Can I ask you some questions about the COVID vaccine?

Sure! This is definitely something we should be talking about.

Have you gotten vaccinated?

Yes! I've received both shots of Moderna.

You fool! What if they injected you with a microchip?

Nevermind that this rumor has been debunked by ABC, the BBC, Business Insider, c|net, The New York Times, Reuters, Times of India, USA TODAY, and countless other news sources that didn't come up in a cursory Google search on the topic. The government already knows my address, age, marital status, income details, and political affiliation. They've got my fingerprints on file from when I was a student teacher. They can monitor my phone calls, texts, Internet use, and credit card charges. They can watch me through webcams, phone cameras, and security cameras; they can even track where my smartphone is (which, for all intents and purposes, is where I am). They don't need a microchip to keep tabs on me.

We don't know all the risks of the vaccine yet. Aren't you worried about long-term side effects?

Let me tell you what the side effects are of not being vaccinated: I know firsthand what COVID can do to a person, and it's one of the worst things I've experienced in my life. I've spent the last year hiding from my friends, family, and community because getting close to them might kill them. I've given up holiday get-togethers, movie marathons, birthday dinners, conventions, and anniversary trips, not to mention all the day-to-day excursions that keep life fun and interesting. Leaving the house for any reason involves so much more stress, anxiety, preparation, and mindfulness than ever before. I've fallen into unhealthy habits to cope with the fear of being around other people and the loneliness of being isolated from them.

People eagerly embrace new cars, smartphones, shampoos, packaged foods, etc, despite having no information about any consequences or defects that only become apparent with time. Why are we so much more cautious about rigorously tested and carefully regulated vaccines developed by some of the best experts in the world?

This pandemic has taken away so many freedoms that we used to take for granted, and we're not getting those freedoms back until everyday people step up, put aside their fears and excuses, and get vaccinated. I think about my grandfather, who enlisted to fight in World War II—despite knowing full well that he might be injured or killed—in order to protect his country and the people he cared about. Getting vaccinated to protect my country and the people I care about, even in the face of unknown risks, is a small act of patriotism that I hope would have made my grandfather proud.

Doesn't the vaccine make you sick?

If you're asking if the vaccine gives you COVID, the answer is no. It teaches your body how to fight COVID. But if you're asking about whether I felt awful for a little while after getting vaccinated, the answer is yes. After the first dose, I had two days of symptoms that reminded me of when I had COVID, followed by two days of general exhaustion. After the second dose, I experienced lethargy, headaches, and mild chills for one day before feeling totally normal again the next day. I never had any real pain at the injection site; my arm just felt heavy and tender if I tried to move it too much.

Everyone's body behaves differently when their immune system is hard at work, and I understand that people who've already been exposed to COVID have a worse reaction to the first dose, so your mileage may vary. The key is to plan ahead and let your past self take care of your future self. Finish all your errands and housework before getting vaccinated, and clear your schedule as best as possible for 1-2 days after your appointment. Plan to have food available that requires little or no effort to prepare, and try to stock things that are easy to eat—I recommend yogurt, pudding, and instant ramen.

I really hate needles. Can't I wait for them to make a pill or something?

Well, you don't have to have ramen, but—oh, wait; you said needles, not noodles. Fortunately, at least in my experience, injection technique has improved significantly among medical professionals in recent years. Both COVID shots felt like a quick punch to the arm, not unlike the kind of punch you might receive from a friend or family member after saying something embarrassing about them in public. Not that I know what that feels like.

How much does the vaccine cost?

For the recipient? Nothing. Getting vaccinated is absolutely free. There's no place for financial barriers when the goal is to reach herd immunity and ensure everyone can be protected. Even if you don't have medical insurance (or ID, for that matter), you can get the vaccine at no cost here in the United States—the Health & Human Services website has a lot of useful information about that on this page.

Was it difficult to schedule an appointment?

Actually, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience. My wife and I registered through VAMS. We started by submitting our basic contact info, then within 24 hours we received an e-mail to sign up for a vaccination appointment. This required filling out a simple online form (nothing we haven't disclosed to a doctor's office before) and then selecting where and when we wanted to get vaccinated. Each location on the list included the street address, the earliest date for a new appointment, and which specific vaccines (ie, Pfizer, Moderna, J&J) were available. The whole process took only a few minutes to complete, and we had an appointment only a few days later.

What was it like at the vaccination center?

We went to a popup clinic at a senior center. There was clear signage around the building that directed us where to go, and a volunteer was at the entrance to answer any questions. We queued up in the gymnasium, which had vaccination stations set up around the room in the same manner that voting booths would have been set up for an election. We showed our IDs, waited briefly in line, and then proceeded to the first available station. The person administering the shot asked us a few questions (eg, have we ever had an allergic reaction to an injection), gave us the shot on the upper part of whichever arm we preferred, and had us take a vaccine record card to fill out. Then we scheduled a follow-up appointment for a month later.

We were asked to stick around for 15 minutes (or 30 minutes, if we had a history of allergic reactions) just in case any bad reactions developed. We sat, socially distanced, in a waiting room down the hall, where another volunteer gave us the rundown of possible side effects in the next few days and how to handle them. One important tidbit was to use Tylenol (acetaminophen) rather than Advil (ibuprofen) for pain relief, because of some emerging scientific evidence that anti-inflammatories might reduce vaccine efficacy. Another important tidbit was to download our vaccine certificate from VAMS at our earliest convenience, because that documentation is more official than the vaccine card, and because it was unclear how long our VAMS accounts would remain active.

Every single volunteer, without exception, was friendly, patient, and good at the job they were doing. The atmosphere was very relaxed, and I actually felt comfortable being out in public for the first time since the pandemic started. I cannot tell you how refreshing and soul-soothing it was to be surrounded by people actively doing the work that's required to end this pandemic.

I have other concerns about the vaccine. Is there any legitimate reason why I shouldn't get vaccinated right now?

In all honesty, if you've done the research, discussed your concerns with a healthcare professional, gotten second opinions from a varied group of other people you trust, and decided that there is a genuinely compelling reason to remain unvaccinated despite the potentially fatal risk it poses to yourself and others...then yes, that reason is probably legitimate.

However, the onus is on you to keep following the safety procedures that have carried us through the pandemic—masking, social distancing, handwashing. If you truly care about the people around you, you'll be completely transparent with others about your vaccination status and your rationale for delaying or avoiding the shot. Transparency demonstrates that you're thinking about their wellbeing, and any legitimate rationale ought to hold up against criticism and peer pressure.

As strongly as I believe that everyone should get vaccinated, I feel that way because I care deeply about keeping everyone healthy and safe from this virus while we work to eradicate it. Getting vaccinated is a safe, free, easy way to demonstrate a basic respect for human life and a concern for the greater good in a time when breathing on someone might kill them.

I'm doing my part to keep you safe. Will you do the same for me?

When I promised my wife that I would grow my hair out to Thor length if I was ever allowed to work from home full-time, I was not expecting it to become a tangible reminder of how long I've been weathering a global pandemic. It's been over a year since my office made all its employees fully remote due to COVID concerns, and therefore over a year since my wife and I entered a state of voluntary lockdown to help keep the virus from spreading.

For the sake of future historians, anyone curious about my personal life, and anyone interested in comparing and contrasting their own personal experiences during this extraordinary time, here are some stories and observations about what it's been like to live as a shut-in this past year.

Incidentally, I look less like Thor and more like Grizzly Adams. Part of the reason I've opted to maintain the mountain man look, despite how much I truly hate its logistical and hygienic consequences, is that it makes me more physically intimidating to strangers in public. Social distancing is easier when people naturally want to stay at least six feet away from me. Grrr.

I take social distancing seriously because my wife and I got horrifically sick in March 2020. We experienced 10 of the 11 COVID symptoms that are now listed on the CDC website—and given that I've developed a ringing in my ears and that sour cream has started tasting weird to me in the months since then, I have to believe it was COVID.

We were never tested, however. That would have required exposing ourselves to other people for the sake of being told with partial certainty whether we had a virus that nobody actually knew how to treat. Better just to stay home and get the best care we could via telemedicine. And let me tell you, the two doctors I spoke with were fantastic, and I admired their ability to stay energized and attentive when being bombarded with calls like mine.

At the peak of my illness, I couldn't breathe while lying down, so I slept—or at least tried to, between coughing fits—in the reclining chair in the living room. Simply getting in and out of the chair required all the energy I could muster. Yogurt and pudding were about the only foods my throat could handle. I got a headache from looking at screens or basically having my eyes open at all. I'll spare you the gross details about the symptoms that ruined our favorite beach towel. About the only thing I was able to do was exist, and even that was a challenge. I was in pain, I was exhausted...and I was bored.

Fortunately, my mother is a children's librarian. She started reading to me on a regular basis over the phone, and for that I am so very grateful. I could scarcely do anything else, but I could listen to a chapter or two of Mike Rowe's The Way I Heard It every day. I also listened through my first audio book, Break Shot: My First 21 Years by James Taylor, my favorite music artist. Engaging stuff, and tremendously helpful for keeping my mind off being miserable.

It's funny; when I think about being sick, the first thing I remember is the happiness of people reading to me.

My wife and I took care of each other as best we could, but we were both sick, with my wife's symptom progression being about a day or two ahead of mine. The advice I've given to people who have tested positive for COVID or who think they've gotten it is as follows: Let your past self take care of your future self. While you're still feeling healthy, do everything right now that needs to get done—pay bills, write e-mails, whatever. Do all the laundry, dishes, and cooking you can, and try to save some leftovers. Make sure you've got medicine on hand for everything you can think of. Ask someone you know to drop off a care package with any essentials you can't go out and get. Plan to be incapacitated for the next two weeks; be pleasantly surprised if you're not.

Our bout with Pretty Definitely COVID occurred around the same time as the temporary closure of my office and the start of our self-isolation, both of which are still in effect. On the surface, my life hasn't changed dramatically from the Before Times (as my friends like to call it). I was already working from home twice a week, spending most of my free time indoors staring at a screen, and generally not going places or seeing people unless there was a compelling reason to give up my introvert time. Indeed, I've been handling self-isolation a lot better than most other people I know, to the point where I sometimes feel guilty that my worst breakdowns are just a regular day for everyone else.

To be clear, here's exactly what I mean by self-isolation: Staying inside the house at all times except for essential excursions (eg, checking the mailbox every few days, running to the grocery store every 1-3 weeks) or nonessential excursions where the boost to mental health outweighs the physical risk (eg, going for a walk at dusk, visiting a mostly empty park). We frequently order contactless delivery for lunch or dinner, which allows us to support our local businesses, put off the next grocery run for another day or two, and spend time that would be devoted to cooking and dishwashing on self-care instead. Plus, eating out at restaurants is one of life's greatest pleasures for me, so I'm able to reclaim a little slice of happiness by ordering in.

Food is one of my coping mechanisms, too. Want some feelgood fizz to calm the nerves? There's Coca-Cola chilling in the fridge, and there's grenadine and vanilla syrup in the cupboard. Had a rough work week? Treat yourself to some comfort food from the local barbecue joint. Need someone to hold you after an absolutely horrible day? Ben & Jerry are looking forward to some spooning.

Food works as a coping mechanism not just because it tastes good, but because it's reliable. When I order a Son of Baconator from Wendy's, I know exactly how I'm going to feel when I'm done eating. A deli sandwich with lettuce, onion, mustard, and mayo on a good-quality roll, with a side of chips, is guaranteed to cheer me up—even if it ends up being a mediocre sandwich. Living in such uncertain times, I need all the predictability and emotional control I can get. I fully understand that this is an unhealthy coping mechanism with long-term consequences, but after everything that's happened in this country over the last year, I don't have high expectations that my fellow Americans will let me live long enough for my pandemic eating habits to catch up with me. If the possibility of killing anyone you breathe on isn't enough incentive to pull your mask up over your nose, then I can only assume that my life means nothing to you.

I now have a zero-tolerance policy for businesses where the employees don't wear their masks properly. It's been a year; masks are now as much a part of the dress code as any other article of clothing. I've stopped patronizing or walked right out of shops and delis I used to frequent, and I'm not shy about (politely) complaining to the management or calling employees out. Half a dozen of my personal acquaintances have died from COVID, and I know firsthand what it can do to a person—you'll have to forgive me if I expect you to keep your face covered with a mask the same way I expect you to leave a bathroom with all appropriate body parts back inside your pants.

Half of me wants to have absolutely nothing to do with the outside world anymore. I'm content to spend every day at home with my wife—there's plenty to keep us occupied, we support each other, we make each other laugh, and our differing sleep patterns afford us both some time alone on a regular basis. If I can forget that there's a world beyond these four walls, then I won't be depressed about being cut off from all the people, places, and activities I want in my life.

But the other half of me needs the outside world. I'm an entertainer, a critical reviewer, a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand—everything that plays to my strengths and gives me purpose in life requires other people. Being an introvert makes this more difficult, because interacting with and performing for other people is draining, and I need ample time to myself to recharge.

One would think that a year of quarantine would offer plenty of time to recharge, but I've also been worrying about the outside world and trying to fend off all the negative feelings that accompany extended self-isolation. It's taken every coping mechanism I have just to get through certain days, and yet I've pushed myself to be social and keep up with side projects such as writing, recording, and game design. I beat myself up for not doing enough for other people during this time, but my wife is quick to remind me that I'm already doing so much, and that I deserve a break.

So maybe that's my cue to cap this post here and go play video games. I've been gravitating toward construction simulators that let me exercise my creativity, easy shooters and beat-em-ups that let me vent my aggression, low-stress strategy games that offer a blend of construction and destruction, intuitive adventure games that make me feel smart, and visual novels where I decide how the story ends. I can't handle pulse-pounding action unless the stakes are low and my odds of success are high. Life is challenging enough right now; I'm craving things that are calm, predictable, and uplifting—which has also informed my television and movie choices to some degree. Thank you, Japan, for the joy of Laid-Back Camp in this stressful time.

Yeah. I think I'm gonna go play video games.

I'm very big on introspection. Thinking critically about who I am and what I'm doing with my life provides an essential reality check every now and again. I do this by asking tough questions that require mulling over. It's the process of working out an answer, rather than the answer itself, that makes self-reflection worthwhile—not unlike taking apart a car to see how it works, or decompiling a computer game to see how it's coded.

I believe that some of our biggest problems, both as individuals and as a society, are due in part to a lack of introspection. We take things for granted, make unfounded assumptions, and turn a blind eye to issues we don't want to deal with, often without the slightest clue that we're doing it. Switching from autopilot to manual every once in a while allows us to confirm that we are, in fact, on the right course—or else it prompts us to make some necessary course corrections.

Here are ten introspective questions I feel we should ask ourselves periodically:

1. Am I happy?
What brings me joy, what drags me down, and what am I doing to tip the balance in favor of being happy?

2. Am I healthy?
Physically, emotionally, intellectually, and (if applicable) spiritually, are my needs being met?

3. What kind of support network do I have?
In times of need, which people and groups can I rely on for help and encouragement?

4. Who are my role models?
Real or fictional, who inspires me or embodies the kind of life I want to live?

5. Am I a role model or part of a support network for anyone else?
At home, among friends, at school, at work, and in my various online and in-person communities, am I setting a good example and being a reliable ally?

6. What are my goals in life, and am I working toward them?
Does the way I spend my time reflect what I want out of life?

7. What are my strengths and weaknesses?
Am I putting the things I'm good at to good use, and am I either working on or willing to accept my shortcomings?

8. What do I believe most strongly, and why?
What are the arguments I won't back down from, the causes I won't turn my back on, and the beliefs that guide my actions—and what makes me so passionate about them?

9. What if I'm wrong?
If—however or unlikely or impossible this may be—it turns out that the people who oppose or disagree with my strongest beliefs are actually right, and I am wrong, then what kind of a person do I look like to them?

10. How do I want to be remembered when I die?
What kind of legacy am I leaving behind with my words and actions?

I can no longer consider myself a Star Trek fan.

Here's the short-ish version: I'm a diehard fan of The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and the first ten movies (The Motion Picture through Nemesis). After several years of agonizing over the damage they did to the franchise, I can enjoy 2009's annoyingly titled Star Trek and its sequel Into Darkness as poorly written but well-executed sci-fi popcorn flicks that coincidentally borrow some ideas from The Original Series. By association, I can't accept Beyond as canon, but it's the honorary eleventh Star Trek film of which I'm a diehard fan.

I gave Discovery a generous nine episodes before my outrage and disgust got the better of me. The show was visually, tonally, and narratively incompatible with what I knew as Star Trek; and the gore, infighting, mistrust, incompetence, contrivances, and pessimism in those episodes made the show unpalatable to begin with. Moreover, I felt it was bad form to reboot the franchise in 2009 by returning to Kirk's era, only to re-reboot the franchise in 2017 by returning to Kirk's era in a different timeline. This franchise was boldly going out of its mind.

To wash the taste out of my mouth, I followed every episode of Discovery with an episode of The Orville—which, despite its imperfections, captures everything I love about Star Trek, from the broad strokes (eg, social commentary disguised as sci-fi) to the little details (eg, long, luxurious establishing shots of ships and planets).

I was wary of Picard, because I wanted the franchise to start looking forward rather than backward for inspiration, and because I fully expected to be outraged and disgusted again. The first episode of left me in tears—tears of joy, because for the first time in over a decade, Star Trek actually felt like Star Trek. Different, yes, but unquestionably welcome.

The rest of the season failed to live up to that standard. Despite how much I liked some of the concepts, and despite one truly superb episode ("Nepenthe"), I had so many problems with the planning, pacing, characterizations, gratuitous violence, and wild fluctuations in storytelling quality. I could suspend my disbelief just barely enough to accept it as canon, but I didn't really want to. I also wish I hadn't watched the Short Trek "Children of Mars," which gave me Discovery flashbacks and diminished the impact of Picard's second episode.

I was disheartened by the teaser trailer for Lower Decks, and I was unimpressed and then traumatized by a preview of the first 90 seconds of the first episode. I'm on board with a series featuring a diverse new crew with no apparent ties to any previous series, set sometime after Nemesis, with a unique slant that adds something new to the franchise (in this case, focusing on people other than the bridge crew)—however, this particular brand of humor is a hard sell for me, and I am not on board with sudden, unexpected gore. That makes three series in a row where my squeamishness, which was previously only relevant for a few specific episodes across the entire franchise, is a deterrent to watching Star Trek at all.

What's worse is that there's no end in sight. After Lower Decks, there's Section 31, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, another season of Discovery, another season of Picard, and at least one yet-to-be-revealed series that I'm aware of, not to mention an R-rated movie originally slated to be directed by Quentin Tarantino. I'm still recovering from the fun but exhausting 11-year journey to Avengers: Endgame; I don't have it in me right now to invest in what is effectively another Marvel Cinematic Universe, let alone one so violent, disorganized, and averse to continuity despite being hung up on nostalgia!

It's reached the point where I physically can't keep up with my favorite franchise, nor do I want to. That is a no-win scenario. My little ship, the USS Fanboy, is in no shape to keep fighting, yet I can't retreat without feeling guilty. So I'm setting the auto-destruct and leaving the battle on my own terms.

Whatever Star Trek is right now, it is not for me. And as difficult as it is for me to admit this, that's okay. I've spent too much of my adult life arguing about what's authentic Star Trek, forcing myself to watch things I knew I wouldn't enjoy, and suffering at the hands of what is supposedly my favorite fandom. I don't need to do that anymore. In fact, I never needed to do that.

There are countless books and comics I haven't read, several games I haven't played, and a few fan-made productions I've been meaning to watch. Even if I ignore everything created from 2009 onward, there is no shortage of new Star Trek for me to experience. I don't have to rely on modern cinematic television, which I often don't enjoy anyhow, to get my fix.

They say all good things come to an end. But perhaps they don't have to. Perhaps what brings you joy is more important than what is canon. Perhaps your vision of a franchise—a vision you believe is in line with that of the person who created it—matters more than the vision of whoever happens to be calling the shots right now. Perhaps, in a universe where absolutely anything can happen, there's still a chance for the undesirable elements to redeem themselves.

I crave optimistic, collaborative, and philosophical stories that are reasonably believable and don't make me want to throw up. I don't mind if stories get dark and serious, as long as those elements serve a greater purpose than just making me depressed. I value the kind of narrative continuity that makes it easy to forgive or explain away the little mistakes and oversights that inevitably occur over the course of several decades. I like cool starships, futuristic gadgets, creative alien civilizations, and relatable characters.

For a good long while, Star Trek was exactly my kind of fiction. Now it isn't. It hasn't been for more than a decade, and I have no reason to believe it ever will be again. That means it's time to move on.

Live fast and prosper, Star Trek.

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.

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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.

The general consensus among my friends is that 2016 was one of the worst years in recent memory, marred by a seemingly endless string of celebrity deaths and characterized by a viciously divisive election that was more personal than political. For me, 2016 was an emotional rollercoaster that served as an unlikely getaway vehicle from 2015, AKA the worst year of my life.

The highs and lows of 2016 were so drastic and unevenly spaced that the whole year feels almost surreal in retrospect. There were incredible highs, including Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage, seeing my name in the credits of not one but three new Mega Man games, and starting work on a Mega Man game of my own. I made one of the biggest decisions of my adult life, walking away from a stable (but undesirable) situation in order to take a risk on a new job and a new home in a different state (or, as I prefer to say, finally moving back to Earth after five years of exile on the moon). I confronted a few personal demons, not exorcising them completely but making invaluable progress. I celebrated a milestone anniversary with my wife, and we helped each other weather one physical or emotional storm after another. I had the weirdest Christmas of my life, filled with twists and turns that had me cycling through the entire range of human emotions for the better part of a week. I actually paid attention to world news for several months, attempting to keep myself informed about topics, such as the Presidential election, that were oppressively unavoidable and that demanded I have an opinion about them. I became an active part of the Mega Man fan community at Sprites INC, and I received their Spike Award for my sporadic gaming livestreams. I informally said farewell to GameCola after 8 years on staff. My mother and I went on a memorable road trip to attend the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. A brief trial of EnChroma glasses gave me a taste of what it's like to see color the way the rest of the world does. I (mostly) stopped picking tomatoes off my sandwiches. It's been quite a year.

Importantly, I made an effort to follow through on my 2016 resolutions (or, as I prefer to think of them, goals). Here's how I did:

Goal #1: Start and finish a YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 8.
Hah! I had every intention of this being the one goal I would definitely achieve, but I ended up spending almost the entire year working on designing Mega Man levels instead. Having spent too many years working on multiple projects and finishing none of them in a reasonable amount of time, I made a conscious decision not to split my focus between projects, and so MM8 remains on hold (but partially recorded) until people stop giving me excuses to make more Mega Man levels.

Goal #2: Make serious headway on the video game my wife and I are planning.
See above. I've at least made serious headway on OH JOES! (A Proto Man Adventure), which hadn't been conceived when I came up with these goals, so I'd call that at least a partial success.

Goal #3: Run at least one D&D campaign, then learn a new tabletop RPG system and run another campaign.
Failure! I played in a number of Pathfinder sessions, but I didn't run any games of my own or learn any new systems. I did at least jot down some ideas for a D&D one-shot that I've been wanting to try for several years. Once again, my creative energies were directed almost entirely toward making Mega Man levels.

Goal #4: Read 12 books.
Failure! Probably. I lost track toward the end. However, I got pretty darn close. My conservative Christian friend sent me a care package of books early in the year, relevant to some conversations we'd had, and they constituted a good portion of my reading list. I have a terrible habit of letting his gifts gather dust for several years before putting them to use, so it was good to delve into these books right away. I may write a separate post discussing everything I read in some kind of detail, but for now, here's what I read in 2016 in the order I read them:
1. Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller
2. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
3. The Ultimates, Vol. 2 by whoever wrote, drew, and inked it; the book's in the other room and I'm too lazy right now
4. And the Good News Is... by Dana Perino
5. William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope by Ian Doerscher
6. Firsthand: Ditching Secondhand Religion for a Faith of Your Own by Ryan and Josh Shook
7. Memories of the Future, Volume 1 by Wil Wheaton
8. Spock, Messiah! by Theodore R. Cogswell and Charles A. Spano, Jr.
9. Some Ultimate Spider-Man graphic novel, I think; once again, too lazy to check
10. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Indistinguishable From Magic by David A. McIntee
11. Things That Matter by Charles Krauthammer (about 3/4 read by the end of 2016)

Goal #5: Get my Backloggery progress index into positive double digits.
Success! Even with so much of my leisure time spent reading instead of gaming, I managed to achieve not only double but triple digits—a progress index of +200, to be exact. That means I played or removed from my collection way more games than I added. Granted, there was that Backloggery revolution halfway through the year, so my real progress index is probably more like +2 than +200, but who's counting? Wait, I am.

Goal #6: Write like I used to.
Partial success! My criteria for this one were to write regularly, write positively, and write for myself. I've obviously failed to meet the first criterion, but the second and third are well in hand. Articles like this one and posts like this one capture my passion for blogging and critical analysis, and even if they're not all sunshine and puppycats, they don't come across as the "general bitterness commentary" that characterized my writing for too long a period. I'm writing the way I want to write—the way I used to write—and it feels wonderful.


Now, then. Let's see if I can't come up with some goals I might have a better shot at achieving in 2017:

Goal #1: Spend more weekends at home.
For the last decade or so, I have done an out-of-state road trip at least once every month. Often at least twice a month. Usually at least three times a month. With so many friends and family members living close enough to visit regularly, but far enough away that a day trip is out of the question, I find myself giving up as many as 10 hours every weekend just to get where I'm going and back. Departing on a Friday evening or first thing Saturday morning, and not coming back until Sunday afternoon or evening, leaves me with insufficient time to work on my creative projects and keep on top of the housework and kick around and relax. It also leaves me with insufficient funds to live as freely as I'd like to—road trips are expensive. For the sake of my sanity and my wallet, I intend to set aside at least one weekend a month for going nowhere.

Goal #2: Finish OH JOES! (A Proto Man Adventure).
Everything is on track for the game to be released in early 2017, so I really hope there aren't any awful surprises here.

Goal #3: Finish a YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 8.
As long as I'm not designing Mega Man levels the entire year, this should be doable.

Goal #4: Read 12 books.
I was very close to accomplishing this in 2016, and I only fell short because of how Christmas vacation turned out. I'd like this goal to become a staple, because it's good to be reading again.

Goal #5: Maintain a positive Backloggery progress index.
Likewise, I'd like to make this goal a staple. My video game wishlist has shrunk dramatically in the last year, and I'm quicker than ever to identify when it's time to stop playing the game I'm working on.

Goal #6: Get involved in my community.
It has been eating as me for several years that I'm not involved in church and volunteer activities like I used to be. I want to join a choir or a small group or something, and I want to find ways to live where I'm living. Hopefully, spending more weekends at home will allow me the time to do so.


I've got a good feeling about these goals. I'll let you know in a year how things go.

Hi. I...uh...I haven't been around for a while, huh? I can explain that.

I've been busy. Not necessarily any busier than usual, but my focus has been elsewhere. I recently moved, and now I'm close enough to friends that I might be busy any given weeknight. I started a new job, and there's a "no blogging" policy that's curtailed my lunchtime writing breaks. I've thrown myself into developing a small Mega Man fangame, which has consumed almost all my free time for the last several weeks. Most importantly, I've taken stock of all my activities and obligations, and I've started turning my attention away from the things that don't energize and fulfill me the way I used to. Blogging, much to my surprise, is one such thing.

To be clear, I still love to write. I still intend to update my Series Opinions when I have the time and inspiration, and I'm not abandoning blogging altogether. But I look at the last several months--heck, the last year or two--and I can't consider myself a "blogger" anymore. With rare exception, my only posts have been my monthly Retrospectives--a holdover from my days with Exfanding Your Horizons, when we relied on regularly scheduled filler posts (which, ostensibly, were also of some benefit to our less-regular readers) to meet our blogging quotas. Until recently, I didn't stop to consider whether I wanted to keep going with a recurring summary of my online deeds. It was simply something I did. I never thought much of it because of how little time it took, in the grand scheme of things. Not like the GameCola articles that took me weeks to assemble, or the YouTube videos that took months. But when I assessed everything I was doing with my life, I came to realize that even the small effort it took to keep up with a monthly Retrospective was still an intrusion on how I wanted to be spending my time anymore.

If you're following an obscure blog that never updates, then you're probably following me on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and maybe even The Backloggery, where you'll get updates on my online deeds in real time. Neither of us needs a Retrospective anymore. (Apologies to the one person who misses the Retrospectives.)

That's how I operate: I accumulate more and more obligations and join more and more activities until I'm completely overburdened, then I clean house and start over again. I never want to let people down, and I often feel guilty backing out of a commitment (no matter how good the excuse is), and I'm also a creature of habit. Once I start something, I'm disinclined to stop. This is why I've played through so many video games I haven't enjoyed. Even that has changed, though; you may recall my Backloggery Revolution earlier this year, and I haven't looked back. I've lost all patience for things that should be fun but aren't. I have so little time to myself anymore that I can't afford to waste a second on anything that doesn't build me up.

That's a little unhealthy for a perfectionist, mind you. I already want the things I do in my free time to go smoothly; now I'm pressuring myself to choose the best possible activities and make sure they go off without a hitch. I'm making myself unhappy by trying to be happy. How messed up is that? The solution, or at least part of the solution, is to free up more time for myself so I'm not so pressured to make every moment count. To awkwardly employ a metaphor, they say there's no use crying over spilled milk, but I'll still cry less if I spill the same amount from a fuller glass.

Regardless, no matter what I do, I will always question whether it's the best thing I can do. Suppose I volunteer to be a friendly visitor at a nursing home. Great, right? But then I'm not helping out at a homeless shelter, providing disaster relief in the wake of the latest hurricane, mentoring a troubled teenager, or doing any number of other important things. And let's be honest; the activities I'm choosing between are playing AM2R and watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain Goes Somewhere You'll Never Visit, At This Rate. Maybe that's not all bad, though. Giving of oneself is arguably the highest pursuit there is, but giving is hollow without someone to receive the gift. By being a consumer of entertainment, I'm validating the time and effort that countless people have spent on trying to make me happy, however indirectly. Maybe, with the right mindset, whatever I'm doing is the best thing I could be doing. At the very least, I can aim to make the most of any situation, however trivial and wasteful it may seem.

It feels good to write again. I missed this. I missed you, dear reader. Even if I'm only writing for myself, this feels worthwhile. Even if this wasn't the best thing I could have done with my time, this feels worthwhile. Maybe perfectionism is the fear of things being less than worthwhile. Well, then. Things are going perfectly.

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

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

Or so I thought.

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

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

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

As it turned out, that guy was me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You've probably seen or heard me talk about my Backloggery, where I keep track of my progress through all the video games I own or have played. Since I joined in 2009, I've been using my Backloggery as a means of keeping up with my buying habits—the more unfinished games on my list, the more the completionist in me strives to play what I've purchased, instead of continually going back to my old favorites. Although I've been successful in playing more and buying less, I've also turned my favorite pastime into something of a chore. Too many of the games in my backlog have ended up being long on replay value and short on fun factor, yet I've insisted on playing them to 100% completion. Marking every game on my Backloggery as Complete is a game in itself, and it's one I'm predisposed to playing.

Fortunately, a few of the games I've played since joining The Backloggery have worn down my resolve. Final Fantasy VIII made me question my rigid completionist mentality, and Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls confirmed that I needed to break out of it. Sonic and the Secret Rings empowered me to abandon games I don't like enough to play to any sort of completion, let alone 100%. Today, the Gradius Collection version of Gradius III incited a revolution that's been brewing for a long time: a total shift in how I define 100% completion.

The Backloggery gives you three options for marking a game as finished: Beaten, Completed, and Mastered. The exact meaning of these options varies from one person to the next, but the general consensus is that Completed means you've done everything there is to do in the game, both obvious and secret. Now, there are games in my collection such as Escape Goat, Dragon Warrior III, and Police Quest II where I'm very close to earning Completed status, but I lack the skill or patience to go after whatever I've missed. Then there are games such as Star Fox 64 and Rollercoaster Tycoon where I'm nowhere close, and games such as Star Soldier and Area 51 that aren't even in my collection. By adhering to a strict code of what it means to be Completed, I've saddled myself with a load of Beaten games that have little or no hope of upgrading their status. It kind of defeats the purpose of working so hard toward 100% Backloggery completion if the best I'm likely to achieve is 70%.

Gradius III drove home how futile my approach has been. I know that I'll never be good enough at space shooters to beat any of the Gradius games on the highest difficulty setting (this is not a defeatist attitude; this is statement of fact), so I've adjusted my definition of "Completed" for these games to mean "finished on the highest difficulty setting I can manage." This kind of compromise is not a new one; for example, I prematurely marked Muramasa: The Demon Blade as Completed, because the hardest difficulty setting is so absurd that Mastered would be the only appropriate completion status. What's different about Gradius III is that, more so than the other games in the Gradius Collection, its roots as a quarter-gobbling arcade machine shine through.

Only a game designed to steal your money would be so relentlessly difficult (to the point of being outright cheap) and offer so few checkpoints to compensate. I am stuck on the last checkpoint of the game, and I am tired of spending four minutes slogging through a tedious corridor and beating up on an easy final boss, only to die repeatedly in the last 10 seconds of an overly fast escape sequence that demands incredible reflexes and perfect precision. It is only through abuse of save states that I made it this far, and I am playing on the easiest of nine difficulty modes. The game stopped being fun a long time ago, but I've already beaten the (considerably fairer) SNES port of Gradius III, and I was able to conquer the other games in the collection with enough practice, so the completionist in me is insisting on seeing this game through to the end. I mean, I'm only 10 seconds from beating the game!

No. No I'm not. I'm probably a couple hours from beating the game, if it's possible for me to beat it at all. And even if I win, I can't mark the game as Completed until I've finished it on the next highest difficulty mode as well. I never want to play this game again. This is where I finally draw the line. All the Completed medals in the world aren't worth the pain I've already endured, let alone what's ahead if I stay on this course. I'm changing the rules: this is as far as I care to play, and I'm marking the game as Completed so that I'm never tempted to go back and waste more of my life on this.

My new rules are simple. Beaten means I've reached a good stopping point, but want to keep exploring the game. Completed means I've done everything there is to do, or else everything I have the skill and desire to do, and thus have reached an even better stopping point. The goal of maintaining a Backloggery is to keep playing the games I own, not to get hung up doing something that makes me unhappy. I know; this should be obvious, but that completionist mentality is difficult to shake. To help enforce these new rules, I've gone through my entire game list and updated the status of every game accordingly. Wait until you see this month's Retrospective; the Backloggery section is going to be ridiculous.

I feel better already, like a huge, self-imposed weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Video games are supposed to be fun, and I refuse to let my completionism keep my favorite pastime from being enjoyable anymore.