Previous attendance at panels hosted by George, Evan, and Lex swayed my decision to attend panels they hosted on Saturday and Sunday, which ended up being some of my favorites. Of the four game shows I attended between this year and last year, the only one I genuinely liked was largely because of the special guest.

Despite the low points this year, a lot of things we liked about last year's convention remained unchanged: great location, perfect attendance size, interesting events with interesting guests, good-quality cosplay, a dealers' room and artist alley with plenty to see, friendly convention staff, friendly convention center staff (those folks don't get nearly enough credit), and a very reasonable entrance fee. We're excited to try our luck again next year.

AnimeNEXT has become our convention of choice, just like Otakon was over a decade ago. Even when things don't go as well as they could, it's nice to have a place to call home.

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The Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest (MaGMML) 3 judge team was assembled a full year before judging began. We had plenty to keep us busy in that time, but I took on some non-judge work as well.

I spent a good chunk of 2018 helping to expand and test the game engine, making such contributions as assembling new tilesets (eg, the MM10 lab), reorganizing existing tilesets and creating slopes for some of them (eg, Skull Man; Charge Man; MM1 Wily 1, 2, and 4; MM2 Wily 1), and checking engine assets for fidelity to the original games (eg, all the Joes). For a time, I also was in charge of showcase development—that is, planning, building, and delegating the example levels that show off everything available in the engine.

I knew that contestants would be influenced to some degree by how the engine assets were presented to them. Without a showcase, many people would stick with the gimmicks and enemies they were familiar with, and overlook a lot of the engine's customization options. At the same time, any kind of showcase ran the risk of encouraging contestants to crib from the example levels—whether due to a lack of creativity, a false assumption that the example levels demonstrated the "right" way to use these assets, or a genuine inspiration to develop one of the sample challenges into a full level.

Before I took over showcase development, the team was grouping assets together by stage—here's everything from Cut Man, here's everything from Heat Man, and so forth. My main objection to this approach was that it would reinforce that certain assets need to go together, because that's how they appeared in the original games. After a lot of discussion, we agreed to rework everything and break up the assets by theme and/or function. I created a blank room in GameMaker; inserted one instance each of every enemy, gimmick, miniboss, and boss in the engine; and then started organizing these assets into categories (eg, water minibosses, moving platforms). Not unlike dumping out a basket of clothes and sorting them into piles.

With input from the devteam, I finessed the groups until everyone seemed to be happy with the distribution. Once things were finalized, I set up a tracking spreadsheet and requested volunteers to build example levels using the assets in each group. Tapping into my instincts as a judge and design critic, I also provided some guidelines for creating the showcase levels:

Of course, the showcase levels needed to be labeled to help players remember what they had and hadn't seen. You can blame me for all but one or two of these groan-inducing names:

• A Slog of Ice and Fire
• A Torrent of Turrets
• Airborne Assailants
• Brawl of the Wild
• Castle Castoffs
• Circuit Breaker
• Demolition Mission
• Extraordinary Ordinance
• Factory Fisticuffs
• Fan the Flame
• Fluidic Foes
• Ground Control
• Industrial Intrigue
• Invite Your Fiends
• Landlocked Leftovers
• Maniacal Manipulators
• Might As Well Jump
• Misfit Minibosses
• Modified Mobility
• Never Gonna Let You Joe
• Perilous Patrol
• Platform Swarm
• Pleased to Met You
• Razor-Sharp Rivals
• Respect the Unexpected
• Spectacular Spawners
• Submerged Scuffle
• Thug Zappers
• Water You Doing

I called dibs on Maniacal Manipulators (bosses with physics-altering attacks, one of whom is Flash Man, my judge avatar for the contest), Landlocked Leftovers (all the ground-based enemies that didn't fit anywhere else), and Never Gonna Let You Joe. After devoting two years of my life to OH JOES!, a game devoted to using this tired old enemy type in new and different ways, there was no way I wasn't going to claim the all-Joe showcase (Joecase?). Although I wouldn't consider it one of my strongest levels, I relished the self-imposed challenge of making the level beatable without destroying a single Joe (seriously, try it). Plus, I got to put some of my custom slope tiles to use.

I had wanted to take on more levels, but the stress of being a game designer (not just a level designer) finally got to me. For one thing, I was burned out from OH JOES! and needed a break from working on fangames. For another thing, I wasn't prepared for the logistical hurdles of this particular project.

The sheer size of the devkit meant absurd amounts of time spent loading and compiling in GameMaker. With OH JOES!, I could fire up the software, make a change, test it, tweak it, and test it again in a matter of minutes; with the MaGMML3 devkit, the same amount of work could easily take half an hour. Level design was suddenly an arduous, inefficient task that required me to plan my time differently and adjust how I approached playtesting.

Moreover, the showcase was being designed while the engine was still being expanded and tested. From a programming perspective, it's incredibly helpful to see how assets behave in normal gameplay situations. From a level design perspective, it's difficult to plan out challenges when the building blocks are still being finessed. I spent a lot of time logging issues on GitHub or, in rare cases, attempting to make programming changes myself. To push my changes to the rest of the devteam, I had to learn to use a command-based software called Git Bash. Even with a comprehensive guide from devteam member NaOH, I frequently ran into confusing, infuriating issues (read: merge conflicts). All I wanted to do was design some levels.

Recognizing that I needed to step back, I passed the torch to devteam member CWU01P, who did a terrific job of picking up the slack. Really, the whole devteam did some impressive work in pulling together the showcase.

If you'd like to take the showcase for a spin, it's packaged with Megamix Engine, which you can download here.

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I've been a part of the Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest (MaGMML) community since the beginning, back when it looked like MaGMML1 was the only chance I'd ever have to move my Mega Man level ideas from paper to pixels. What followed was an unexpected explosion of level design opportunities—Mega Man Endless, OH JOES! (A Proto Man Adventure), Mega Maker, and MaGMML2. I shifted my focus away from recording YouTube videos and threw myself into Mega Man fangames, becoming highly active as an archivist, livestreamer, playtester, and wiki contributor on top of being a level/game designer. When MaGMML3 was announced, I got to add another title to the list: judge. But it took some effort to get there.

From my videos and livestreams to the countless reviews I've written across the Web, I've been a game critic for something like 15 years. After participating in the first MaGMML, I expressed an interest in being a judge for the second one. I was briefly considered for the position...but then people remembered that I was the guy who made the love-it-or-more-likely-hate-it "Maze of Death" level for the first contest, so I was back to being a contestant. Recognizing good level design and creating good level design are not the same skill, so I had something to prove going into MaGMML2.

With "Guts Man's Asteroid," I attempted to address every complaint I'd heard about "Maze of Death." By all accounts, I was successful—despite some flaws (read: boulder droppers) that kept the level just barely out of the top ten, my submission was well received by the judges and remains a fan favorite. Hence, this was the level I chose to submit when applications opened to become a judge for MaGMML3.

Nineteen of us applied, but only three of us—Shinryu (creator of MaGMML2's first-place level), Pachy (creator of what might be MaGMML2's best-designed middle-tier level), and yours truly (creator of this blog post)—were offered a judge position. There were two phases to the application process. The first one consisted of playing, rating, and reviewing seven sample levels, which represented a typical spread for this type of contest: the thoroughly mediocre level, the obvious troll level, the level that looks great at first glance but secretly has some issues, and so forth. Eleven of us made it to the second phase, which had us sending the contest hosts an example of our level design ability, be it a new level or one that we'd already made.

During the whole process, I kept telling myself that I'd be happy no matter what the result was. However, the anxiety, excitement, and preemptive disappointment I felt at various points made it clear to my wife, if not to me, that I really would've been crushed if I didn't pass the test. I say "preemptive disappointment" because, for a while, it looked like I hadn't made the initial cut. I was watching for an e-mail or private message with a status update, but I didn't realize a new "Phase 2 Applicant" role (or something to that effect) had been added for me on Discord. Oops.

Because I'd already created the level I wanted to submit as a sample of my work, all I needed to worry about were the reviews. We were given a rubric: 35 points for design, 25 for fun, 15 for creativity, 15 for aesthetics, and 10 for functionality, adding up to 100 possible points. We were also asked to rate the difficulty on a scale of 1-5, indicate whether the level should be skippable (and if so, why), and designate a favorite and least favorite.

I can rate things on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10 just fine, but I had trouble determining what would separate, say, a 23 from a 24. I ended up breaking each category into more manageable subcategories, getting a second opinion from my wife and tinkering with the balance until I ended up with this:

Design - X/35
Learning curve - X/5
Challenge design (deliberate, clear, meaningful, fair) - X/5
Challenge progression (↑ complexity/difficulty, challenge arcs, climax) - X/5
Focus (coherent theme, manageable roster, nothing over/underused) - X/5
Architecture (logical, efficient, unobtrusive) - X/5
Level design (length, layout, pacing, checkpoints) - X/5
Capability consideration (abilities shine without destroying the challenge) - X/2
Name (does the level reflect the title) - X/2
Perfectible (no damage w/ buster only) - X/1

Fun - X/25
Totally subjective rating - X/10
Worth my time - X/5
Highs (do the best parts boost the level) - X/5
Lows (are the shortcomings forgivable) - X/5

Creativity - X/15
Originality (have I seen anything exactly like this) - X/5
Novelty (does this offer new experiences) - X/5
Impressiveness (am I surprised or wowed) - X/5

Aesthetics - X/15
Graphics - X/5
Music - X/5
Atmosphere/theming - X/5

Functionality - X/10
Stability (flawless construction; no glitches) - X/5
Feasibility (can the player reliably complete each challenge) - X/5


Now I was ready to judge some levels. I downloaded an executable file containing the sample levels (which you can download here, if you'd like to try them yourself) and got to work. I played everything once, jotted down some notes, then circled back and played everything again before finalizing my scores and writeups.

Preserved for posterity, and so that you can ask, "Wait, how did this guy get accepted as a judge?", here are the opinions I offered. Note that the numbers in parentheses correspond with the subcategory breakdowns listed above. Also note that this is the last time you'll see level reviews from me in excess of 500 words; no one should spend more time reading my review than I spent playing their level.

Midnight Man

Difficulty Rating: 1
Skippable: No

Design - 21/35 (3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 1, 1, 1)
Fun - 12/25 (5, 2, 1, 4)
Creativity - 3/15 (2, 1, 0)
Aesthetics - 8/15 (3, 2, 3)
Functionality - 10/10 (5, 5)
TOTAL - 54/100

This is—and I think we can all agree on this—a level. The name “Midnight Man” conjures up images of what might be in store for the player—at the very least, a boss at the end named Midnight Man. Will there be werewolves to fight under a full moon at midnight? Some darkness- or shadow-oriented gimmick, given how dark it is at midnight? Perhaps a battle on a clock tower as the clock strikes midnight? The heart of a lion and the wings of a bat, BECAUSE IT’S MIDNITE? Why, the possibilities are...not really fleshed out here at all.
 
The background of the first half of the stage suggests that it is nighttime, and there are bats. This is a good start. In general, the graphics are pretty good; there’s some nice detail in the foregrounds, and the damage-ridden background for the indoors portion (despite being a bit too close in color to the foreground) suggests there might be an interesting story behind this level—especially on the last screen; I want to know what that cool-looking capsule thing is. Unfortunately, the challenges do nothing to bring that story to life.
 
I applaud that the enemy roster is a reasonable size and that the enemies aren’t placed all willy-nilly. I like the one screen where the dense starfield in the background makes it harder to see the Haehay’s bullets (I hope that was intentional), and I like that the Battons blend into the background for a similar sneakiness (which I also hope was intentional). But that’s about all that stands out as particularly positive about the challenges.
 
There’s no sense of theme to the enemies, and their placement is often less than ideal—the first Beak you meet should not be on top of the first ladder you find, nor should you hide Beaks behind the health bar. The Shotman guarding the entrance to the secret room (which is satisfyingly well hidden) is all well and good until you realize you’ll practically walk right into him on the way back out. Many enemies can be avoided or dispatched with no risk to the player whatsoever, like the useless Hot Dog near the halfway point. And I’m not sure it’s even possible to avoid damage while fighting the secret Hot Dog with the buster; that is a looooooong string of fireballs. The lack of gimmicks is a letdown, too. The level needs something to make it stand out, and the enemy challenges aren’t novel or complex enough to compensate.
 
The music is fine; I found it a bit abrasive at first and I’ve already forgotten what it actually sounds like, but it fills the noise void well enough. I didn’t find any technical issues; there was one screen transition at the top of a ladder that could’ve been a little smoother, but that’s a minor thing. Otherwise, there’s not much to say. This level needs a stronger theme and an actual MIDNIGHT MAN to live up to its name.

Coptar Man

Difficulty Rating: 4
Skippable: Yes (the graphics inconsistently and unreliably convey the actual level architecture)
LEAST FAVORITE

Design - 3/35 (0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0)
Fun - 2/25 (1, 0, 0, 1)
Creativity - 3/15 (2, 1, 0)
Aesthetics - 3/15 (0, 2, 1)
Functionality - 1/10
TOTAL - 12/100

What an exquisite level. While other developers waste their time on such outdated concepts as “learning curve” and “solid floors,” you have masterfully eschewed every so-called “good” game design principle in favor of something truly revolutionary. Like the Pirate’s Code, any graphical representations of spikes or solid objects are more like guidelines, really; they’re a cue to the player that spikes and solid blocks are in the vicinity, but not necessarily exactly where they appear to be. This generates a sense of paranoia that, previously, only the likes of Stephen King or, say, Baby Groot holding a detonator have ever achieved.
 
Amplifying the paranoia is the constant surprise of new enemy types assailing the player when they are least prepared to take them on. A sudden Apache Joe while the player is being launched uncontrollably off the ground by a powerful fan? Genius. Nevermind crafting cohesive challenges or giving the player a chance to understand the nature of each obstacle; tossing handfuls of miscellaneous robots onto each screen is a sure-fire way to create difficulty without expending any effort in the process. Imagine how many more Mega Man games we could have had if Capcom had taken that approach.
 
I’m glad to finally see a level that recognizes graphics for the scourge they are. All those differently colored pixels everywhere take too much of the focus away from the gameplay. A solid-color background, a few pipe tiles, and a handful of different spikes are really all anyone needs—and honestly, I think you even could’ve gotten away with ditching the pipe tiles.
 
I wholeheartedly support the music choice. The high-pitched noises of Tornado Man’s theme have captured fans’ attention for years, and the decision to loop the music in an unconventional way is a clever tie-in to the level’s overall theme of never knowing what to expect. Truly, this captures the essence of a “Coptar.”
 
I was so inspired by your masterful work that I decided to take a page from your book and score your level with numbers that don’t necessarily match up with anything I’ve said here. Hopefully you enjoy that as much as I enjoyed your level.

X Factory

Difficulty Rating: 3
Skippable: No

Design - 32/35 (5, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 2, 1, 1)
Fun - 21/25 (8, 5, 4, 4)
Creativity - 12/15 (5, 4, 3)
Aesthetics - 12/15 (4, 4, 4)
Functionality - 10/10 (5, 5)
TOTAL - 87/100

Good, good, good. This is a level that reflects both an understanding of good game design principles and the skill to do them justice. Although this level doesn’t elicit the same “Whoa, cool” reaction that I’ve had to other levels in this contest, I respect the heck out of the craftsmanship here.
 
From start to finish, there is a clear learning curve and steady difficulty progression, introducing new elements in relatively safe environments and gradually combining them for more and more interesting and challenging scenarios. There’s a perfect balance of focus and variety, with each enemy and gimmick having a chance to shine without overstaying its welcome. Challenges require a combination of observation, planning, and straight-up platforming skill to overcome, giving the level a bit of a puzzle slant that I appreciate. It took me a few tries to reach the end, but every death was entirely my fault—a mark of truly fair difficulty.
 
Aesthetically, the level is a unique combination of colorful and serious, and the energetic music compliments the visuals well. Highly detailed graphics like these always run the risk of being distractingly detailed and clashing with the simpler 8-bit Mega Man sprites, but for the most part, everything meshes well. The enemy and obstacle selection and coloration go a long way in creating a cohesive look. A couple screens are right on the edge of looking too busy, though; I had some trouble distinguishing between foreground and background on the screen with a Springer in the top and bottom half, for instance. Also, the architecture in one or two places makes the challenge at hand appear a little confusing at first; for example, there’s one screen with four X platforms leading you across spikes to an exit on the right, but the bottom-left corner of the screen has an irrelevant cavern of spikes that appears to be part of the challenge somehow.
 
The autoscrolling section at the end is a nice culmination to the level, yet not quite as satisfying as it could be. It’s tricky to nail the pacing of an autoscrolling section, and this one errs just a smidge too much on the slow side for my taste. I suspect most players will find it fine, but I got antsy a few times while standing around idly for the next challenge to appear. It’s mostly the very end that’s a bit disappointing—it’s extremely easy to wipe out that whole row of B Bitters before they become a problem, which makes it that much more anticlimactic to discover the Energy Element sitting around unguarded on the next screen. Swapping out one of the B Bitters for a Crystal Joe might’ve been sufficient to spice up the final challenge (and as a side note, the Crystal Joes don’t entirely function like they do in MM5, but they serve the challenges just fine). Adding even a simple gimmick challenge to the Energy Element screen would have been enough to remove that feeling of “Oh, it’s over already.”
 
These are relatively minor issues, however. This is a thoroughly solid level with very deliberate and well-thought-out design decisions, and I would love to see more levels like this one.

Space Crusade

Difficulty Rating: 3
Skippable: No
​FAVORITE

Design - 23/35 (2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 1)
Fun - 21/25 (8, 5, 5, 3)
Creativity - 12/15 (4, 4, 4)
Aesthetics - 15/15 (5, 5, 4)
Functionality - 10/10 (5, 5)
TOTAL – 80/100

This was fun! I'm a sucker for outer space, and the stage lives up to its name. Between the groovy music, the eye-catching blend of space-themed tilesets, the reskinned enemies, and the story element provided by the NPCs, everything works together to create the atmosphere of an exciting space crusade. I could tell that the stage was referencing...something...(I looked it up afterward; it's Warhammer 40K) but the whole experience is crafted in such a way that you don't need to get the reference to appreciate the stage.
 
I like variety in a stage, and this one has plenty of it—too much for its own good, in fact. On the plus side, most enemies and obstacles are used at least twice, in situations where they have at least a partial opportunity to shine. There's a lot of creativity in the challenges, and nothing feels completely wasted. I love the screen where you're sliding into time bombs with the cannon firing at you, and the screen where you've got to slide under spikes on a Splash platform...and the screen where you're sliding past those dreaded Up'n'Downs is surprisingly not awful, further demonstrating that you have the chops to turn the familiar into something pleasantly different. The boss is a clever synthesis of different bosses and minibosses, and a satisfying end to the stage.
 
On the minus side, the “sampler platter” approach means that none of these challenges have the chance to be fully developed, which is a right shame. Cutting a handful of foes and hazards would allow more room to explore the potential of the remaining ones, bringing more focus to the level without sacrificing the feeling of variety. In particular, the reskinned falling platforms add nothing to the stage; you’ve already got Shadow platforms and indestructible blocks that could serve the exact same purpose.
 
Unfortunately, many of the rooms are fairly cramped. This isn’t inherently problematic, as claustrophobia-inducing architecture can allow for some tricky challenges and can add to the character of a stage. In this case, however, some rooms feel tight because the entrance and exit aren’t ideally positioned—take the room before the checkpoint, for example, where all the action is jammed into the top left corner of the screen. Moreover, it’s not uncommon to have a few too many objects on the screen at once, or a complex challenge concentrated into a very small space.
 
The learning curve on these challenges is fast, but standing perfectly still at the entrance to a screen will usually give enough time to figure out what’s going on. The few exceptions are brutal, however. The introduction to the reskinned falling platforms seems specifically designed as a beginner’s trap, with only the most agile players making it out alive on their first try. The following screen with the reskinned Sniper Joes and Shadow platforms over spikes demands even faster reflexes, and the screen after that surprises you with Up’n’Downs in a place where they’re totally unexpected and impossible to dodge if you’re caught off guard. Part of the problem is making every screen a self-contained challenge; occasional use of camera scrolling would go a long way in giving the player and these challenges enough space to breathe.
 
Nonetheless, I enjoyed this level. The shortcomings aren’t deal-breakers for me, and almost all of the challenges are individually satisfying, even if there are ways to improve them and the level as a whole. I was promised a space crusade, and by the Emperor, I did not leave disappointed.

Gate 303

Difficulty Rating: 2
Skippable: No

Design - 14/35 (2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 1, 1, 1)
Fun - 9/25 (4, 1, 2, 2)
Creativity - 4/15 (2, 2, 0)
Aesthetics - 9/15 (4, 4, 1)
Functionality - 10/10 (5, 5)
TOTAL - 46/100*

This could have been a fun romp through a robot-ridden airport, with our hero on a scavenger hunt for the keys that unlock Gate 303, where an airplane or aviation-themed boss lies waiting. Instead, it's a well-meaning collection of rookie mistakes.
 
The stage starts out well enough: pleasantly backgroundy music, unremarkably but competently used vanilla graphics, and a few simple challenges with a very gentle learning curve. I like the use of the Elec beams as a less punishing alternative to floor spikes (though it looks odd to have the beams overlap with the floor; either give them more space or hide them behind a higher-priority floor tile). Combining them with Guts platforms is a decent idea, and WAIT THAT'S A SOLID WALL NOT A BACKGROUND TILE OH THE ELECTRICITY IT HURTS.
 
Suddenly, the exceedingly gentle learning curve is gone. It's never demonstrated that Guts platforms can pass through solid walls, so it's an even worse shock (literally and figuratively) when you're dumped off. It's not long before you're thrown into a tricky timing challenge involving sliding, falling a fair distance, and dodging Sniper Joe bullets—none of which has been required previously in the stage—while also avoiding an Elec beam trap. And I should mention that the Elec beams across the stage are inconsistent about whether they fire constantly or are on some kind of timer.
 
One enemy after another is introduced in a way that assumes the player already knows how to handle these foes. Never seen a Shield Attacker? Too late; you got hit. What's a Pandeeta? It's that thing you almost fell on, which is now shooting you at unnecessarily close range. Worse yet, these enemies are never seen again. I can easily imagine an inexperienced player getting smacked around the entire stage, never truly understanding how to deal with all this pain. Fortunately, the stage is a wholly appropriate length, and checkpoint placement is good.
 
The last area before the bosses is simultaneously the best and worst part of the level. On the one hand, it's a neat idea to have the player clear out every last bad guy in a large room to collect enough keys to proceed. On the other hand...the whole room is a mess, with enemies all over the place and no real structure to the challenges. Not to mention that the key doors come AFTER you get all the keys (a recurring theme here), which kind of defeats the purpose of having key doors. Although it is easy enough to avoid the enemies and then need to backtrack to get the keys, but that also feels like a waste. Tease the player with a locked door, THEN let them look for the key.
 
At least there's a boss fight behind all those locked doors...except it's the same Plant Man fight we got in MM6. Devkit bosses are fine, but do SOMETHING to set them apart. Bringing in those Elec beams or Guts platforms might have been good. Cutting the second boss fight also would have been good; Gemini Man is pure padding, and the lack of a checkpoint at the start of his battle is a bit of an oversight. There's no thematic connection between Plant Man, Gemini Man, and the rest of the stage...though the stage doesn't really have much theming to begin with.


*When I received my applicant feedback from the hosts, it was brought to my attention that I missed an exploit where you can grind for infinite keys, so Design and/or Functionality should've been a point or two lower. What I learned from that oversight is to play these levels like a playtester, not just a critic.

Universe City V

Difficulty Rating: 3
Skippable: No

Design - 27/35 (3, 4, 3, 5, 3, 4, 2, 2, 1)
Fun - 19/25 (7, 4, 5, 3)
Creativity - 14/15 (5, 4, 5)
Aesthetics - 13/15 (4, 4, 5)
Functionality - 9/10 (4, 5)
TOTAL - 82/100

It took me a while to warm up to this one, but once I did, it brought a smile to my face. Initially, I was a little bored with the stage. Lots of empty space, music that’s nice but far too sleepy for a Mega Man stage, and pretty basic challenges (except the one with the fork blocks, which is good but too exacting to be an introduction to the gimmick). Then there’s a joke boss (which gave me a chuckle) and the stage is over. OK, fine. Except...it’s not over. It’s only just begun.
 
I love that the first part of the stage simultaneously sets player expectations for one type of stage while subtly exposing the player to the normal enemies and gimmicks they’ll face once the main gimmick kicks in. When the music ramps up and you start seeing Volt Men everywhere, there’s this wonderful revelation that you’ve been fooled, and the stage can jump right into more complex challenges because all the basic elements have already been introduced. But I think the intro section could have been tighter and more efficient while accomplishing the same goal, leaving me saying “Oh, that was really clever” instead of “Oh, so that’s why the first part was kinda dull.”
 
The Volt Men challenges are totally worth it, though. I’m a big fan of seeing Robot Masters repurposed as stage enemies, and you got some terrific mileage out of this one—both in terms of gameplay and the fact that the “Volt Man is overused” joke could inspire an entire stage. The challenges are interesting, varied, and continually humorous, and the many flavors of Volt Man mix well with the other enemies and gimmicks in use. I might’ve liked some sort of subtle visual distinction between the different Volt Man types, or at least a shorter timer before the shield-launching ones decide to attack; I frequently sustained damage after (incorrectly) determining that the Volt Man in front of me was just going to hold his shield forever. A little caution is fine, but the stage requires a bit too much idle waiting if you truly want to play it safe.
 
The challenge progression is solid, with a smart blend of timing and speed as the core focus. Probably my favorite part is the screen where you’re riding Spark platforms past fork blocks while a Volt Man keeps shooting at you. Great stuff. That being said, a few spots could benefit from a bit of finessing; for example, I was a smidge disappointed by how easy it was to use Super Arrow to bypass every challenge in that long hallway toward the end.
 
I was thrilled to find that Sakugarne can bounce off the boss projectiles, and I laughed at the unexpected deterrent to using Slash Claw on the stationary, shielded Volt Men. The boss fight is a superb culmination to the stage, offering another good chuckle as well as a challenge that’s well in line with everything preceding it. I experienced a little wonkiness during the boss fight when using Flash Stopper, but otherwise the programming seemed pretty solid.
 
This is a stage that could be improved in places, but it doesn’t need to be. A fun premise coupled with good design instincts makes for a charming addition to the contest, and I’m very happy to have played this.

Magnum Man

Difficulty Rating: 3
Skippable: No

Design - 24/35 (4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1)
Fun - 17/25 (6, 4, 5, 2)
Creativity - 14/15 (5, 5, 4)
Aesthetics - 12/15 (4, 5, 3)
Functionality - 7/10 (3, 4)
TOTAL - 74/100

The Good: Custom assets that look professional, evocative music that fits the level well, several fun and clever challenges, generally smooth learning curve
 
The Bad: Inconsistent theming, lots of clutter, too many enemy types
 
The Ugly: Problematic level layout, some spikes aren’t even spikes, a deadly and easy-to-trigger glitch
 
From the very first screen, this looks and sounds like it could be an official Capcom level. I’m a sucker for Westerns, too, so this level started off at an advantage—which gradually slipped away as more and more problems became apparent.
 
At first glance, everything seems totally fine. All the custom enemies, gimmicks, and tiles look and feel perfectly at home in a Mega Man game, and they work together with the music to develop a strong sense of theme. New types of challenges are introduced fairly, with only a few mild exceptions (eg, the exploding bullet enemies are a bit of a surprise). The oversized revolvers and springboard platforms are really creative and used extremely well, and there’s a satisfying boss fight at the end. Level length feels a mite long but within acceptable parameters, and the frequency of checkpoints and power-ups is just right. If we left it at that, this would be a dynamite level.
 
Upon closer inspection, however, there’s a disappointing lack of focus in the enemy and gimmick selection. When I remember the Alamo, I certainly don’t remember Electric Gabyoalls. Tanks in the desert I can understand, but tanks in Tombstone? When did John Wayne ever ride into the sunset on a Tondeall? For a few dollars more, would Clint Eastwood have agreed to a shootout on bouncy platforms? This is Mega Man we’re talking about, and tradition dictates that it’s OK to include a few elements that don’t strictly fit the level theme, but Magnum Man takes it a little too far. Not only are these miscellaneous elements disruptive of the otherwise fantastic atmosphere created by the themed assets, but they clutter the enemy roster to the point where several enemies only appear once—or twice, if they don’t scroll themselves off the screen before you get to them.
 
This overabundance of different enemy types also contributes to a sense of clutter, which is amplified by the busy backgrounds. The graphics look very nice, yes, but there’s so much variety and fine detail that they tend to draw the focus away from the gameplay. There’s not quite enough of a gap between challenges to give the player a chance to properly appreciate the set pieces. The architecture is occasionally a contributing factor in that cluttered feel; for example, one screen toward the beginning has two random spikes underneath an oversized revolver for some reason (wouldn’t a regular wall have been enough of a deterrent to go that way?), and one screen toward the end has a gunman buried inside a wall above the screen entrance, which is pointless when the height advantage is already a deterrent to using any weapon that can’t pass through a wall.
 
I also got extremely confused about the level layout upon reaching the second Noble Nickel, which is sitting out in the open like it’s a perfunctory health refill. Special items like this are meant to be a reward for accomplishing something out of the ordinary, so I could only conclude that I had accidentally found a secret exit to the previous screen...but then I couldn’t backtrack out of the room, and the only way to progress was to walk through pillars that looked solid. This dropped me awkwardly into the middle of a scrolling section, but there was no indication whether I should go right or left. I arbitrarily went left (which is good, because right takes you to a pointless dead end), but it felt the whole time like I was backtracking through challenges I had inadvertently bypassed by choosing the path that led to the Nickel. As it turns out, the level is completely linear—and it’s a horrible feeling to be lost in a linear level.
 
That really soured the whole level for me, which is a shame, because there are so many parts that I adore. Individually, the majority of these challenges are well designed and highly memorable. Riding oversized bullets from place to place is a hoot, and combining that with sliding challenges is AWESOME. Likewise, bouncy gunfights (despite making no sense in the context of the level) are satisfyingly tricky, particularly when the gunmen’s bullets track you, and I approve of how the spike challenges take advantage of that momentarily delay between landing on the springboard and being launched into the air. All the Noble Nickels (save for the aforementioned second one) are exactly the right amount of difficult to obtain. The battle against Magnum Man is solid, and it’s neat to see him use a couple of the attacks you’ve been practicing against throughout the level. And like I said, this has the production values of a Capcom level.
 
Except...Capcom probably wouldn’t have left an entire floor of spikes as background decoration instead of actual spikes that cause you to explode on contact. And I suspect they would have playtested those springboard platforms more thoroughly—firing Super Arrow and especially Wheel Cutter at an extended platform leads to some interesting visual oddities, and it’s all too easy to get Mega Man stuck inside one...and then speedily shunted to the opposite end of the screen, where he explodes.
 
Other issues with the level may include the following: A few late-game challenges are decidedly easier than their earlier counterparts (eg, going from an unavoidably bouncy gunfight to a gunfight on the ground with a nearby springboard if you feel like using it). The background sometimes utilizes black rectangles (like on the checkpoint screen next to the boss chamber), which look less like holes or windows and more like...black rectangles. The fight with Magnum Man is aesthetically problematic; for one thing, his boss chamber is technically underground and shouldn’t have that desertscape in the background, and for another, his generic looks don’t help the inconsistent theming. Also, Flash Stopper freezes Magnum Man’s projectiles but not the boss himself, and Electric Gabyoalls don’t freeze when hit by a charge shot like they do in MM6, but those oddities may well be intentional. However, I will say that Magnum Man’s animations, especially the gun twirling, are pretty sweet.
 
There are the makings of a truly great level here, but the biggest shortcomings seriously belie the professionalism this level projects.

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 haven't been on social media much lately, so here's a status report for all the projects I have going:

1. OH JOES! is receiving a major update. I've added or am in the process of adding 9 new game modes, 14 Achievements, quality-of-life improvements (eg, an option for Quick Lasers to have a warmup animation before firing), an Italian translation, and more. This will probably be my last update to the game (notwithstanding any necessary functionality patches), so I'm making it a point to include everything I wanted to have as part of the initial release but got too burned out to implement. Thank you to everyone who's written words of encouragement and rekindled my enthusiasm for this project.

2. I'm updating this website on a relatively frequent basis. I've been chipping away at various Series Opinions, and I finally added a link to my Mega Man Fangame Tracker under the Games section. Once the aforementioned OH JOES! update is released, I'll post the next developer diary I've been working on, which should be considerably happier than the last one.

3. I'm still working on my Mega Man 8 playthrough for YouTube, I swear. It's hard to work up the motivation to play one of my least-favorite games in the series, let alone replay the same half a stage over and over without any guarantee I'll get decent footage. I'll devote more time to this as my fangame commitments disappear. In the meantime, you can track my progress by looking at the banner image I'm using on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

4. I'm designing a handful of screens for a unique trio of fan-made Mega Man relay levels, where each designer makes a few screens and passes the level along to the next designer to continue the challenges. This is a very small commitment that will only occupy a few evenings total. No release date yet, but probably sometime in the next couple months. (If you'd like to participate, we could use more designers! Click here to join the Discord server.)

5. No further livestreams are planned for the foreseeable future. I do plan to get back to streaming eventually, and I may stream on a whim (like I did recently with a dash-free run of Mega Man X), but my Twitch channel is officially dormant for the time being. I need some time away from actively performing in front of an audience, and I want to direct my attention to projects with a clear endpoint.

6. I'm a judge and on the development team for Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 3. I will also be designing a judge level and likely making other contributions to the game. I expect this project will consume most of my free time in December, January, probably February, and possibly March. However, after this is all over, I intend to step away from developing Mega Man fangames and refocus on recording. It's been fun to be so active in the fan community and create content based on my favorite video game franchise, but I have a fanbase of my own that's been starved for new videos these last three years.

7. I am a contributor to the Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest website and have been tidying up (read: overediting) the existing pages and adding new pages. There's a little bit more I'd like to do, but nothing I have to do; this might take up a couple more evenings across the next several months.

8. In an effort to complete my playlist of music from OH JOES!, CosmicGem has given me permission to upload videos of his compositions for the game. I just need to take 10 minutes to slap together a background image and make the videos.

9. This has been on the backburner for an outrageously long time, but some diligent fans have added closed captioning to some of my YouTube videos, and I just need to review them. As a professional copy editor, I want to make sure the captions are as accurate and tidy as possible—which means this is essentially an extension of what I do at work all day, hence why it takes me so long to get around to it in my spare time. However, I'm most grateful that people are willing to put in the effort to write accurate captions, sparing my viewers from the inappropriate and nonsensical absurdities of Transcribe Audio.

On top of all this, I've got a normal life to lead—keeping up with boring adult stuff such as housework and bills; spending time with friends, family, and my wife; taking time to relax with books, movies, and video games; and so forth. I'm assuming that all counts as "normal." I'm prioritizing my side projects as much and as often as I can, but there's only so much time in a year, and only so much energy in a day. But thanks for sticking with me as I try to do it all.

Story navigation: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Two years. That's how much of my life I devoted to nurturing OH JOES! from some goofy level concept into a full-blown game with original cutscene artwork, an original soundtrack, ​58 randomized disclaimers for the startup screen, 500 words of dialogue, 1500 words of game over hints, multiple language options, multiple paths, multiple difficulties, multiple playable characters, and plenty of Easter eggs. I participated in every aspect of development—planning, spriting, programming, level design and decoration, music composition, writing, translating, and playtesting—learning any necessary skills along the way, including skills that hardly come naturally. Overcoming my aversion to collaboration, I coordinated with 34 people to make the game better than it ever would have been as a solo project. To me, OH JOES! isn't just another Mega Man fangame; it's a remarkable accomplishment that pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped define an entire chapter of my life.

At first, the game was a fun distraction, something I worked on a few times a week for a couple of hours at a clip. After a year, it was a pleasant obsession, consuming as much of my free time as my sanity (and my wife, friends, and family) would permit. By the last few months, OH JOES! was more of a burden than a joy, an obstacle between me and how I wanted to be spending my life, but I was committed to doing it right.

The good days, of which there were many, were the ones in which I conquered some programming problem myself, designed some challenges I felt good about, had productive interactions with the other people involved in the project, incorporated lots of playtester feedback, or finalized basically anything (menu screens and sprites were especially gratifying). I took it as a very positive sign that I frequently found myself humming the soundtrack, and that I didn't get sick of fighting Joes until the last few months—which, considering the impetus for the project, is rather astonishing. When I posted updates on social media, I could rely on at least a few (if not several) supportive responses to validate my work and keep me excited about continuing.

The mediocre days, of which there were many more, were the ones spent troubleshooting technical issues that didn't make any sense, coming up with creative new ways to use and combine gimmicks I'd grown tired of using, reworking challenges that playtesters disliked without articulating exactly what was wrong, reorganizing menu screens, finessing level graphics, implementing and testing the translations (especially French and German; Spanish I could confirm without too much cross-checking), ​or endlessly adjusting line breaks in the text. These days were productive, but they felt more like work than fun.

The bad days, which became more frequent the longer the project dragged on, made me angry. These were the days where I fruitlessly attempted to solve programming problems above my pay grade. These were the days where a playtester made a reasonable and compelling case to overhaul something that had been completely fine and final for months. These were the days where I sacrificed all my free time to work on this game, for the sake of a release deadline that was always "next month" no matter how much I worked. I took a week of vacation in the summer of 2017, and about the only thing I remember is being glued to my computer for 10+ hours a day in a futile attempt to finish the game that month.

When I set the official release date, I was in a weird place. My need to retake control of my life finally outweighed my desire for the game to be as polished as possible upon release. I knew there were glitches to fix, challenges to playtest more thoroughly, details to streamline, and features to add, but all the most important stuff was in place and reasonably solid. I was happy with it. The game was playable from start to finish. The majority of playtesters enjoyed the game. OH JOES! was more release-worthy than many other fangames I'd played. It was time to hand the game over to the largest group of playtesters yet, take a break, and come back fresh when there was a consensus about what I should focus on for the next update.

The plan for OH JOES! was a soft launch, announcing the game on Twitter, Facebook, Discord, and Sprites INC, where I'd been posting about it during development. It made sense to debut to a smaller audience who knew what to expect, and who was maybe even looking forward to the game. After a week or two of incorporating feedback from the general public, I'd "officially" announce the game on YouTube (to around 12,000 subscribers between both my channels) and on the forums at Capcom Unity, Rockman Perfect Memories, Cutstuff, Talkhaus, and anywhere else I could think of.

Despite all the headaches and hurdles, I was about to fulfill a childhood dream. ​I was nervous but optimistic, relieved but excited. I created a page on this website with information about the game, put together a download package, and played through the game one last time. I uploaded the game to three different file-sharing sites (always have a backup!) and tested that each download worked correctly. Then, I took a deep breath and announced my dream to the world.

It took the world 20 minutes to trample my dream, spit on it, and toss the pieces in my face.

I've been a content creator long enough to know that not everything I produce will be an instant hit with the public. I'm always braced for some measure of criticism, and I've learned to brace myself even more when it comes to level design. I was wholly unprepared for the hostility, ridicule, and indifference my game was about to receive, and I was blindsided by the things people would choose to complain about.

First was that initial ripple of excitement—hey, the game's finally out, congratulations, I can't wait to play it. Next were the first impressions—that cutscene art is fantastic; this music is great. So far, so good. Then came the bug reports—or more accurately, the memes making fun of the shoddy game engine, my horrible programming, and the apparent lack of playtesting. People were getting stuck in walls and crashing the game before even making it to the first checkpoint. Multiple people were outraged by the framerate, as though 30 FPS (more or less the fangame standard until OH JOES! was well underway) was utterly unplayable. Whatever credibility I had as a developer was gone before anyone got to the actual gameplay, by which point OH JOES! was just another no-effort fangame for people to trash. Notwithstanding the remarks about the art and music, the most positive thing I saw anyone say on Discord was that the game overall was "meh."

What a profound waste of my life this game was.

I had to walk away from my computer. I felt sick. What had been a source of tremendous joy and pride 20 minutes prior had rapidly turned into a painful mistake. One might argue that I was being overly sensitive to criticism, interpreting comments as negative when they weren't intended as such. But over the next four months, social media only reinforced the notion that nobody actually liked OH JOES!.

People complained about the lack of infinite lives, the fact that Proto Man loses his charge when hit, and the fact that a couple items require a specific character or weapon to collect—so I was being criticized for staying true to the official Mega Man games. But then people complained about the lack of a stage select or "real" final boss—so I was also being criticized for deviating from the official Mega Man games. I heard that the game was both too easy and too hard, that there were too many power-ups and not nearly enough, and that the game overstayed its welcome but wasn't long enough. There was no shortage of conflicting feedback from the general public.

But it didn't stop there. The lack of original Joes (when the entire point of the game was using tired old Joes in new situations) was disappointing to people. Over 250 screens of challenges, and the game did nothing new or interesting with Joes. Three meaningfully different difficulties, three meaningfully different characters, and a large degree of control over which challenges you face and how to face them, yet the replay value came across as artificial. How was I supposed to work with this feedback? These weren't critiques I could use to improve the game; these were indications that my game was a lost cause.

I'm better at handling the negative when there's some positive to focus on, but there was a gut-wrenching absence of praise for the story, dialogue, level design, tile work, special features, overall execution, and anything else I was responsible for. The only things people seemed to like were the stage music (of course, because Cosmic, Jasper, MiniMacro, and RushJet1 are extremely talented), cutscene art (of course, because Phusion is amazing), and secret character (of course, because she's a silly surprise who completely changes the gameplay nobody was enjoying). A handful of people involved in the project, who had previously stated that they liked the game, reiterated that they still liked it. I appreciated their support, but I also wanted—needed—some affirmation from the general public.

To give some numeric perspective: My initial announcement on Discord, Facebook, and Twitter reached a minimum of almost 600 different people—and depending on how much overlap there was between subscribers across the different platforms, that number could have been as high as 1500. I haven't been able to track the number of downloads from Dropbox and Google Drive, but MediaFire tells me that OH JOES! has been downloaded over 400 times—and I'm not sure whether that's since release, or just since I uploaded the last update. The first playthrough of the game that anyone posted on YouTube had over 1000 views within a few months of release, and my post about the game on Sprites INC had over 30,000 views. Even if, say, 90% of those views were repeat visitors and not unique views, those are still significant numbers.

In short: there were hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of people outside the development team who knew about OH JOES!. Of these, five people in as many months said anything to make me feel like I wasn't a total failure as a game designer. With the exception of one glowing and articulate review, the praise was concise and tempered: the game was fun, despite [insert shortcoming]. Meanwhile, I continued seeing hostility, disappointment, and indifference toward the game every day, then every few days, then every week, until people stopped talking about it altogether. Whenever I brought up the game's unpopularity in conversation, secretly hoping that someone would chime in with something nice to say, the response was invariably, "Oh, that's too bad." Pity felt almost like an acknowledgment that there was nothing nice to say. Even on the rare occasion when someone tried to defend my game against criticism, their response was usually something to the effect of, "Well, the problem isn't that bad...".

Emotionally, I was extremely unwell for several weeks after the game's release. There's a sickening bitterness that arises from being so proud of something—something that you devoted years to creating, that other people told you they liked—and then having your self-worth pounded into oblivion when you put your creation on display. After a few days, I no longer had the drive to record an announcement for YouTube. After a week, I was this close to deleting the game's page from my website and killing the download links. After two weeks, I nearly stepped down as a judge for Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 3. I felt like the game's existence was ruining my reputation in the fan community, and I wanted nothing more to do with it.

The game's few vocal supporters eventually convinced me that maybe, somehow, the game hadn't reached the right audience yet. I worked up the energy to advertise the game on a couple small gaming forums, but by that point, the branding was substantially different. "I'm excited to share my game with you" had changed to "Here's this thing I made; maybe it's not a total waste." The only response I've received on any of those forums is a compliment about the cutscene art. I made an effort to review bug reports and update the game if anything critical came up, but I expended a minimum amount of effort in implementing any changes. I also started writing this series of blog posts—partially for posterity, partially to share some insights about what it's like to design a game, but mostly to try to salvage the memory of this deeply personal project.

I didn't spend two years making a game; I spent two years on a challenging, emotional, eye-opening journey to fulfill a dream I've had since childhood. Looking back on the high points, I can be proud of what I accomplished and happy with the personal relationships that developed along the way. Looking back on the low points, OH JOES! caused me an unprecedented amount of stress and suffering for something that was supposed to be fun. If I could go back and do it all over again...I wouldn't.

I think about how eager I was to make more Mega Man levels, and how I would have gotten my fix if I had just waited a few months for Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 2 and then a few more months for Mega Man Maker to arrive. I think about how many YouTube videos I could have recorded in the time it took to make OH JOES!—and how much happier both I and my content-starved audience would have been. Most of all, I think about how much it hurt to spend two years crafting a keen blade intended to cut through an afternoon of boredom, only to have my peers use it to carve out my heart.

But hey, at least I got some blog posts out of it.

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If there's one thing I learned from "Maze of Death," my contribution to the first Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest (MaGMML), it's that levels need to be playtested by other people—people who think and play differently than you do. People who don't already know what's coming. People who aren't predisposed to thinking that everything is perfect and wonderful. It's important to playtest the heck out of your own creation, but you can't stop there.

In playtesting as in life, there is strength in diversity. Gaming skill varies greatly from one person to the next, and we all have our own ideas about what is and isn't fun. Our expectations are informed by the games we've played and the lives we've led. We differ in how we deliver feedback, and in what we deem important to point out. Some of us are attentive to detail; some of us are oblivious to the obvious. Some of us like to take our time, explore, and think things through; some of us like to barge ahead and rush through challenges. I could go on. The broader and more eclectic the playtesting group, the more bugs you'll catch, and the better your final product is likely to be.

From the beginning, my plan for OH JOES! was to playtest in phases. Whenever I had a substantial amount of new content, I'd send the game for playtesting. Not every playtester was involved in every round of playtesting, and the size of the group depended on the size of the development milestone I'd reached. My rationale was that I'd get better feedback if I had a mix of some playtesters who'd seen several iterations of the game, and some playtesters who came in fresh at various points in development. Rotating playtesters also helped people from getting burned out, and it ensured that the finished product didn't just cater to the tastes and opinions of the same few playtesters.

By the time OH JOES! was released, almost 30 playtesters had taken the game for a spin, and I extend my thanks to all of them. At first, the group was mostly comprised of the people actively helping me with the project—CosmicGem, Entity1037, Jasper Valentine, and Renhoek. Along the way, I roped people I knew (either personally or through years of Internet interactions) into playtesting, including Alice "Mother" Kojiro, B.B. Sting, Dash Jump, Desertskunk, Mr_Cobb, ProcneDevi, Super Adapter, and Zapetroid. A number of folks specifically from the Mega Man fan community either volunteered or took me up on a request to playtest, such as happygreenfrog, IcyTower, Mark in Austin, NaOH, PKWeegee, Quack Man, and Raine.

I thought it was important to get feedback from the people with whom I'd be judging MaGMML3, so I invited Mick Galbani, Pachy, and Shinryu (and ACESpark, but he was extremely busy at the time). For good measure, I recruited Cheez, the MaGMML judge who seemed most likely to appreciate my game, as well as Dolphin, a regular judge of informal Mega Man Maker contests. I wanted input from fellow fangame developers, so I asked for help from Blyka, Lars Luron, SnoruntPyro, and WreckingPrograms. I was also planning on reaching out to the likes of MegaPhilX, MrWeirdGuy, GoldWaterDLS, and YouTuber RoahmMythril, but by then I had a near-excessive number of playtesters for a game that was only four stages long.

As often as possible, I pestered people to playtest my game in person; otherwise, my preference was a playthrough video with audio commentary. It's easier for me to gauge difficulty, fun, and fairness when I know exactly how the player reacts to each situation, both visually and verbally. Glitches are easier to replicate when I can study a recording for possible causes, too. Some people preferred text feedback via e-mail, Facebook, Discord, or even a PDF, sometimes with screenshots or short video clips attached. This allowed people an opportunity to articulate their thoughts in a way that might be difficult in the middle of a playthrough, plus it cut straight to the heart of what they felt did and didn't work. Getting feedback in a variety of formats kept the playtesting process fresh for me, and I got a well-rounded sense of my game that way.

Whenever I watched someone play through the game, I kept a notepad handy and scribbled a bulleted list of things I intended to change. A playtesting session could yield up to three or four pages of notes, with about two dozen bullets per side. I used plenty of shorthand, so Hammer Joe became just "ham"; I've since discarded all these notes, but I'm sure you can imagine what it was like returning to a list a few days later and trying to remember what things like "ham stuck on ice" meant. I crossed items off the list as I addressed them (in whatever order I felt like); any items I didn't really feel like dealing with immediately got transferred to a Word document to be sorted out later. Many of these, such as native controller support, sat on the list so long that they turned into "nice to have" items to be addressed after the game's release, if there was enough interest in the game to justify the time and effort.

For the most part, I contacted my playtesters individually for their videos and written comments. I've been a playtester for other games where feedback was provided in a group chat, and though there are benefits to that approach, I find it lends itself to derailed trains of thought, people jumping on a bandwagon, and people criticizing your criticism. The individual approach also allowed me to address feedback at my own pace, without feeling pressured to keep up with an ongoing conversation.

Most of the playtesting feedback for OH JOES! was very freeform; I welcomed any and all comments, usually with minimal guidance about what I wanted people to test. To some degree, this was a mistake. Hardly anybody tried the final iteration of Easy Mode, I don't think anybody played the game in French, the glitch-prone Item-2 was largely ignored, and there were a couple paths in the final stage that few people bothered with on Difficult Mode.

My original plan for the last round of testing was to send my playtesters a questionnaire about their experience. I used to do this after every Dungeons & Dragons campaign I ran for my friends, asking what specific moments and general characteristics of the quest they liked most and least. This questionnaire also would have assessed which game options were selected and which paths were taken, to give me a better idea of the gaps in testing. When it came time for final playtesting, however, I was burned out on being a game developer. I wanted the game out the door. I asked my playtesters to look only for glaring problems and tiny things that were easy to change. So much for the questionnaire.

Keep in mind that, despite the sheer number of contributors to the project, I  was the only one incorporating playtester feedback. Revamping challenges, fixing glitches, adding new features, revising dialogue, correcting graphical mishaps—that was all me. I tried not to outsource changes unless I was utterly stuck. This proved to be exhausting, because the changes required way more programming than I ever wanted to do for this game. Programming was something I tried to get out of the way early so that I could focus on the fun parts, but it kept coming back to haunt me. It was not uncommon for me to spend an entire evening trying to address a single item off my bulleted list. There's a reason why this game took 2 years to make.

It was fascinating to see what kinds of issues each of my playtesters focused on. I could tell who was a programmer, who was a level designer, who had an artistic eye, and who was more accustomed to playing fangames and ROM hacks than the official games. Comments ranged from extremely general (eg, stage 3 is too hard) to extremely specific (eg, here are the particular notes I'd like to change in the music). Some issues were no-brainers to fix (eg, the game crashes when I do this thing); other issues were annoyingly on the cusp between my fault and the player's fault (eg, magnets pulling more strongly when stacked on top of each other, which one playtester misinterpreted as individual magnets having arbitrarily inconsistent pull strengths). Sometimes, I got conflicting feedback (eg, one person said the Chill block sections were brutal and always avoided them; another person said those sections were the best).

Indeed, the hardest and most frustrating part was figuring out when and how to compromise. Incorporating feedback is a balancing act between your vision for the project and what other people want out of it, a matter of filtering out personal preference and bias (both yours and the playtester's) to get to the core of what actually needs to change. Accepting a suggestion doesn't automatically make the game better—in fact, it usually necessitates more playtesting to determine how well the suggestion works.

There are plenty of reasons why you might choose to ignore feedback, but if you start to see a theme in the ideas you've rejected, you can be sure that issue will become a sticking point once the game is released. My MaGMML2 level, "Guts Man's Asteroid," fell short of the top tier because I didn't fully address my playtesters' complaints about the boulder droppers. Despite practically every official Mega Man game having items that are off limits if you come into the stage without the right character, weapon, or upgrade, OH JOES! has received nothing but grief for some of the JOES letters being inaccessible to certain characters. Do yourself a favor and find a way to make a concession, however small or indirect, even if you completely disagree with your playtesters. Especially if your playtesters are unanimous.

For the most part, though, my playtesters seemed to appreciate and enjoy the game. It was gratifying to hear them laugh and smile (yes, you can hear a smile) in their playthrough videos. One playtester described me as a "potent designer." Another said OH JOES! might be the most fun he's ever had playing Mega Man, which strikes me as something that can't possibly be true, but I'll take it anyhow. There were plenty of critiques about the premise being stretched too thin, the stages being too long, and so forth. At the same time, there was also a lot of praise for the soundtrack, the graphics (especially the intro cutscene), the game's sense of humor, and the quality of individual challenges. The general consensus was that OH JOES!, while certainly not the next Rock Force, was fun enough to be worth a look. That's all I really wanted to accomplish.

A couple playtesters didn't seem to enjoy the game as much as the others, but they all had one thing in common: they had never heard of OH JOES! before I asked them to playtest. My other playtesters had been following the project to some extent, and they had a sense of what kind of game this was. This, in combination with some of the specific criticisms I received, led me to believe that false expectations might be influencing some playtesters' opinions. In fact, after I recommended using special weapons more often and approaching each challenge as a puzzle, one playtester who had given up on the game gave it a second chance and ended up having a blast.

It's like when my friends took me to see Hot Fuzz. "What's Hot Fuzz?" I asked. "It's Hot Fuzz! With Simon Pegg!" my friends responded. And then they stuffed me in the car and drove off to the theater. I had never heard of Simon Pegg. I had no clue what this movie was about. I spent a very long, unpleasant time in the theater suffering through a series of uncomfortably awkward character interactions. Then Simon Pegg kicked an old woman in the face, and I realized, "OH! IT'S A COMEDY!" It was a completely different movie from there on out, and this epiphany allowed me to enjoy the entire thing on a rewatch.

Expectations can radically affect the perceived quality of a thing. Viewed as a serious drama, Hot Fuzz is terrible. Viewed as a traditional Mega Man game, OH JOES! is a poorly designed disappointment. In lieu of overhauling the game to address the broadest complaints, I resolved to set clear expectations on the download page and wherever else I advertised the game.

There's plenty more I could write about the playtesting process, but I'd like to conclude by showing you the process. Culled, with permission, from over 19 hours of footage, I present to you a tiny sample OH JOES! playtesting from March 2017 through April 2018. This casually edited video is by no means comprehensive, balanced, or polished; moreover, it's comprised of footage never intended for anyone's eyes and ears but mine. Still, I hope you find the video enlightening and entertaining.