As much as I like generating new content (blog posts, videos, etc.), sometimes I prefer to tinker around behind the scenes and administrate my creativity. That's mostly what I've been doing with my YouTube channel over the past year—you know it's been almost a year since my last real Mega Man video? I've released a couple of general channel-related videos since then, and spent much of the last several months working on a Space Quest 0 playthrough for GameCola's YouTube channel, but for the most part, I've been updating my video descriptions, compiling playlists, responding to comments, and posting weekly polls on my Facebook page.
That's also how I spent most of last night: Administrating. Formatting. Fiddling with things. A few days ago, following a long back-and-forth debate with one of my YouTube viewers about the strengths and weaknesses of Mega Man 3, I determined I really need to put my opinions of the game into a written format, to which I can refer people once I start running out of room in YouTube's relatively small comment boxes. I've got a lot of opinions that don't jive with the mainstream's—for example, I'll take Terminator over Terminator 2 any day, I think The Beatles are "okay," and I don't like green peppers—and it usually takes a whole heap of explanation until the murder in people's eyes starts to die down. You wouldn't believe how strongly people feel about green peppers.
Well, I sat down to write a short overview of the entire Mega Man series, reviewing each of the games I've played in a concise format that highlights, as objectively as possible, each game's strengths and weaknesses relative to the rest of the series. Bear in mind that the term "short overview" is being used here by a person who took something like 4000 words to review Mega Man 10, even before getting to the downloadable content. The idea was to put every aspect of a game on equal footing—graphics, novelty, replay value, story, etc.—so that the oft-overlooked flaws and the unsung merits of each game would get the attention I feel they deserve. Mega Man 3 in particular would benefit from this treatment, I thought; people love this game, and don't seem to acknowledge or notice even the rampant flaws and shortcomings that stand out to me.
After starting work on this massive series of reviews (which you can find here), I got to thinking about ways to make it look nicer. More accessible. Easier to read. And I started tinkering. Formatted a whole bunch of pages—covering the entire Classic series as far as I've played it, with the X series next on the list—and got things organized and ready so that I could hop on and easily plug in a few more opinions whenever I had the time and felt up to it. This is something that'll be in progress for a while, so expect a bunch of blank spaces and plenty of revisions.
That's one of the nice parts about making these reviews a separate feature on this website, instead of cramming them all into a blog post or two—there's no digging back through the archives to find them, and I don't have to spend days, weeks, or months toiling away at something behind-the-scenes, only to publish it once it's ready, and have all my hard work disappear into someone's RSS feed after an hour or two. There's an obvious link next to the "HOME" and "BLOG" buttons at the top of the page, and folks can check in whenever they're bored to see if I've made any updates—they don't have to wait for a finished product.
Ah, and I mentioned RSS feeds. While I've been content to keep this website pretty simple (tricking out Exfanding Your Horizons with all the bells and whistles was fun, but also a tremendous amount of effort to teach myself how to do everything, and then research why nothing I did was working), being on my administrative kick last night was the push I needed to burn this blog's RSS feed to FeedBurner and polish up the blog's sidebar a bit. Now I'm that much closer to looking like I care about this blog as much as I really do—I assure you the simplicity really is a deliberate choice, and (mostly) not a matter of laziness.
That's also how I spent most of last night: Administrating. Formatting. Fiddling with things. A few days ago, following a long back-and-forth debate with one of my YouTube viewers about the strengths and weaknesses of Mega Man 3, I determined I really need to put my opinions of the game into a written format, to which I can refer people once I start running out of room in YouTube's relatively small comment boxes. I've got a lot of opinions that don't jive with the mainstream's—for example, I'll take Terminator over Terminator 2 any day, I think The Beatles are "okay," and I don't like green peppers—and it usually takes a whole heap of explanation until the murder in people's eyes starts to die down. You wouldn't believe how strongly people feel about green peppers.
Well, I sat down to write a short overview of the entire Mega Man series, reviewing each of the games I've played in a concise format that highlights, as objectively as possible, each game's strengths and weaknesses relative to the rest of the series. Bear in mind that the term "short overview" is being used here by a person who took something like 4000 words to review Mega Man 10, even before getting to the downloadable content. The idea was to put every aspect of a game on equal footing—graphics, novelty, replay value, story, etc.—so that the oft-overlooked flaws and the unsung merits of each game would get the attention I feel they deserve. Mega Man 3 in particular would benefit from this treatment, I thought; people love this game, and don't seem to acknowledge or notice even the rampant flaws and shortcomings that stand out to me.
After starting work on this massive series of reviews (which you can find here), I got to thinking about ways to make it look nicer. More accessible. Easier to read. And I started tinkering. Formatted a whole bunch of pages—covering the entire Classic series as far as I've played it, with the X series next on the list—and got things organized and ready so that I could hop on and easily plug in a few more opinions whenever I had the time and felt up to it. This is something that'll be in progress for a while, so expect a bunch of blank spaces and plenty of revisions.
That's one of the nice parts about making these reviews a separate feature on this website, instead of cramming them all into a blog post or two—there's no digging back through the archives to find them, and I don't have to spend days, weeks, or months toiling away at something behind-the-scenes, only to publish it once it's ready, and have all my hard work disappear into someone's RSS feed after an hour or two. There's an obvious link next to the "HOME" and "BLOG" buttons at the top of the page, and folks can check in whenever they're bored to see if I've made any updates—they don't have to wait for a finished product.
Ah, and I mentioned RSS feeds. While I've been content to keep this website pretty simple (tricking out Exfanding Your Horizons with all the bells and whistles was fun, but also a tremendous amount of effort to teach myself how to do everything, and then research why nothing I did was working), being on my administrative kick last night was the push I needed to burn this blog's RSS feed to FeedBurner and polish up the blog's sidebar a bit. Now I'm that much closer to looking like I care about this blog as much as I really do—I assure you the simplicity really is a deliberate choice, and (mostly) not a matter of laziness.
RSS Feed
