You win some, you lose some. And sometimes you do both at once.

If you caught any of my Mega Man Legacy Collection livestream, you know of my disappointment with the Challenge Mode of this otherwise superb collection. Faithful ports of the six NES Mega Man games, a music player, a comprehensive enemy database, and a sizable art gallery were well worth the $14.99 price tag on Steam for new players, but we old-timers were counting on the Challenge Mode to provide the one thing we didn't already have. We envisioned The Wily Wars, or the Game Boy games, or even the Challenge Mode of Mega Man 10, but instead we got whole chunks Mega Man 1-6 smashed together to form fifty-something time-trial stages. I don't think it's what any of us wanted, but I was willing to keep an open mind.

There are some clever challenges that transform these familiar sections into devious deathtraps. Some challenges start you in the middle of a hectic section without any chance to prepare. Other challenges run you through a gauntlet of boss fights or disappearing brick puzzles. The best challenges are disorienting, grueling, and have you exploiting every glitch and trick to shave a few seconds off your completion time. The worst challenges, unfortunately, are far more numerous. A person can only be expected to survive the moving platforms in Guts Man's stage, dodge the falling crystals in Crystal Man's stage, and square off against Charge Man so many times. Filler, repetition, and an egregious underuse of MM6 characterize the bulk of the challenges, and that's why I'm disappointed.

That's also why I got so excited about the Mega Man Legacy Collection Challenge Contest that Capcom held back in September. An opportunity for fans to submit their own challenges for inclusion in the 3DS release? Sign me up! Not only was this a chance to put my amateur game design chops to the test and contribute to my favorite video game franchise, but it was a chance to help make things right with the Challenge Mode. Ten new good challenges could go a long way in exploring the full potential of Challenge Mode and enticing veteran fans to pick up the collection.

I knew right away that my challenge submission had to have a theme. I considered stringing together a bunch of ice or water levels or mashing up all the most interesting Hard Hat sections, but I figured those were obvious enough that someone else would surely come up with them. After much consideration, I finally came up with a challenge stage I was proud to submit, excited to play, and thought had a low chance of being duplicated by someone else. Here's how I pitched it to the judges:

"The current challenge roster has a lot of emphasis on the earlier Mega Man games and the Robot Master stages, so my goal was to show a lot of love to some of the fortress stages we haven't seen much of. I also wanted to include sections that have a slower, safer way and a faster, riskier way to beat them; I feel this adds a layer of complexity to speedrunning strategies. Finally, I wanted to keep players improvising by choosing unconventional starting points as often as possible, and by including one section where Rush Coil must be used creatively in place of Rush Jet (assuming "Buster Only" just means the default options you have before beating any bosses, which would include Rush Coil in this case)."

Here's the kicker: In order to show the judges exactly what to include in the challenge, participants were asked to link to YouTube playthroughs of the Mega Man games in question and provide timestamps for the start and end of each segment. Guess who makes YouTube playthroughs of the Mega Man games? This guy. I can now say with certainty that someone at Capcom has seen some of my Mega Man videos, because I got an e-mail about two weeks later congratulating me on winning the contest. AWESOME. I didn't come down from that high for at least a week.

The months passed, and I still got occasional pangs of excitement when I thought about this wonderful thing that was going to happen. Finally, the 3DS Legacy Collection hit the stores, and I was there on release day to pick it up. Again. At double the price I had paid for it on Steam. I tried to ignore the visions I had of lighting money on fire and reminded myself of everything this version would contain.

Stickers! Great box art! The option of playing the original Japanese games! An even larger art gallery than before, complete with stuff I didn't already have elsewhere! Fun new backgrounds for my 3DS home menu! And, of course, ten (wait--eleven?) new challenge stages, one of which I designed. I was so psyched. Fortunately, I had the foresight to pick up a Mega Man amiibo well before I needed him to unlock the new challenge stages, so I could avoid shelling out $50 for the deluxe edition with the gold Mega Man amiibo that no one I've spoken with seems to care about.

(Side note: I totally would have bought the deluxe edition if Mega Man were in a color scheme associated with one of his special weapons...say, Gemini Laser? But I digress.)

During the entire ride home from the game store, I felt the kind of anticipation building inside myself like I used to get when I unwrapped a new video game as a kid. I don't get overly excited about much these days, but this was one of my childhood dreams about to come true, seeing a Mega Man level I designed in an official Mega Man game. As I fired up the game and started poking around the menu screen for new features, I started to feel that sense of wonder that helped get me hooked on video games in the first place. With the benefit of hindsight and plenty of time to incorporate fan feedback, surely the designers and developers alike had constructed some awesome new challenges that blew the old ones away.

Of course, the first thing was to see whether the contest winners were acknowledged in the credits. Important stuff.

THERE I AM! SO VERY COOL. You can tell this is an authentic screenshot and not Photoshopped, because it's blurry and crooked like an actual photograph. An actual photograph demonstrating alarmingly low hand-eye coordination for someone who plays Mega Man. But I digress.

I touched my Mega Man amiibo to the screen and was whisked away to a beautiful little menu of eleven challenges with fun-loving names. I scanned the list and determined that "Fortress Fun House" had to be mine. I was fully aware that the developers may have taken some liberties with my challenge idea (they even say so in the contest rules), so I wasn't expecting a perfect translation of my vision. I also wasn't expecting to feel like Alan Alda in Sweet Liberty.

The challenge I designed had ten segments. It started with MM5's fourth Proto Man stage (blast pillars and dodge spikes as the floor rises), transitioned to the first Mr. X stage from MM6 (at the intersection where you can take the highly dangerous shortcut to the boss door or the long, safer way around), and moved on to the boss of MM3's third Wily stage (the Mega Man clones). I felt this was a nice little trilogy of beginning, middle, and end; it front-loaded the challenge with a few areas likely to wreck a speedrun; and I'm pretty positive that none of those sections had been used yet in any of the old challenges.

Fortress Fun House skips those first two segments entirely. At least the boss fight is intact, and it's everything I'd hoped for.

Next up in my challenge were the brief underwater portion of the first Wily stage of MM4, the part of MM6's first Wily stage where you need to have mastered Jet Adapter to avoid impalement on the spikes (plus the alternate path for clever players), and the few screens at the end of MM4's first Cossack stage where the snow in the background kicks in.

Fortress Fun House includes the underwater section, once again omits the MM6 stage (it's official: they have a vendetta against MM6), and uses the completely wrong section of the Cossack stage. I was horrified to discover my utility-heavy vertical climb had been replaced with enemies popping out of bottomless pits (a trope I've come to despise). Adding insult to injury, the segment ends one screen before the part I wanted to include. Worse still, this exact section had already been done to death in the old challenges. I am so sorry that I'm somehow responsible for this segment; it is not what I chose.

My challenge continued with the second Proto Man stage of MM5 (the gauntlet of bouncing enemies between the pillars) and the second Wily stage of MM3 (full of bees and way too many power-ups). The latter would be an interesting experiment. The plan was to toss the player in the middle of a hectic section with hidden clamps biting at their ankles; after the initial shock, they'd proceed to the point where Rush Jet is required to reach the boss door. Except there would be no Rush Jet. Or any other special weapons, for that matter. But the interesting part about buster-only segments is that you still get Rush Coil by default for the games that have it. If you're creative, you can navigate the end of the stage with only Rush Coil. I'd hoped this would add a memorable puzzle element to an area that usually requires no effort whatsoever.

Fortress Fun House perfectly implements the few screens from MM5 and then sends the player off to the fourth Wily stage of MM3, where the junk bots start dropping out of the ceiling. At least there's still that initial surprise of enemies coming out of nowhere, there's a mess of power-ups in the middle, and it's not a segment that was used much in the old challenges, so it's a reasonable substitution. I can live with the change, and I wasn't really expecting that segment to go unaltered anyhow.

The home stretch of my challenge included the final stage of MM2 (lava dropping from the ceiling), starting the player a couple screens in to throw them off balance. Somehow, this iconic challenge (I believe) is 100% absent from the old challenges. The entire last leg of MM1's third Wily stage was the conclusion. The obvious place to start is at the beginning of the penguin tunnel, so I of course wanted to start at the point where it becomes a flying bomb tunnel. This would continue all the way through the boss fight against the dreaded bubbles of doom (CWU-01P, in case I need to prove my Mega Man cred). Similar to how the first part of the challenge formed an arc, so too did the last part—the gauntlets of death before the boss.

Fortress Fun House skips the MM2 segment altogether. Sure, why not. The MM1 segment is almost what I wanted, except it starts with the penguin tunnel and ends...right at the boss door. Which means I'm stuck with another segment that's been overdone in the other challenges. The boss was the important part, as I don't recall seeing it anywhere else (and it's a good strategic challenge), and the rest of the stage is pointless if you start where everyone expects you to. Bummer.

So, of the ten segments I—hang on; the challenge is still going. For some reason we're in the underwater spike-lined shaft in the third Wily stage of MM2. I don't even know where this came fro—oh, and now the challenge is over. Hey, look, I got a gold medal on my first try. Woo.

Of the ten segments I submitted, only three were implemented as I proposed. Two used a different portion of the same stage, two more were added from stages I didn't choose to include, and five were completely omitted. I don't know what's more disappointing: having my challenge almost completely gutted except for the "fortress" concept, or having my name attached to something I almost don't want to take credit for. Was this even the challenge I designed anymore?

I could understand removing or changing sections to cut down on length or avoid duplication, but that clearly wasn't the reason here. Almost every other new challenge was notably longer than mine, and the amount of duplication was unreal. Off the top of my head, I remember another pass at the penguin tunnel in MM1 and the watery spike shaft in MM2, two bouts with Napalm Man and Doc Robot Quick Man, two or three excursions to the line-guided platforms in MM2's fourth Wily stage, and three or four additional trips to the underwater part of MM4 that I used. And that's to say nothing of how many times most of these segments had been used in the original challenges.

Consequently, most of the other new challenges blend together in my head, but I can pick out a few things. No Swimming Allowed might be my favorite; it's a smart compilation of water levels (I knew someone else would come up with that!) that includes one or two segments we rarely or never see. Doc Robot Rematch fits nicely with the existing boss gauntlets. I like the concept of Ready Set Go; each segment is the beginning of a different stage, but too many are ones we've seen too many times before (particularly Cut Man).

Some of the buster-only segments of the other challenges are pretty good about forcing you to face situations that are totally doable with the buster but are almost always done with special weapons. The Wily stage from MM6 that I had wanted to use gets a brief but delightfully evil cameo. Starting the player in the middle of the MM3 Wily 3 hologram hallway was a stroke of genius. There are some great moments. There are also some horrid ones, such as three awful visits to the spike-filled Foot Holder corridor in the first Wily stage of MM1—two of them without the Magnet Beam to make it bearable. The worst part of Crystal Man's stage comes back to haunt us (whyyyy!?). I even gave up on Wily's Machines after failing my first attempt to take down Wily Machine 1 with just the buster; a projected 20 minutes to presumably fight a bunch of bosses that simply aren't fun without special weapons was not appealing to me.

These new challenges could have been a real treat for 3DS owners and a wonderful showcase of creativity from the fan community, but most of them are indistinguishable from any of the old challenges if you take away the amusing names. Segments are still being duplicated with no variation in start or end point. Whole stages are still unaccounted for, and MM6 is still lucky to be included at all. I'm not upset that my challenge was overhauled; I'm upset that it was overhauled to be more like every other challenge! I would love to hear what the developers and my fellow contest winners have to say about the matter. How many of these challenges still resemble the original submissions, and why was so much changed?

Ultimately, what the developers did with my design is all on them. I can still be proud that I designed something good enough to get me credited in a Mega Man game that people around the world are paying money to play. And that is a Very Cool Thing indeed.

I'm not the world's biggest comics fanboy. I have a respectable collection of graphic novels, enjoyed the X-Men arcade game back in its heyday, and still have a few Batman toys from when I was a kid, but I'm only casually interested in comics. I am, however, a big fan of continuity. When books and games and movies sow seeds for future plotlines and make references to previous events, I am a happy camper. Fictional universes seem larger than they really are when nothing happens in a vacuum, and it's rewarding for diehard fans to notice little details that everyone else might overlook. That's why I got hooked on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), despite having only a mild passion for superhero stories.

Iron Man, at the time, was a cool-looking action movie that happened to be based on a comic I'd never read. The film was funny, engaging, and explosive enough to convince me to sit through The Incredible Hulk, which was rumored to connect with Iron Man somehow, despite my complete lack of desire to see what I (more or less accurately) predicted would be 90 minutes or so of either a green guy punching things or a wimpy guy not punching things. I looked forward to Iron Man 2, which cemented my interest in this Avengers movie that these new Marvel films were working toward. Fantasy and mythology generally aren't my cup of tea (or mug of ale, as it were), so Thor was a strictly perfunctory viewing that left me no more excited about the character and his world than before. Captain America was the last obligatory piece of the puzzle; WWII is an interesting time period but overdone in the entertainment world, and Cap fell into the "mostly just punches guys" category of superhero that doesn't usually interest me. Fortunately, the film exceeded my expectations and got me genuinely invested in its characters. So that was two Avengers out of four to get me psyched for the team-up movie.

The first half of The Avengers is everything I'm tired of seeing in movies: origin stories (in the form of assembling the team), heroes spending more time fighting each other than the villains, and mind control making the good guys either ineffective or subservient to the bad guys. The second half is everything I want out of an action movie: eye-popping visual spectacle, great one-liners, and heroes being awesome. I was more excited than ever to see the continuing adventures of Tony Stark in Iron Man 3, but Thor 2 still couldn't get me to care about the Norse god of gratuitous shirtlessness. Captain America had proven himself worthy of my interest (I say that like it means anything), so I was curious to see Winter Soldier. Guardians of the Galaxy probably would've had my money regardless of its affiliation with the MCU, because I've never been one to turn down comedy and action in space. Phase 2 of this huge film endeavor was in full swing, and with the connections getting stronger and the movies looking more up my alley, I was officially hooked.

To gear up for Avengers: Age of Ultron, my wife and I started getting caught up on the MCU TV series, starting with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Everyone loves Agent Phil "Everyone's Favorite Character" Coulson, but I had trouble connecting with the other characters at first. I quickly warmed up to the show as those connections I love kept working their way into the story, and as the show kept subverting my expectations. There were several times where my wife and I would go, "Noooo! Don't tell us you're going to do that to us!" and then they didn't. AoS was different from your average monster-of-the-week espionage show (assuming those exist), and it had both humor and heart, so I was willing to forgive a few of the less-desirable plot points along the way. The first season ended on a very high note, which made the second season's incongruously serious tone, loss of focus on external connections and character development, overemphasis on the generically evil main villains (to the point where we started calling it Agents of Hydra), and insistence on doing exactly what you expect all the more unpleasant.

Agent Carter proved to be a more evenly enjoyable experience. My wife raves about how they nailed the time period and how Peggy Carter is a wonderful example of how to write good female characters. While I agree, I also found myself missing the superpowers and high-tech gadgetry that are so integral to the rest of the MCU, despite the best efforts of Howard Stark. I also don't feel like I have as deep of a sense of the characters as I'd like, but there's always next season.

As for Age of Ultron? Well. There's a story behind that one. It's called the Ultimate Marvel Marathon.

Previously, my longest movie event was approximately 20 hours of Harry Potter, eight films in all. Similarly, the longest I'd ever stayed awake continuously was 36 hours—rising early to sing at a summer church service, hopping a plane to France, not sleeping on the plane because I was a fool, and sightseeing for an entire day before hitting another pillow. I knew I had it in me to do this.

This, of course, being two days at the movie theater to see Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor 2: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the premiere of Avengers: Age of Ultron, one after the other, with a break of 20 minutes or so between films. I lost track of how long I'd been there after the 30-hour mark. Between striking up conversations with strangers in line next to me, packing a change of clothes and a stick of deodorant in lieu of showering, and not sleeping until my body shut down on me during Snore 2: The Dark Theater, it was just like being at a comic book convention.

My brother-in-law and I got there a good five hours before the start of the marathon. You might think that's excessive, but when you're also reserving seating for your wife and your father, and when the alternative to waiting is risking front-row neck strain for 11 straight movies, queuing up early sounds downright sagely. The challenge here was that the marathon didn't start until the evening; despite my best efforts to sleep in, I had already been awake for several hours before arriving at the theater.

Every other crazy marathon I've done has started in the morning. Wake up, roll out of bed, Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Edition. You don't start a marathon, let alone one of this magnitude, around the time most people are getting home from a full day of work. I can trick my body into thinking I'm staying up extra late if an all-day marathon spills over into the next day, but there's no way to disguise a 20-hour extension to the part of the evening reserved for warm milk and pajamas.

The odds were against me staying up the whole time, but smart planning and a lot of unexpected support kept me going.

What worked: Sleeping in beforehand. A trunk full of outside snacks, including muffins, Pop-Tarts, Clif bars, fruit snacks (shaped like sharks, because that's important), apple juice, assorted chips, and snack cakes. Meals from the snack bar at meal times, and snacks from the snack bar only when nothing else would do, and never the same thing twice. Drinking caffeine-free root beer throughout Day 1 and water throughout Day 2. Between movies, stepping outside for fresh air and sunshine (when available) and enforcing a mandatory bathroom break. Chatting with people. Cheering with the rest of the theater when something satisfyingly cool happened, or when Agent Phil "Everyone's Favorite Character" Coulson showed up. Having the theater manager and a local YouTube comedian interact with the audience every other movie, asking trivia questions and giving away posters.

What didn't work: This wasn't my living room.

I think about all the marathons I've done at home, from the aforementioned Harry Potter one to the 2012 Mega Man Megathon, and they were successful in large part because of the venue and structure. You can stand up, walk around, grab hot food or a drink refill, make a pit stop, change seats, and crack wise at the screen without worrying about bothering the people around you, tripping over things in the dark, getting caught waiting in line, or having to wait for the fryer to heat up. You can cut the break time between movies down to however long it takes you to swap out the discs after the credits are over (which would have trimmed entire hours off of this marathon). You can plan a proper breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert at the times you need them the most. There's something to be said about the energy of a movie theater crowd and the spectacle of seeing these films on the big screen, but the Ultimate Marvel Marathon almost felt like more of an endurance test than a marathon.

The entire first half of the marathon, I was fine. I was excited, well fed, making notes between films, and asking my family for a critical assessment after each film. (Age of Ultron notwithstanding, we'd seen them all before; amusingly, one of the other people in the theater was seeing all of these films for the first time!) There was a stretch during the wee hours of the morning, somewhere between Thor and Captain America, where I began to question how I was going to make it through another day after this, but when I stepped outside during the break to find that the sun had returned, simply knowing that it was time to wake up and start the day was good enough to keep me going.

Eating nothing but packaged snacks and concession stand food for two days has a way of making you reevaluate any aversion you ever had to vegetables. When everything available is fried, salty, sweet, or some combination thereof, you need to be a tactical genius to eat well enough to stay awake and feel good about it. On the plus side, I have now tried everything on the concession stand menu that ever piqued my interest, except (regrettably) the Oreo churros, so I need never gamble on untested movie food again. Spicy chicken is delicious.

As a side note, if you ever do a marathon like this one, plan your budget like you're spending the day at an amusement park.

In addition to food and drink, the concession stand was selling Marvel figurines; the largest drink cups had a lid with a divot on top where the figurine base would plug right in. As we waited in line, people were trading figurines like they were pogs on a playground. Iron Man, Thor, and Ultron were common sights, with the occasional Cap and Hulk, but there were rumors of the elusive Black Widow. The figurine packages were unmarked, but it wasn't long before people started realizing they could tell which figurine they had in their hands by pressing against the bag to determine the shape of the figurine inside. Those poor cashiers spent the next couple hours being asked to feel their packages.

I was less discriminating and took the first figurine I was given...which turned out to be none other than Black Widow. Very cool. Plugging her into my drink lid was a mistake; her glowy blue nightsticks almost poked my eye out every time I leaned in to take a sip from the straw.

There are plenty more stories to tell from the marathon, but two things I took away from the event were a greater appreciation of Tony Stark's character arc, and a sense of wonder at how so many movies from so many different directors and writers and actors could not only have such seamless continuity, but also maintain a consistently high standard of quality. Each and every one of those movies is at least a 3 out of 5 in my book, with even the weakest entries being no worse than "merely average." Eh, I suppose The Incredible Hulk is really more of a 2.5, but still. The MCU is a vast, rich place with some superbly developed characters and an ever-complexening (is that a word?) history. I was psyched to come back for more.

Then there was Ant-Man. Like practically everyone else who said, "...Ant-Man?", I was not terribly excited (and besides, if we're talking shrinky people, I prefer The Atom). I've read a bit of the earliest Avengers comics, so I had an idea of what I was in for...but I didn't expect to like it so much. A few story flaws, sure, but overall a very funny and exciting addition to the MCU.

Daredevil was a bit of a departure from...well, everything else in the MCU, not to mention everything I normally watch. Dark, both visually and tonally. Violent. Normal. In a world of superheroes, it's a show about lawyers and thugs and corruption. Well done? Most definitely. My wife and I are only five or six episodes in, but so far it's an intriguing and engrossing show. It's also emotionally exhausting to watch. And this is where I see my dedication to the MCU beginning to waver.

I watched a trailer for Jessica Jones. It looks great. It looks like something I won't enjoy. I think back to The Dark Knight, what an incredible piece of cinema it is, what great performances and cinematography it has, and how I really don't like it. I can recognize when something of good quality is not my style, and as the MCU continues to diversify, I'm going to see more and more films and TV shows I wouldn't choose to watch under normal circumstances. And considering it's taken more than a year to get through those few episodes of Daredevil, I predict it's the TV tie-ins that are going to be my downfall. I can sit through two hours of another Thor movie, but I don't know if I can commit to 17 more hours of AoS if it's anything like the second season (which, based on the trailer I saw, seems all too likely).

Beyond that, the MCU has competition. Star Wars is back in full swing with the first installment in a new trilogy, two spinoff movies in the works, and countless more to come—and my wife and I are barely through the first season of The Clone Wars and haven't even started on Rebels. Star Trek has a new movie and TV series coming out next year; my expectations are low, but if the latter ends up being any good, it'll likely take priority over anything else I'm watching. At least I've given up on staying current with the DC Comics film and television universe, which strikes me as disorganized and unattached to the source material.

Still, I'm excited for what will be in theaters during Phase 3 of the MCU. Even if I can't keep up with the universe at home on the small screen, any excuse to get out to the big screen is usually a good one. And who knows? Maybe I'll have trained my body to go without sleep for three days straight the next time an Ultimate Marvel Marathon rolls around.

You're going to laugh when I tell you I'm looking forward to this movie:

Let me get this obligatory link out of the way, which should explain to anyone new to this blog why they're inexplicably laughing right now. In short: I've been opposed to rebooting the Star Trek franchise from the beginning, and the last two movies in the new continuity have done nothing to convince me that this was a good idea. What I like about the trailer for Star Trek Beyond is that it doesn't even pretend to be Star Trek anymore, and that's really all it takes to get me to like this reboot.

At this point, I'm a little numb to the flaws of the reboot universe, because I've moved past trying to rationalize it as canon. It isn't canon. If you claim your reboot is an alternate timeline, then I expect to see an identical universe up to the point where the timelines divide, and I expect an alternate version of events that follows logically from whatever changed history. Star Trek 2009 failed to deliver on both those points. Star Trek Into Darkness added insult to injury by remaking Wrath of Khan, as though the whole point of throwing away 50 years of continuity was to try to improve on the one movie that basically any Trek fan will tell you doesn't need any improvement. On their own, these two films are flawed but highly enjoyable sci-fi action flicks, but they have no business masquerading as an alternate timeline. Paying lip service to the Star Trek name does not make one worthy of it.

Star Trek Beyond seems to acknowledge that, or at least the trailer does. Advertisements for the last two movies seemed to hint at the kinds of philosophical questions and moral choices that characterize Star Trek, providing a false hope that these films would be as thought-provoking and introspective amidst all the action as you would expect of Star Trek. This new trailer does no such thing. The transporter looks cool. The aliens look weird. Stuff blows up real good. There's action and comedy and suspense, but nothing too emotional or thinky, and the characters just happen to wear Starfleet uniforms. The music is loud and raucous with vocals, in contrast with the dynamic orchestral music that usually accompanies a Star Trek trailer. Heck, you'd think the movie's name was Beyond if it weren't for the tiny Star Trek logo fading in above it at the very end.

At the same time, there are little signs that this film might be a step in the right direction for the reboot. The uniforms have been updated and appear more like uniforms than costumes; the actors look the part even more than before. There are aliens we've never seen before, meaning we may finally get to watch the crew make first contact and develop relationships with a new species or two. Character interactions seem organic, like these characters have real personalities and aren't simply there to move the plot forward. The dialogue sounds like some artistic thought went into it, a refreshing change from the platitudes and clumsy references of the last two movies. It appears that the female alien may be one of the main characters, and she goes the entire trailer without screaming or disrobing. I'm pretty sure they're going to destroy the Enterprise in this one, if the swarms of whatevers smashing through the hull are any indication, which hopefully means the next movie will feature a ship that doesn't look like a balloon animal. The fact that there are swarms of whatevers instead of another huge warship gives me hope that the primary conflict of this film won't revolve around trying to outgun yet another impossibly strong opponent.

It's nice to look forward to Star Trek again, even—or especially—if the chances of it being actual Star Trek are slim to none.

I grew up watching Star Trek. My first love was The Next Generation, but after seeing nearly every episode of every series and being old enough to examine them more objectively, I've also found a great love or appreciation for The Original Series, The Animated Series, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise—in other words, all of them. Each show has its ups and downs, but the one constant is an exploration of the human condition that makes Star Trek unlike any other franchise. The compelling characters and cool technology alone would have been enough to win me over, but it's that penchant for raising questions with no easy answer, and that optimism that humanity's future can be as bright as we choose to make it, that makes Star Trek as close to my heart as you can get without causing a medical emergency.

Recently, it was announced that a new Star Trek series will be coming to television in a little more than a year. I want to be excited, but I'm wary of the involvement of so many people responsible for the 2009 franchise reboot. I've written extensively about how J.J. Abrams' vision of the final frontier eschews so much of what makes Star Trek Star Trek, so I'm not sure what my worst-case scenario is here: an awful new series in the Prime timeline that makes me angry for all the same reasons the reboot does, or an awesome new series in the Abramsverse that's better than any other Trek. So, with basically no details available other than "there will be a new Star Trek series," my imagination is running wild with best-case scenarios instead.

As much as I enjoy space battles and fight sequences, I feel like Star Trek was already starting to put action ahead of introspection by the time J.J. Abrams took over. Archer defended Earth from annihilation. Picard did the same in two of the movies. Sisko went to war against the Dominion. Janeway made enemies with practically everyone in the Delta quadrant. The Star Trek universe has been on red alert for most of the last 20 years. Let's scale back on the armed conflicts for a while. Mortal peril on a huge scale is fine from time to time, but drama can come from so many more places.

I'd like to see the next Trek return to the franchise's exploratory roots. I'm not necessarily talking about seeking out new life and new civilizations; the universe is already plenty full of strange new worlds we've barely explored. In fact, I'd rather see more of the one-off aliens from previous series and flesh them out the way DS9 fleshed out the Cardassians and Bajorans. What are the Bynars up to? Is the Federation still getting a piece of the action from Sigma Iota II? What about the more established races that only appeared in one series, such as the Breen, the Talaxians, and the Denobulans? Star Trek doesn't need to visit the uncharted reaches of space to find new territory to explore.

How about this: We set the next Trek in the Prime timeline sometime after the events of Nemesis, and (spoiler) after Romulus has been destroyed for the 2009 reboot. No continuity headaches like you'd have with a prequel or interquel, and we could acknowledge NuTrek without trying to build a new Trek empire upon its slapdash foundation. The show would follow the exploits of the crew of a midsize courier ship—a change of pace from the warships and deep-space exploration vessels we're used to. There'd definitely be room for space combat and encounters with the unknown, but the ship's primary mission would be to ferry cargo and people from place to place within known space. That might sound dull on paper, but so does spending 75 years getting home from the Delta Quadrant or hanging out on the same space station for seven years. Limitations give a story more focus, and it's the story you tell within the framework you have that counts.

There are numerous possibilities for a courier ship. Strange cargo. Intriguing guests. Rendezvous with other ships. Time spent on a planet's surface at the beginning or end of a trip. Bizarre anomalies along the way. And let's not forget the places we can go with the holodeck. Really, it'd be like any other Trek, just with a different how or why driving the story.

I'd also like to see an exceptionally diverse cast. The original Star Trek pushed cultural and racial boundaries with the inclusion of such characters as Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu, allowing them to be positive role models for groups of people who had too often been villainized or stereotyped on American television. Each subsequent Star Trek, with the arguable exception of ENT, has found new ways to be inclusive with its uniquely diverse cast. It's not only a tradition to shake things up; it's almost an obligation. The makeup of your main cast says as much about your show as the individual episodes do, and any show that calls itself Star Trek needs characters that challenge viewers to look at the world in a different way.

If it were up to me, the captain would be a woman. And, equally importantly, she would be an alien. Bolian or Andorian, maybe; somebody blue. The Federation consists of more than humans and dudes, but it's not often enough that you see that reinforced on screen. TOS notwithstanding, the average ratio is 1 woman for every 3 men in the main cast of any given Star Trek, and I'd like to change it to a 50/50 split. That's not feminism; that's equality.

From a narrative perspective, aliens are a great way to explore controversial issues without outright offending viewers who feel strongly about those issues in a real-world context. One of the biggest social conflicts in this country today is about how sexual preference ties in with politics and morality. It's been established that Bolians are polyamorous, with co-husbands and co-wives, and that Andorians are passionate about a great many things; I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that the captain could be bisexual. Star Trek doesn't need to take sides to make an impact on society; posing a question or presenting a situation that solicits a reaction from the viewer is all it takes to start a conversation, and there's a divide in this country that won't end until we stop yelling at each other and start talking about it.

In my mind, this next Star Trek needs to stay culturally relevant to survive, and it needs to ruffle a few feathers. People who never used to care about Star Trek flocked to see the 2009 reboot as well as Into Darkness, and now the franchise is poised to reach a broader audience than ever before. Listen to people's water-cooler conversations and make episodes that relate to what people are already talking about, but get people thinking critically about those things. Don't play it safe; challenge the norm and get people to think critically about things they aren't talking about, too.

Consider the incredible buzz generated by Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn Jenner. Gender identity is in the news, but it's often sensationalized and still widely misunderstood. What kind of impact would a well-written transgender character have on the viewer? Especially if the character were to transition a few seasons into the show, after the viewer has gotten to know them. All too often we pass judgment on a whole person because of a single label, before knowing anything else about that person. You can love a person and hate one of their labels, or you could love the label and hate the person. People are complex, and I want this new Trek to make people think about whether they're reacting to the person or the label.

Of course, racial diversity would be important. We've never had a fully Hispanic main character on Star Trek. We've also never had an overtly Middle-Eastern main character (Julian Bashir's heritage is merely implied) or a Korean character—and given that Star Trek started out as a bright vision of what the future might look like, I would love to see someone from North Korea or Iran on the bridge as an equal, their country's political conflicts far behind them. We've also been short on Canadians and Australians, and I would be totally fine if the next Star Trek launched without a single American on the bridge. That's not anti-American sentiment; that's the kind of diversity I expect from an intergalactic organization that recruits people from all over the planet, let alone from the 150+ other planets in the Federation. Maybe the one American could be Hawaiian.

There should be plenty of aliens as well. A Tellarite engineer, perhaps, or a Caitan science officer. A Xindi-Humanoid doctor or a Ba'ku first officer. A quartermaster from one of the countless unnamed races we've seen walking around in the background. There's a range of possibilities. I'd like to see a mix of ugly and beautiful aliens, aggressive and passive species—aliens whose cultures and traditions compliment and clash with the rest of the crew in interesting ways.

Other characters I'd like to see:

• Someone with a physical or developmental disability who is every bit as valuable a crew member as anyone else. If Starfleet can have a blind engineer, there's certainly room for a deaf navigator or a transporter chief with high-functioning autism. The 2010 US census reported that 19% of the population had a disability of some kind; that's almost 1 in 5. How many television characters can you name who have a disability?
• Someone age 60 or older (in Earth years, anyhow) who, again, is every bit as valuable a crew member as anyone else. I've noticed a trend in movies especially that the actors keep getting younger (compare the original Star Wars trilogy with the prequels, for example), and that anything featuring older actors puts a big focus on their characters being old (Last Vegas, Rocky Balboa, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and so forth). Humans on Star Trek have been shown to live well into their second century, and some alien races have mind-boggling longevity. Let's see a ship's counselor whose wisdom and experience matter more than the number of arthritis jokes he can make.
• A traditional conservative, preferably one of the younger crew members. I remember a time when social, political, and religious issues were a matter of debate, where you could disagree with someone but still be friends. That's changed over the last few years, at least as far as I can tell. Conservatism has become synonymous with ignorance and bigotry; either you keep your opinions to yourself, or you open your mouth and be labeled an idiot or a monster. No middle ground. Just as people with disabilities and transgender people need good role models and positive representation on television, so too do people who believe in returning to ways that worked well before or maintaining the stability of what we have. And on a personal note, I'm tired of seeing every. character. on. television. jump right into the sack with their romantic interest du jour after the first date; it would be incredibly refreshing to see someone cultivate a close personal relationship without immediate physical intimacy—and because they choose to, not because it builds romantic tension.

The next Trek stands to be as pivotal a series as The Original Series if it can tap into the zeitgeist, do things that no other show on television is doing, and transform the way we look at our world. Do an episode that speaks to the current refugee crisis, but with Romulans escaping the destruction of Romulus. Explore the climate change debate with an episode about a planet being terraformed. Encounter a species whose government has adopted educational policies not unlike Common Core, and have the crew work through a crisis situation with aliens who, for better or for worse, all have identical training.

At the same time, make meaningful connections with the rest of the Star Trek universe, and take every opportunity to fix mistakes and develop ideas and plot threads left dangling in other series. I want a resolution to the TNG episode "Conspiracy" that brings back the parasites we suspiciously never heard anything about again. I want a holodeck episode where we get to see some of the Romulan War that was teased in the last season of Enterprise. I also want a line from one of the characters about how a lot of the holoprograms of that era are notorious for getting the details wrong, placing events farther in the future than they really were, and having historical figures die or break up with their loved ones who actually lived long, prosperous lives and settled down to raise a family—subtly correcting some of the biggest problems with the final episode of Enterprise. I want to meet a very old Joanna McCoy, daughter of Dr. Leonard McCoy, and have her spin some yarns that shed some light on her father's backstory. I want an episode that makes it abundantly clear that NuTrek is actually an alternate universe, and not an altered timeline that's inconsistent with so much of established Star Trek history. Heck, if you really want to fix continuity problems, establish that Enterprise and NuTrek are in one universe, and all the rest of Star Trek is in another.

No matter what this next Trek looks like, I'll give it a shot. I only hope the people making it have the kind of passion for the franchise and thoughtful approach that will do justice to Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future.

Yesterday I finished a blind playthrough of Deponia that I'd been streaming periodically on Twitch over the last few weeks. I had only intended to take the game for a test drive in front of a live audience, but circumstances changed and I ended up doing a full playthrough by popular request. As with most of my livestreaming endeavors, this was a learning experience.

I managed to draw a modest crowd for each stream, with multiple returning viewers, so there was clearly some interest in the playthrough (or else I have a knack for streaming when there's nothing good on TV). Still, compared with the hundreds of views and couple dozen Likes my other livestream videos have received after being ported to YouTube, the metrics on my Deponia videos are a little disheartening. I'm averaging about 70 views per video, and there are no Likes after the first one.

Normally I don't focus much on the numbers—I record for fun, not fame—but these numbers indicate the least engagement I've had on any of my videos in recent memory. So, what is it about this playthrough that's less appealing to my subscribers?

1.) It's not Mega Man. I've had success with Crystalis, Space Quest, and other non-Mega Man games on the GameCola YouTube channel, which has a more eclectic assortment of videos than either of my personal channels. But Mega Man is what people look forward to seeing most when I'm not recording for GameCola. Plus, of all the non-Mega Man games to play, Deponia is not one that people get overly excited to watch, assuming they've heard of it at all.

2.) It's a blind playthrough of a game that doesn't lend itself to blind playthroughs. At least with platformers (or practically any other genre, for that matter), the action doesn't stop when you encounter a challenge you can't readily overcome. You might keep falling down the same pit or losing to the same boss, but there's usually varying degrees of success, and things might play out differently from one attempt to the next. Plus, there's the anticipation that maybe this time you'll succeed. Adventure and puzzle games, on the other hand, tend to play out more or less the same way every time, and what's fun to play may not be fun to watch. Working through a challenge in your head translates visually to waling in circles and clicking on the same few objects until you stumble on the one and only solution.

3.) The best games to play are the ones you love or the ones you hate; strong opinions make for strong commentary. I'm not passionate about Deponia, one way or the other. The story's fine. I like the art style. The music is good. There's some decent humor. The voice acting's not bad. The characters are not as compelling as they could be. The ending makes the game feel incomplete, even knowing that it's part of a trilogy. The only element I feel particularly strongly about is the gameplay, but that's a given for practically any game. Challenge design is wildly inconsistent, and the interface needs more polish. 5/10; probably wouldn't play again, but could be persuaded to. That's hardly enough fuel for 9+ hours of commentary.

4.) The timing of my livestreams was not convenient for a few subscribers who would have otherwise attended. Some folks had family dinner plans or extracurricular obligations, and I was recording far too late in the evening for all but my most insomniac European viewers to participate. The viewers I had were loyal, but there weren't as many people in the chat (or, at least, as many people completely invested in Deponia) to keep the conversation and energy going whenever I started to wane.

5.) Most video series have diminishing returns with each subsequent installment, but my playthrough of Deponia is an especially large investment: each episode on YouTube is 1-3 hours long, and the game's story and puzzles are too complex to be able to skip ahead without missing something. Unless you're along for the whole ride, you might not bother with the series at all, and the first episode is long enough that you can make that decision well before committing to a second video.

All in all, I expect this playthrough of Deponia will be remembered, if at all, as a stepping stone to better livestreaming practices. Hopefully it's been entertaining enough to justify the time spent on it, which is all I ever really ask of a video. If nothing else, I was glad to have some company while I muddled my way through another game in my backlog.

With the recent release of the final trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII: Pretty Much Everything Else Isn't Canon Anymore, I feel it's a good time to make some predictions about this upcoming film. The last time I did this, my predictions turned out to be surprisingly accurate, so you might want to take notes. Here's what I'm expecting:

- Han Solo dies. At the very least, someone you care about from the original trilogy will not survive to the end of this trilogy. Probably two or three characters, really. Maybe the droids.

- Copious callbacks to the original trilogy that straddle the line between reverence for the original trilogy and pandering to the fans who love anything that references the original trilogy.

- A sudden realization that the actors from the original trilogy are way older than everyone else in the movie.

- Ideas repurposed from the old Expanded Universe (now Star Wars Legends).

- An earnest attempt to convince you that the prequels aren't all bad.

- The heroes get captured, because that's pretty much a requirement nowadays.

- Despite starring a woman and a person of color, the film will still manage to screw up equal representation.

- The soccer-ball droid will have more charisma and depth than at least one of the other main characters.

- LENS FLA—oh, wait; wrong film. A moment where you could swear you're watching one of the Star Trek reboot movies.

- No matter what the movie is like, the fan community will not be able to agree on whether it's any good.

I'm not a betting man, but I'd put money on that last prediction. That's because The Force Awakens is arguably in an even tougher spot than the prequels were. Multiple generations of fans have had an immensely personal connection with those first three films. When Episode I debuted, it only had to live up to the impossibly high standards of the original trilogy, For Episode VII, being as good as the original trilogy won't be enough. It needs to be better.

In the last 20 years, the Special Editions have become the face of the original films, much to the chagrin of Star Wars purists. The prequel trilogy—an endless source of outrage for countless hardcore fans—and its spinoffs (e.g., The Clone Wars) have changed the landscape of the fandom, making the original trilogy a smaller and smaller part of what it means to be Star Wars. Episode VII is, perhaps, some fans' only hope of salvaging this fractured franchise. And with the Expanded Universe—the one place where Luke, Vader, the Alliance, and the Empire were still king—being thrown out almost wholesale for the sake of a new continuity, Episode VII needs to prove itself worthy of discarding the beloved Thrawn trilogy (and numerous other works) to make room for itself.

"At least it's better than the prequels" won't cut it. There is a lot riding on this movie. It's a real-life Anakin Skywalker: The one we've all been hoping for to bring balance, but the one that's probably going to tear us apart for it to happen. Whether the movie ends up being marvelous, mediocre, or mortifying, I don't imagine it will simultaneously be able to satisfy those who long for the original trilogy and those who like all of Star Wars, justify rewriting the continuity, and unite fans in excitement about the direction of the entire franchise.

I purchased the Mega Man Legacy Collection at full price on release day. I didn't need another repackaging of the six NES Mega Man games. I didn't need the art galleries; I've got a Mega Man art book already. I didn't need the music player; all the chiptunes are already on my computer and on CDs. Only the challenge mode promised anything new, and even that was a small consolation for effectively lighting $14.99 on fire in the hopes that Capcom would take notice if enough fans expressed continued monetary interest in the franchise. The MMLC is a great value for new fans, but it's a hard sell for the old ones.

What's saddening is that, once I'm done getting my money's worth out of the Legacy Collection, it's doubtful I'll ever go back to it. At least the Mega Man Anniversary Collection still has games I don't own on any other system...but even then, several of the collected games have serious presentation flaws, and the controls for the GameCube version take some getting used to. Capcom proved with the Mega Man X Collection that they know how to properly showcase a series, but I'm still waiting on a Classic compilation truly worthy of an anniversary or a legacy.

What might a Mega Man Legacy Collection done right look like? I'm so glad you asked.

On the front of the box:
An original art piece with Mega Man front and center, posed heroically, with Rush, Eddie, Beat, and Tango bursting forth in action poses around him, the game's logo boldly below them. In the bottom-left corner are Dr. Light, Roll, and Auto looking hopefully toward our heroes. Shadowy, back-to-back figures of Proto Man and Bass can be seen in the bottom-right corner. The top-right corner is dominated by the castle from Mega Man 9, guarded by an intimidating-looking Yellow Devil, Mecha Dragon, and Mad Grinder. The top-left corner has Dr. Wily rocketing forward in his capsule from Mega Man 10, leading a swarm of flying enemies from various games in a massive charge toward the heroes.

On the back of the box:
A cascade of illustrations forms a border along the edges, featuring Skull Man, Pump Man, Saturn, Guts Man, Junk Man, Dynamo Man, Splash Woman, Snake Man, Gravity Man, Buster Rod G, Crash Man, Punk, Search Man, Wind Man, and Konro Man. The bottom has all the obligatory warnings and credits you'd expect to find on the back of a box, but above those is an inviting description of what's inside:

20 games. Thousands of ways to play them. Choose a stage, conquer its guardian, and master their weapon. Test your mettle against the automated armies of Dr. Wily, the cutthroat creations of Dr. Cossack, the menacing machines of Mr. X, the stellar Stardroids, the grueling Genesis Unit, and even the devious Dimensions! Experience 25 years of Mega Man history exactly as you remember it...and like you've never seen it before!

• Choose between 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit graphics and sound!
• Unlock new characters and abilities—charge up your buster in Mega Man 10 or play as Proto Man in Mega Man 2!
• Discover updated versions of these classic games in Mega Mode!
  
• Acquire weapons from every game to use in a massive Endless Attack!
• Explore a comprehensive character database and art gallery while listening to music from every game!
• Push yourself to the limit with 50 Achievements, and go for a high score on the leaderboards!
  

Includes Mega Man 1-10, Mega Man I-V, English translations of Rockman & Forte and Rockman & Forte: Mirai kara no Chōsensha, "Wily Tower" from Mega Man: The Wily Wars, and several never-before-seen stages.

Title screen and main menu:

A clean and simple title screen, in the same style as the one from Mega Man: Powered Up. Mega Man appears as the default mascot, but after beating each game in the collection, any of the main characters and Robot Masters from that game may randomly appear instead. A different character to greet you every time you fire up the collection!

The main menu then appears alongside the featured character, with the following options in a list: Games, Endless Attack, Leaderboards, Achievements, Database/Gallery, Jukebox. Looking at these in reverse order...

Jukebox:
One huge list of tunes from every game in the collection, separated by game, with an option that lets you jump to the next game in sequence without needing to scroll through every tune individually. The jukebox can be used as a straight-up music player, but you can also build a playlist of one or more tunes to use as background music while navigating the various menus and perusing the database/gallery.

Database/Gallery:
Basically the same as what's available in the Legacy Collection, but covering all the games present and combining the database and gallery to avoid duplication of artwork.

Achievements:
I'm a firm believer in having Achievements that represent meaningful accomplishments and impel the player to experience the game in new ways, but without demanding anything so impossible or tedious that it's no longer fun. Here's what I'm thinking:

• Beat each game in the collection (that's 20 Achievements right there).
• Beat each game in the collection a second time, choosing a different first and last stage than before (another 20).
  
• Beat any game without getting a Game Over.
• Beat any game without dying.
• Beat any game without using special weapons.
• Beat any game using only special weapons.
• Beat any game in under an hour.
• Beat any game without using at-will recovery items or buying anything from the shop.
  
• Beat any ten stages without taking damage.
• Collect every nonrandom power-up in any game (i.e., all the 1-Ups, E-Tanks, etc. that are always in the same places).
• End any boss battle in a draw (both you and the boss explode at the same time).
• Survive 100 screens of any Endless Attack mode.
  

Leaderboards:
In lieu of some of the more outrageous Achievements as seen in Mega Man 9 and 10, online leaderboards are used to track the most superhuman accomplishments players can muster. Your completion time, damage taken, and weapon accuracy are recorded for each game overall and each individual stage. In the case of Endless Attack mode, number of screens completed is the only thing tracked. As with the Legacy Collection, you can view replays of the top players' performances.

Endless Attack:
Available after unlocking 40 Achievements. Like the Endless Attack modes in MM9 and 10, but with 500 areas mashing up challenges from every game in the collection.

Games:
All 20 games in the collection are available from the get-go. MM1-10 are listed on the left half of the screen and the rest are listed on the right half, reserving the middle portion for a slideshow of screenshots from the currently highlighted game. Once a game is selected, an options box pops up. The default option is to launch the game in Classic Mode, which preserves the game as it was originally released, but you can throw that out the window right quick with the following options:

Available immediately:

• Text: English, English (revised) [fixes all the typos and awkward line breaks], Japanese.
• Graphics & Audio: 8-bit (NES), 8-bit (GB), 16-bit (MM7), 16-bit (Wily Wars), 32-bit (MM8).
• Starting Lives: Select how many lives you start with (0-9).
  
• Fast Weapon Switching: Enable or disable use of the shoulder buttons to change weapons on the fly.
• Charge SFX: A half-dozen choices for what noise the buster makes when it's charging up, from a constant hum to a little ripple to that weird woogle noise that Proto Man's buster makes. Maybe people will stop complaining now.

Available after unlocking the indicated number of Achievements:

• (10) Energy Balancer: Enable or disable the automatic refill of weapon energy without switching weapons. In games where you can normally acquire an Energy Balancer, the item is part of your inventory from the beginning.
• (20) Slide/Charge: Enable or disable one or both (charge style options include MM4, MM5, MM7, and MMIV). A few games have one or both options locked because those abilities are required to complete the game.
• (30) Mega Mode: This mode presents an updated version of the game in question that streamlines any technical issues (rampant sprite flicker in MM2), incorporates the best parts of the different versions (finally, a definitive MM8 that combines the PS1 and Saturn perks), selectively implements unused content (basically making MM3 the game it was supposed to be), and generally polishes and improves on everything fans have been complaining about for decades, but without completely overhauling the game. The one exception is "Wily Tower," which acts as a standalone game in this collection; its Mega Mode is basically a brand-new game that adds a second fortress, incorporates challenges from every game in the collection, and allows you to choose weapons from any game you've beaten.
  
• (50) Character Swap: Enable or disable the ability to switch to a different hero character at will (à la MMX7 and X8). Playable characters aside from Mega Man are Proto Man (rebalanced from MM9-10 so he's actually fun to play), Bass (same as in MM10), Roll (same as in Powered Up), Auto (no knockback; bazooka), and Kalinka Cossack (fast; boomerang hat). Select which two characters you'll use throughout the game; certain cutscenes will change to fit the character selected, which gets really silly in some games.
  

All the in-game options from the Legacy Collection (save states, video filters, etc.) are also available for all games.


I don't know about you, but I'd pay basically any price Capcom put on that collection. Even if we got a collection with half of those features (which is a far more feasible best-case scenario), longtime fans would finally be happy. Honestly, putting MM1-10 together in a single, no-frills package is really all Capcom needs to do to make longtime fans happy; doing anything to update the games would make us ecstatic. Leaderboards and art galleries and challenge modes are just gravy, and there's gotta be enough meat for that gravy to cover. With any luck, someday we'll have a complete meal of a collection that will satisfy us for years to come.

"You are not required to agree with everything you read. That is submission. But laughing at it and trying to understand something you do not concur with is called being sophisticated."  –Greg Proops

Growing up, my English and history teachers were big on differentiating fact from opinion. Facts were irrefutable; opinions were up for discussion. The key to any debate, any essay, was presenting enough factual support for your opinions that your audience couldn't help but see things your way. My college religion professors added an extra layer to this by differentiating between Truth (big "T") and truth (little "t"), the former being a sort of cosmic fact and the latter being a kind of mortal opinion. To use a religious example, Truth is whether or not God actually exists, fact is whatever evidence we have on the subject, truth is whether we think God exists based on the facts, and opinion is whether ketchup belongs on mashed potatoes.

Society, in my experience, has gotten really good at arguing over ketchup like it's evidence for God.

What I mean is that fact and truth have largely fallen out of the conversation when it comes time to express feelings and pass judgment. I think of the posts I've seen on Facebook that discredit an entire belief system or group of people with a single scathing photo caption. It's the social media equivalent of a drive-by shooting; who's going to come limping after you when you've reduced their complex identity and well-founded beliefs to a punchline? And so we passively exchange potshots until the cleverer caption writer prevails, catching countless friends in the crossfire who were just popping in to post baby pictures.

I also think of the political debates I've seen in recent years, particularly this year's first Republican primary debate. I'm registered Independent; I'll listen to anyone who's got the chutzpah to run for President, but I confess that I had a hard time tolerating so much rhetoric and pageantry. The sheer number of participants on the stage transformed the debate into a zoo, leaving only enough time for each speaker to trumpet a few buzzwords before another elephant trampled over their response. The few people who made any effort to explain the facts and personal truths behind their opinions were the ones who held my attention, and whether or not I agreed with them, they were the ones I respected most.

My wife and I feel the same way about the Food Network shows we watch, such as Cutthroat Kitchen and Chopped, where contestants are judged by professional chefs and food critics on the meals they're forced to make within certain parameters. We cheer whenever chef and restaurateur Jet Tila shows up as a judge, because he's articulate in his feedback and consistent in the criteria he uses to render a verdict. In other words, he backs up his opinions with facts, and his explanations hint at a set of personal truths about cooking and competing that clearly inform his opinions.

This is why my wife and I became so disenchanted with Ramsay's Best Restaurant as the series went on. Sixteen of London's best-rated restaurants, representing eight different cuisines, competing head-to-head in a series of challenges that tested their mettle in circumstances both ordinary and extraordinary. The show started off well, showcasing the personalities of the people involved and highlighting the best and worst of their performance, but either the show's editor or celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay himself seemed intent on renaming the show Ramsay's Arbitrarily Best Restaurant.

Nevermind that any sense of fairness went out the window when the participants stopped being treated equally in the semi-finals, or that the show became preoccupied with everything the restaurants did wrong; Ramsay had consistently criticized one restaurant for trying too hard, then gave them the title of Best Restaurant because they tried so hard. Meanwhile, the other restaurant, which had performed spectacularly in almost every challenge, was deprived of the award with no explanation other than that they had "too much heart."

My wife and I were appalled. Yes, we had wanted the other restaurant to win, but the verdict, as far as we could tell, was completely unfounded. But Ramsay's opinion carries a lot of weight in the culinary world, so this flaky opinion that the one restaurant is better than the other might as well be Truth. Not that any of the previous verdicts were defended like a graduate thesis, mind you; Ramsay's descriptions of the food he sampled were typically limited to "delicious" and a few similarly subjective terms, and every vaguely explained decision was invariably "one of the toughest decisions I've ever had to make."

Opinions themselves aren't destructive; it's the way they're used and presented. "Your favorite movie sucks" is not the same as "I'm not a fan of romantic comedies to begin with, but I really don't get any sense of chemistry between Carrot Top and Judi Dench." And "this is the best restaurant in Britain" is not the same as "Gordon Ramsay, through a televised competition of unclear standards and dubious execution, determined that this is the best restaurant in Britain." Let's be clear where we're coming from when we talk, and let's examine the facts before we call people out on their opinions. Let's be sophisticated.

Jurassic World restored my faith in humanity a little bit.

Dramatic, I know. But if you've heard or read anything I've said about the modern state of Star Trek, Mega Man, Metroid, or any of my other favorite entertainment franchises, you know I've become bitter. Like I'm the only fan who cares about integrity, continuity, coherence. We can't just make sequels and prequels and interquels anymore. Everything has to be a reboot, even if it isn't technically a reboot. Everyone has to tell a story on their own terms, even if that means tearing down the foundations that have held a series together. Modern entertainment is selfish, nearsighted, and usually terribly written, but that didn't stop me from getting excited about Jurassic World when I saw the first advertisement for it.

Jurassic Park is my favorite movie of all time. It's been my favorite movie since I first saw it in the theater with my mother back in 1993. I've written about why I love it, but in short: Dinosaurs! As any child will tell you, dinosaurs (if not ninjas or robots) are the coolest thing in the world. Jurassic Park perfectly evokes those childlike feelings of awe and wonder, followed by utter horror and helplessness as things spiral out of control, which ultimately gives way to a mature admiration and respect for these fearsome creatures. No matter how old I get, the movie never fails to make me feel like a kid again, and by the end of it, I've grown up a little more, just as the characters have.

The sequels don't come close to duplicating the quality of the first movie, but they're at least reasonable continuations of the story. Despite some moments where I find it difficult to suspend my disbelief, I like Jurassic Park III  (William H. Macy and Téa Leoni go a long way in improving my opinion of any movie). I tolerate The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Jeff Goldblum and a rampaging T. rex go a long way in improving my opinion of any movie). With nearly 15 years' distance from the last installment and a two-sequel precedent of "generic action movie" to follow from, Jurassic World had every excuse to be a disappointment.

I left the theater in tears. But for the first time since maybe 2009, when a layer of ice shaped like J.J. Abrams started to cover my heart, those were tears of joy. Jurassic Park was the one thing—and I mean the one thing—left in the entertainment world that I held dear that nobody had messed with, and Jurassic World brought it back with the kind of care and dignity that, pardon the irresistibly obvious pun, I thought were extinct.

Jurassic World remembers where it came from. It understands what makes the first movie so much more popular than the next two. It caters to a new generation of fans without leaving the old ones behind, also capitalizing on the current popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Chris "Star-Lord" Pratt and Vincent "Kingpin" D'Onofrio playing key roles. Touchstones to the first movie are everywhere, and they're not just there for the audience; they play an important role in the story—a story that recaptures that childlike wonder, offers up some fresh scares, and thoughtfully explores the possibilities of a successful park filled with dinosaurs. Jurassic World reboots the franchise without severing ties to continuity, and it clearly has a plan for where it wants to go from here...but if this is the last Jurassic film we ever get, it's not a bad stopping point, either.

That's not to say I wouldn't change some things. The film is about 10 minutes too slow, getting hung up in the beginning on multiple introductions that could have been condensed or conveyed through other means. There's a hint of romance that doesn't necessarily take away from the movie, but that could have been excised for the welcome novelty of having a male and female character not end up together after spending a whole 90 minutes with each other. One character gets killed off in a particularly gratuitous fashion that befits an especially vile villain, but not an unassuming person just trying to help. John Williams' unforgettable Jurassic Park score is back in full force, but the new music tends to meander, and the score as a whole sometimes overshoots or undershoots the tone of a scene.

Still, these are shortcomings I can live with. Changing them wouldn't change the fundamental character of the film. Jurassic World breaks new ground without desecrating the old, and it does so with style and love. That's what I want out of a sequel. I sat through the whole credits with a grin on my face, wiping the joyful tears from my eyes, remembering just how good it feels for one of my favorite things in the entertainment world to make me happy for a change.