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

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

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

Also, I submitted a level.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was going to be terrible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Midnight Man

Difficulty Rating: 1
Skippable: No

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

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

Coptar Man

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

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

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

X Factory

Difficulty Rating: 3
Skippable: No

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

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

Space Crusade

Difficulty Rating: 3
Skippable: No
​FAVORITE

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

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

Gate 303

Difficulty Rating: 2
Skippable: No

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

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


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

Universe City V

Difficulty Rating: 3
Skippable: No

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

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

Magnum Man

Difficulty Rating: 3
Skippable: No

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

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

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

We judges are gonna die.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have forgotten how to slow down and relax.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

With no new Mega Man level design contests cropping up, I found myself able to once again devote my free time to...uh...staying late at the office. April was a busy month. However, I managed to accomplish a few things of note, so I'm happy with what I have to show for myself this time.

This Website:

I did a lot of writing in April (at least, by current standards), and there's another Star Trek Series Opinions page and two blog posts already in the works for May. If you ever miss the kind of writing I used to do for Exfanding Your Horizons, the posts from this month should be a treat. Incidentally, I wrote almost the entire post about the NuTrek Enterprise back in February; I just didn't take photos until the trailer for Star Trek Beyond and news of the upcoming Star Trek TV series got me thinking about NuTrek again, which also prompted the 2009 Series Opinions page. I swear I've finally gotten all the complaining about the reboot out of my system. Well, at least until I start reviewing Into Darkness.

- Retrospective: March 2016
- Origin Stories
- A Tall Ship, and a Star Trek to Steer Her By
- Series Opinions: Star Trek (2009)

YouTube:

I simply did not have the time or wherewithal to record as much as I wanted, but I managed to pull off one impromptu livestream, and I recorded the intro stage of Mega Man 8 for my upcoming video playthrough. And, of course, I published the elaborate April Fools video I had originally planned for last year. Happily, it works even better now than it would have then.

Flashman85LIVE:
- One-Shot Live Playthrough: Prince of Persia

GeminiLaser:
- [April Fools'] Mega Man 8 Teaser Trailer

The Backloggery:

I effectively cleared six games from my backlog and only bought two new ones with my tax refund money, but I still only broke even on my progress index for April. Go figure. April was simultaneously one of the most refreshing and one of the most disappointing gaming months I've had in quite a long time.

Appallingly unprofessional PC port issues aside, I had an absolute blast with Ghostbusters, which reminded me why I play video games in the first place. The game was immersive, faithful to the spirit of the movies, thoughtfully designed, possessed of fun mechanics and excellent production values, and very funny (the Spirit Guide descriptions cracked me up). X-Men Legends was a cathartic release of wanton destruction and a throwback to my college days, when people in the house would pop in and out as one of us kept plugging away at the story mode.

Playing a shinier version of Gradius, which I grew up with on the NES, brought back some fond memories, and Gradius Gaiden was awesome. Hopping around from game to game in the Gradius Collection gave me my first real appreciation of what good and bad game design look like in a scrolling shooter. Bad game design looks like this iteration of Gradius III, and to a lesser extent Gradius IV, which derive challenge from all the wrong places.

Although I wasn't as happy with those games as I'd hoped, FEZ was the biggest letdown of the bunch. It could have been a clever puzzle-platformer, or a diabolical puzzle game with platforming elements, but it insisted on being a boring and tedious collectathon with almost everything worthwhile locked away as a poorly explained secret. The game is full of good ideas, but their execution makes the game feel either pretentious or just badly designed—neither of which inspired me to stick with the game any longer than I had to.

Oh, and while the sentiment of gifting me with AVGN Adventures was appreciated, ten minutes with the game reinforced how much I really dislike AVGN. Sorry.

New:
- Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride  (NDS)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius  (PSP)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius Gaiden  (PSP)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius II  (PSP)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius III  (PSP)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius IV  (PSP)
 
Started:
- Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures  (Steam)
- FEZ  (Steam)
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game  (PC)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius  (PSP)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius Gaiden  (PSP)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius II  (PSP)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius III  (PSP)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius IV  (PSP)
- Type:Rider  (Steam)
 
Beat:
- FEZ  (Steam)
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game  (PC)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius  (PSP)
- Gradius Collection: Gradius IV  (PSP)
 
Completed:
- X-Men Legends  (GCN)
 
Removed:
- Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures  (Steam)

Hey, this felt like a proper post for a change! It's good to be writing again.

March was another busy month. No sooner had I submitted my entry for the Make a Good Mega Man Level contest on Sprites INC than another contest opened up: designing any number of six-screen level segments for the upcoming Mega Man Endless fangame. Between friends, family, work, and my deadline-driven side projects, I was going almost nonstop by the end of the month. It was exhausting, but it was also a reminder of how I thrive on having a variety of activities to keep me occupied. Let's see what all I have to show for myself.

This Website:

I might not write many posts anymore, but the ones I do write are ones I want to hang on to. The story of my concert experience with Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage is one of my favorite things I've written for this blog, and I think it's the biggest indication that I've finally moved away from the "general bitterness commentary" that weighed down my writing only a year or two ago. Also, I've decided to start linking to my individual Series Opinions articles once they're finished, regardless of whether everything else on the page with them is finished. I've still got a lot of Star Trek and Mega Man to write about (and rewrite about, because opinions are subject to change), but I'm one step closer to having my definitive take on every part of my favorite entertainment franchises all in one place.

- Retrospective: February 2016
- The Ultimate Voyage
- Series Opinions: The Misadventures of Tron Bonne

YouTube:

Due to all the time I spent making Mega Man levels in February and March, I wasn't able to focus on playing Mega Man levels, (meaning my playthrough of Mega Man 8 got delayed)...but I did subject one of my friends to a level I made, so we can call that a compromise. I did keep another one of my recording projects going, though, carrying on with the next installment in what is possibly my favorite first-person shooter series. I like MotS less than its predecessor, but I think I like this playthrough more than the one I did for the original Jedi Knight. So it balances out. Pardon the choppiness of the first video; it gets better.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 1: The Noisy Asteroid of Ugly Awfulness
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 2: Wireframed and Imprisoned
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 3: A Pirate's Death for Me
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 4: Nothing I Want at the Swamp Meet
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 5: Taking the Bonus Level for a Bespin
- Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest - "Maze of Death" Blind Playthrough (With Special Guests)

GCDotNet:
- The GameCola Podcast #90: A Not-So-Spooky Halloween

The Backloggery:

Wow. This portion almost isn't worth mentioning. My wife and I played one round of LEGO LotR and were put off enough by all the glitches and gameplay issues that we haven't found the motivation to go back yet, and I played just enough of Nintendo Land with friends that it qualifies as Beaten by my standards. Oh, and I chipped away at X-Men Legends and played a little more of the 3DS Mega Man Legacy Collection, so it's not like I completely abandoned my favorite pastime.

Started:
- LEGO The Lord of the Rings  (Wii)

Beat:
- Nintendo Land  (WiiU)

...And that's just the stuff I finished in March! April oughta be pretty big, and I'm in a great mindset going into the month.

My free time in February was primarily devoted to designing my entry for the Make a Good Mega Man Level contest on the Mega Man fansite Sprites INC. Consequently, I'm a bit behind on the writing and recording I wanted to have done by now—but I'm behind for a good cause, and I'm excited to share my finished level with the general public once the judging is done. In the meantime, here's everything I did manage to accomplish that pertains to my online endeavors:

This Website:

With the release of the 3DS Mega Man Legacy Collection, my name now appears in the credits of an official Mega Man game by Capcom. Naturally, there's a story behind this, and it's one of the most significant stories I've written about in quite a while. In keeping with this website's purpose as a base of operations for my creative endeavors, this seemed like a good time to set up a Games page that catalogs my contributions to professional and fan-made video games. I'm more prolific than you might expect, and there's potential for the list to grow in the years to come. I also kept plugging away at my Mega Man Series Opinions, finishing off my review of Mega Man X3 and going back to tidy up some of the Classic games now that I've started to categorize things a little differently.

- Retrospective: January 2016
- The Legacy of a Challenge
- Games

YouTube:

As mentioned above, I was otherwise occupied for most of the month, so I didn't get to start recording the video footage for my playthrough of Mega Man 8 as originally planned. Still, I've got something to show for myself, including a livestream of random SNES games, and a particularly silly installment of The GameCola Podcats. Meow.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Backloggery Choice #3: Mega Man Soccer, Super Mario RPG, Kirby Super Star, Donkey Kong Country 2

GCDotNet:
- The GameCola Podcast #89: When Jeddy's Away the Cats Will Play

The Backloggery:

LEGO Jurassic World got my wife and me back into co-op gaming on a regular basis, and it was the most fun we've had with a LEGO game since way back on the GameCube with LEGO Star Wars. When we went out to pick up the Mega Man Legacy Collection on release day, a couple bargain-price LEGO games came home with us, allowing for many more stay-at-home date nights. In prepping for my SNES livestream, I noticed I'd never updated Kirby Super Star for the SNES after playing through it as part of Kirby's Dream Collection for the Wii, hence the random Completed status for a game I hadn't been playing. And that's all the boring news I have to share about my video game backlog.

New:
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean  (Wii)
LEGO The Lord of the Rings  (Wii)
Mega Man Legacy Collection  (3DS)

Beat:
LEGO Jurassic World  (WiiU)
 
Completed:
Kirby Super Star  (SNES)
LEGO Jurassic World  (WiiU)

So much Mega Man! More than usual, even. No wonder I've been in such a good mood lately.