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Friday, May 29, 2015

The May 29 Purchases: Splatoon and amiibo

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The trip to Best Buy, as promised.

It is the time that I have been waiting for since E3 2014, when I first fell in love with Splatoon and declared it my second-most anticipated game of the show. Yup, Nintendo's entry into team-based third-person shooters (not counting Kid Icarus: Uprising) is here! As I wrote about yesterday, I set out to make it a Day 1 purchase at my local Best Buy since I pre-ordered it. (As opposed to the non-local Best Buy Nintendo World Championships happening tomorrow.)

Well, I'm sure y'all are dying to know about my adventures, so apologies to write this article so late at night (but that's sorta been the case with every article this week). I was... busy playing Splatoon, you see.

Splatoon Wii U disc jewel case
The disc is so cool.
It's also competing with Smash 4.

So I go to Best Buy and I don't immediately go to Store Pick-Up, because my copy is gonna stay there until June 6. No, I go to the Nintendo section... to the amiibo. Here's what I saw.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

amiibo Purchase Limits

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Retailers to penalise the accumulation of wealth.

May 29: More amiibo come out. We got the three Splatoon amiibo (pictured here) plus Wave 4 of the Super Smash Bros. series amiibo. Oh, and Splatoon comes out.

It's unclear which revenue stream will give Nintendo the most money tomorrow. 

I'll be picking up Splatoon (I pre-ordered it) at Best Buy tomorrow. Same one I keep referencing throughout KoopaTV, and the same one that I tried to get the Little Mac amiibo from, failing more than once. So for tomorrow, I want to buy the three-pack set of Inkling Boy, Inkling Girl, and Squid. That way, I can have kids and squids! I don't have that pre-ordered or any amiibo pre-ordered, yet I still want 'em.

I want the Jigglypuff amiibo too but that's exclusive to Target, which I don't have access to.


Jigglypuff amiibo official art render
Apparently she's exclusive to Wal-Mart in Canada. That's much better.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

"You didn't build that" — Smash 4's Stage Builder

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Oh yes I did! It just sucks, but I built it!

According to President Barack Hussein Obama, I didn't build KoopaTV. Somebody else made that happen. And I guess it's true, since we have a whole staff working at KoopaTV and the website design and server is outsourced to Google.


But you know what I built brick by brick, coil by coil? The KoopaTV stage in Super Smash Bros. For Wii U.
 

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

A More Constructive Banjo

By RAWKHAWK2010 - Get with the times, Banjo fans.

As I mentioned in my #IStandWithPhils article, we at KoopaTV have a healthy respect for a man by the name of Phil Spencer. Not just any man by the name of Phil Spencer (since there are at least two), but the recently-appointed new Head of Xbox who has made an earnest effort to get Rare and its IPs back on the right track. And the same Phil Spencer who, just last month, expressed his desire (or unusually-enthusiastic compliance) of seeing everyone's favorite hillbilly bear in Smash.


Phil Spencer Banjo Kazooie SSB DLC Super Smash Bros. 4 Rare
#IStandWithPhil

Of course, this immediately opened up the #BanjoForSmash floodgates since the Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot was announced just two days prior. And with Conker's Big Reunion having shown the world that it's never too late for a Rare character to resurface, this development been viewed by many as a dream-already-come-true, where they will at long last be reunited with the classic Banjo of their childhood.

...But wait a minute, classic Banjo? Huh?

Monday, May 25, 2015

Memorialising Our Fallen Troopas

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - We miss 'em dearly. Rest in peace.

You all know that Koopa Kingdom is involved in a lot of stuff. You know our propaganda arm (KoopaTV), and I'm sure you're all aware of our universe-renowned military might that can even destroy the United States if we chose to. And y'all know our lovable royal family, and you know I'm a member of that. (As the most lovable.)

However, the guys we love the most are our servicemen and servicewomen Koopa Troopas, who work hard to implement everything that Koopa Kingdom sets out to do. These loyal, magnificent, shelled soldiers put kingdom first and we would like to thank them for their hard work and dedication. We can all learn from them.

Unfortunately, it appears that quite a few Koopa Troopas have made the ultimate sacrifice. These include KoopaTV's spokesturtles, Devin and Claira, and the countless Koopa Troopas that have went above and beyond the call of duty to protect Koopa Kingdom from enemies foreign and domestic. We would like to tell you what happened today and designate this day a Memorial Day.

Friday, May 22, 2015

I'm a Squid Now, I'm a Kid Now

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Ready for round 4 of the Splatoon Global Testfire?

Public service announcement: The Splatoon Global Testfire will continue, for the last time, tomorrow (SATURDAY, May 23) at 3 PM Pacific, 6 PM Eastern. For one hour.

If you want my impressions of the first three hours of the Splatoon Global Testfire, check 'em out here.

Anyway, I'm totally caught up in Splatoon hype, so you can see my avatar is Squidwig. I'm A SQUID NOW. ...I'M A KID NOW. That's from a Nintendo commercial that you can check out here. It's important you're familiar with it since that's what the rest of this article is based off of!

A lot of people dislike the commercial for unknown reasons, to the point that Nintendo disabled comments on the video. (Comments are still available on the other Splatoon video materials on their YouTube channel.) I personally love it.

So I made three different versions of it, found below the page break!

Thursday, May 21, 2015

The Republican Presidential Primary Debate Super Contest!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The media wants to limit the field... but we have better ideas.

The most important media events of 2015 will be E3, and the start of the Republican Party presidential debates. If the Democrat Party actually had a schedule set up (and an actual selection of candidates), they'd be worth mentioning, but as of publishing they got nothing resembling definitive. So here's the Republican schedule.

The first debate is with Fox News on August 6, and the second is with CNN on September 16. Here's the thing though... While there are six officially-declared candidates now (Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee), that number is apparently expected to jump to sixteen by the first debate. There are some unannounced heavy-hitters in the wings, like Jeb Bush (aka the Democrat's choice to win) and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

Basically, the field is going to get crowded very quickly. Reminder that four years ago in 2011, the traditional set of eight candidates we got used to (nine if you count Gary Johnson) was just that... eight. That's half of sixteen, and what happened with those eight was that everyone not named Mitt Romney or Ron Paul got to take turns becoming the anti-Romney candidate, with Americans slowly learning about all the candidates as they got their momentary spotlight.

There's a problem with that now, though. 

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Doug Bowser — New VP of Sales — Some Suspicious Things...

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Hm... what could it be that's so suspicious?

Looks like Nintendo of America is making new hires. They just hired a dude named "Doug Bowser" to be the Vice President of Sales.

The press release (linked there) is littered with references regarding that his last name is pretty familiar to KoopaTV's readers (and especially to me and my family) but I'd like to point out some even more important things to note.
"Bowser comes to Nintendo from Electronic Arts, where he has worked since 2007, most recently as Vice President of Global Business Planning, a role that made him responsible for EA’s console, PC and mobile game forecasting."
He's from Electronic Arts, and Nintendo just poached him. This means that he has all of the baggage of EA with him. Will he infect Nintendo with it? There's more things to note, too:
"Bowser will report to Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing."
This is the scariest thing of all. See below.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Your "local" Nintendo World Championships Qualifiers

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Nintendo used the word "local", and we give it the scare-quotes it deserves.

As KoopaTV previously reported, Nintendo of America has revived the "Nintendo World Championships" from 25 years ago at participating Best Buys. The qualifiers are May 30. We now know where those are and what games are involved.

According to e3.nintendo.com:
"When & where:
May 30, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time, at the following eight Best Buy locations:
  • San Francisco, CA (1717 Harrison St.)
  • Torrance, CA (3675 Pacific Coast Highway)
  • Miami, FL (10760 NW 17th St.)
  • Schaumburg, IL (900 E. Golf Road)
  • Maple Grove, MN (12905 Elm Creek Blvd. N)
  • Long Island City, NY (5011 Northern Blvd.)
  • Dallas, TX (9378 N Central Expy)
  • Tacoma, WA (2214 S. 48th St.)" 
Don't forget to fill out this .pdf registration form which is titled "PowerPoint Presentation". This and the official rules reveal that the game you'll be playing will be... Ultimate NES Remix... on the 3DS. Well, guess that makes up for the Wii U console-favouritism shown by Nintendo's Best Buy events up 'till now, but no one was complaining.

So what are the games as part of Ultimate NES Remix? Well, Championship Mode, which includes Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, and Dr. Mario.

So instead of showing favouritism to display-friendly Wii U games, Nintendo just shifted their favouritism to be to EXCLUSIVELY Mario games. This is on top of Mario Maker at Best Buy a few weeks later. You know, what no one will wanna show up for. But that's not the worst part.

Monday, May 18, 2015

You Won't BELIEVE What The Videogame Media Misreported!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - These so-called journalists should slow down and get the facts right.

In the old days of journalism, journalists cared about getting the facts right. They asked questions that needed to be answered for the report to go through: 
  1. Who?
  2. What?
  3. Where?
  4. When?
Journalism had 4 W's, and was ruined with Why. Editorials
Source: A CainTV comment. For comparison, here's a collection of KoopaTV comments.

And then... editorialists and people with an agenda added "Why?". Journalism as a field was twisted and facts took a backseat to opinions. Horrible websites like KoopaTV were created focusing on this "Why?", with other questions left unanswered, uninvestigated, or deemed unimportant. This has been going on long enough.

Now look at journalism today. Very sickening. As a product of our toxic culture, so-called videogame journalists have sprung up out of their basements trying to be the first one to cover the story. Of course, the first one to rush into a story is the first one to get it wrong. Beware anyone whose mission is to get you the news first. Examples to follow after the page break, so be sure to read on for more.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Election Antics Part 1: The Low-down

By VORTEXICA - Good times were had by all, except by those who lost.

Hello again KoopaTV viewers!

As some of you may be aware, here in Foggy Albion there's been much hullabaloo over the past few weeks over a monumental decision to be made. There was much speculation, analysis, and the question on everyone's lips was that of who would succeed to one of the most prestigious positions in the land...

Just who will replace Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear?

Okay, not really. That might actually make for an interesting article. People are likely far more interested in what'll become of Top Gear now that Clarkson's gone than what the UK's next government will look like. Yep, that's right. We've just had an election.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

The Nintendo 2015 E3 Outlook (Updated May 19)

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA  - Lacking details that we'll fill in later.

For all the details regarding Nintendo's E3 plans check out their E3 minisite (e3.nintendo.com) and their explanation video below. 


For a summary:
  1. Nintendo World Championships (after a 25-year hiatus).
    1. Qualifiers May 30 at participating Best Buy retailers. Participating ones are unknown, but they'll be in major cities. You probably know if you're near one of those. Anticipate Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, one or two in Texas, and a southern Florida city wrongly representing the entire Southeastern United States. Update May 19: Information on the qualifiers here.
    2. The actual champion event round on June 14 that no one reading this will participate in, but you can watch it on Nintendo's Twitch channel.
  2. Digital Event June 16 (Tuesday) at 12 PM EST. In other words, same time and day of the week as last year.
  3. Treehouse Live @ E3 from June 16 through June 18. So same as last year.
  4. Nintendo Access: Mario Maker @ participating Best Buy retailers on June 17 (Wednesday, 4 PM to 9 PM local time) & June 20 (Saturday, 12 PM to 5 PM local time). Limited edition 30th anniversary Super Mario Bros. pins will also be distributed. Last year it was Super Smash Bros. For Wii U at Best Buy, and the year before that it was Mario Kart 8, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, Super Mario 3D World, and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze at Best Buy.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Splatoon Global Testfire Impressions

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Ludwig maintains that Splatoon is incredible.

Did you play Nintendo's Splatoon over the weekend? If you have a Wii U and you didn't try it even once, you're either totally unaware of what's going on with Nintendo (meaning you haven't been reading KoopaTV since we made sure you knew about it), you don't have a stable Internet connection, you're a bad person, or you work or something on Saturdays (which the Lord specifically said not to do). 

But for the rest of us, the Splatoon Global Testfire was amazing. AND I played all three times! And I want more. So does everyone else. But I'll have to wait until May 29th at the earliest, since that's when the game comes out and it's unlikely Nintendo will have further demos.

Why did Nintendo have this Testfire and why set it up like this? Nintendo did what a lot of other companies already do: They wanted to conduct a stress-test for their servers and double it as a marketing stunt. And by my experience, the stress-test succeeded. However, they needed to test it at all points in the day, hence why there were three tests: One for each part of the world (North America, Europe, Japan) separated by 7 hours. With the test itself being 1 hour, that's all 24 hours covered. 

They also needed the test to be concentrated and stacked with a ton of people, so they had a very limited one-hour time period. If it was three hours or the whole weekend then people might not have been so eager to play at the first minute the test opened until the last minute for it to close.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

KoopaTV: Two Years of Shocking Your Shell!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Shocking your shell and tossing it to hell. (And then getting arrested for streaking.)

I am very proud to announce that, today, May 12 2015, KoopaTV is now two years old. Proof right here.

On behalf of KoopaTV's staff, whether or not you've been following us from the beginning or you've recently started, we would like to thank you for all the joy you have given us these past two years.

And RawkHawk2010, in the words of Barack Hussein Obama, would like to say "#FourMoreYears". Amen to that. Vortexica would like to say, "We need our own domain name already." ...Yeah, probably. And Kamek proclaimed a few days ago, "We are not only journalists; we are people." (His personhood is taken to extremes as will be explained later this article.)


KoopaTV turns two 2 years old birthday anniversary Nintendo videogame blog commentary site website
*confetti*


I don't really need to explain what's happened over the past year. I mean, we have an About page with a timeline for that. But RawkHawk2010 has provided an audiovisual aid. It's not entirely in chronological order and isn't exhaustive, but it gives you a sense of just some of our original content over the past year.



...Uh... So I'm obviously Ludwig. Rawk is that nasty Mii (it's supposed to look like his hawkish physique). Vortexica is represented by Waluigi because, uh, he's showing his solidarity with Nigel Farage and UKIP after last week's election even though a KoopaTV staff photo-op was a totally inappropriate time to do so. (At least, that's what I think. Vortexica probably will give an explanation and analysis later this week or sometime shortly after.) And lastly, there is Kamek who removed his robe and looks like a normal Koopa Troopa. Then he Shell Tossed his shell and got arrested for streaking. (King Dad's municipality has some strict rules on moral behaviour. I'd say I was raised right.) Dude is totally unreliable with staying outta trouble, but I guess I'll keep him on the staff anyway.

What is reliable about KoopaTV is our strong reputation, delivery, and execution of premium and free quality original content imbued with truth and levity. And this whole past year, we've consistently published that content every weekday to keep you coming back for more. And we hope you keep coming back, 'cause we got new ideas and more content in the figurative Paratroopa's wings.

KoopaTV, of course, represents a greater movement. (Or maybe the whole movement is just us, I dunno.) Taking our videogame industry back from all the bad stuff that has been plaguing it. Fortunately, it's not all misery on KoopaTV, 'cause we sure as heck like to poke fun at the news and other events. We're one-of-a-kind and try to innovate everything we do.

Anyway, if you're a long-time KoopaTV player, you already know all that. And since you're a player and not just a viewer or reader, you'll wanna participate. That's where the KoopaTV Loyalty Program comes in, and is a great way to get your skin in the game.

It's better to keep that skin in the game rather than streak it all over Neo Bowser City.


KoopaTV hopes to continue on indefinitely and reach bigger and better heights  than ever before. With your help, KoopaTV can reach that! Share KoopaTV to everyone you know, and pat yourself on the shell for helping start-up a revolution. KoopaTV couldn't do it without you.


What else turned two years old that we like? The Wii U, half a year ago.
KoopaTV's article on its one-year anniversary is here.
Vortexica tries to explain his Waluigi-purple behaviour.
Vortexica's wish that KoopaTV gets its own domain name is granted!
KoopaTV has a third-year anniversary as well! Dedicated to King Bowser.
Waluigi's UKIP affiliation makes him a target for death.
King Bowser returns to help celebrate the four-year anniversary.
KoopaTV turns ripe for the five-year anniversary, which also mentions King Bowser.

Monday, May 11, 2015

George Zimmerman Shot By Right-Wing Gun Nut!?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Might even be affiliated with the Octarians.

Breaking news, y'all: Today, George Zimmerman was involved in some sort of weaponised altercation. (We care because KoopaTV covers every Zimmerman story in the news as part of our ZimmermanTV alter-ego.)

The plot twist? He was the one being shot at.

So a lot of these news sources get their clicks by saying there was another Zimmerman shooting, and the details talk about how he was the one being shot at. Well, we'll lay it up straight after doing research on the suspect and listening to the Lake Mary police's live conference.

Update later in the day: We said screw privacy and just gave the suspect's name in full.

George Zimmerman shot victim fire truck ambulance
Zimmerman being taken inside a firetruck masquerading as the ambulance.

Friday, May 8, 2015

Defending Kill the F*****?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - For its true message.

A company out of Los Angeles, California, Skaldic Games, recently caused a huge controversy over a game they tried to release on Valve's Steam Greenlight. Very controversial, and as such, we would like to issue a content warning for our younger audience concerning language. Hence the title-censorship that is sure to kill the search engine optimisation for the article.

Here's what Skaldic Games says about themselves:
"Skaldic Games is an independent video game developer from the Los Angeles area. We try to bring to life new games and apps with unique ideas."
Well, we definitely like new games with unique ideas.

The idea in question? Release a game called Kill the Faggot for free on Steam. You are tasked with shooting gays and trannies running across the screen while avoiding shooting normal people. This got instantaneous outrage and Valve deleted it.

Skaldic wrote a statement about it here

We wanna show you what we mean, but unfortunately, the YouTube video provided by Skaldic Games showing gameplay footage got deleted by YouTube for violating its Terms of Service.


Thursday, May 7, 2015

KoopaTV's Live Reactions to the Splatoon Direct!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Times for the Global Testfire included at the bottom.

Splatoon is personally my most anticipated game of 2015, so I'm totally pumped for the Nintendo Direct based on it!

We live-reacted to it. I'm Nintendork 13 13, RawkHawk2010 is RawkHawk2010, and Vortexica is breezinabout.

You can watch the whole Direct here while reading along with our reactions (pre-log banter ends at 10 AM):

 

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

The Dark Side of Nintendo's Virtual Console

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You like nostalgia? You stay there. Forever.

The Virtual Console was one of the Wii's selling points: Nintendo's whole back catalogue available for you to buy (with a great discounted price, too). This means we can finally play great cult games like EarthBound and buy 'em on-demand (which didn't actually happen until the Wii U came out). While there have been terrible releases on the Virtual Console (made worse with its drip-feed release schedule), overall, porting these old games to the new consoles is a net positive. The Virtual Console allows people to relive games or play 'em for the first time to allow them to get into new franchises, or even teach the young'ns what real gaming is all about.

Last week, the amazing game Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64 was released on the Wii U's Virtual Console, though you could have been playing it on the Wii's for years now, like I did to make my Let's Play of the game (without using badges!). The Wii port was one of my most highly-recommended games from the Club Nintendo catalogue (oh, and you can win it FOR FREE right here on KoopaTV: read here for more).


Virtual Console on Wii.
It's not even called the Virtual Console anymore, is it?

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

The Crimes of Mike Tyson

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The criminal history of the for-glory superstar.

With boxing still fresh on everyone's mind lately (the Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather boxing match brought out a lot of closet boxing fans), we'd like to note KoopaTV's special relationship with the Punch-Out!! series. We dedicated a full week of articles towards it and topped that off with the release of a whole videogame, Trayvon Tyson's Punch-Out!!, playable here. You can also watch a Let's Play of it here.

With those advertisements and that prefacing out of the way, we haven't talked a whole lot about the man who helped the game sell so well in America and gave it its unique fanbase: Mike Tyson himself. Mike Tyson was the famous heavyweight boxer who got into a ton of controversy because of his personal choices both in and out of the ring. A lot of that controversy came from his nature to commit acts of bad behaviour. While the Tyson star power helped sell Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! and made Nintendo millions of bucks, there was and still is an inherent ethical problem in branding it with the Mike Tyson name that will forever leave a very dark mark on Nintendo's history.

Darker than the black eye this dude got from Tyson.

Let's talk about it! 

Monday, May 4, 2015

KoopaTV's April 2015 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - April showers? Well, it was a success.

Did you know that April 2015 was KoopaTV's most-heavily-trafficked month in our history? I wanna hear from you, dear reader/viewer/player... did you experience traffic jams? Are they worse than Atlanta's or are they still pretty smooth? 

Either way, the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program is in full swing! The first round is extra long for some reason, so Round 1 is ending 11:59 PM EST on May 30. As of publishing, your top candidates for winning prizes (top 3 = win something) are as follows:
  1. Martino X — 36 points
  2. Samantha Lienhard — 30 points
  3. Jareditton — 20 points
  4. Ringabel Brave — 19 points
  5. Anthony Shaffer & Sam — 9 points each
And then there's everyone else below that. That said, it's absolutely still entirely mathematically possible for someone to enter starting today and win the contest (first place). In fact, it's not only possible, but practical. You can get up to three points per day just by making one awesome comment per day on any KoopaTV article. (Read the rules for full details and other ways to earn points.) You can end this with over 70 points and dominate first place. Just sayin'.

We have over 500 articles published, so finding interesting stuff to comment on isn't hard at all! That's because KoopaTV turns two years old in May!

If you haven't heard the news, Ludwig got his Facebook back. Read that updated article. The KoopaTV Facebook is fortunately now eviscerated, though a debate rages on in KoopaTV's AIM Blast over whether or not we should make another attempt at a Facebook presence. You can join the debate by joining our staff!

You can also make determinations on our top five recommended articles every month. The following is a chronologically-ordered list of articles published during April 2015! Read and experience these for sure!
  1. Announcing KoopaTV BLK™
  2. 200cc — Death of F-Zero? 
  3. Jareditton presents: Let's Play Trayvon Tyson's Punch-Out!!
  4. An Unbehooving Truth
  5. Play Free-To-Play Every Day
There are a lot of other articles from this month that didn't make it to that list, and it's obvious why: KoopaTV is big on article quality, so everything is worth reading.

So with our second anniversary coming up next week, you better believe we're committed to bringing you truth and levity every weekday!

Oh, shortly after publishing this, I made a new tab called Games. This is so you can see all of our Games in one page.


Stay tuned to KoopaTV for more magnificent writing and art on the videogame industry! Share with your friends wherever they may be, even on Facebook!


For last month's newsletter, click here.
For next month (May 2015), click here.
For last year's, click here.
For next year's (April 2016), click here.

Friday, May 1, 2015

Playtonic's Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter: Undisguised Success?!

By RAWKHAWK2010 - Mayday! Mayday! They're running out of stretch goals!

April showers bring May flowers, as the saying goes. The past month has been filled with earthquakes, riots, Tax Day, and all manners of other catastrophe, but May has arrived and it seems to be off to a pretty good start. One marked by the full reveal of Playtonic Games' Yooka-Laylee.

Meet Yooka and Laylee!
(In no way related to failed homework project "Ukulele Pinball", or at least we hope not.)