Robert E. Stoutland and Confederate Memorial Day

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Memorialising our... predecessors.

You might think this is weird, but KoopaTV's staff has been trying to do a lot of themed Pokémon stuff over the years. Like, "Have the eight 2012 Republican presidential candidates be the eight gym leaders and figure out their types." Or "What eight Pokémon are closest to Mega Man Robot Masters?" (Seriously, a Mega Man-Pokémon crossover is just so obvious.) (Also as obvious: One of the answers is Magmortar.)

Or, in this case, "What would be a representative Pokémon team for the Confederate States of America?"

Since Gen 5 was released with Pokémon Black and Pokémon White (their names had no bearing on our decisions), we definitely settled on Stoutland as Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

Robert E. Stoutland by Rawk.

Over the years, we got some other ideas for the other slots. Well, it turns out that long before I made the Confederate Flag out of Super Mario Bros. sprites, I actually requested another videogame representation of the flag. See below:

Play CAPTURE THE CONFEDERATE FLAG here!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - On your browser, for free, on KoopaTV! (Press-kit at the bottom, advertisement video even further below, game embed after page-break.)

You've waited a year since our last game, but the time for patience is finally over. You can at last enjoy yourselves by playing KoopaTV's third videogame! What a great way to close out 2015, and shame to all the other gaming sites that have already declared their game of the year for 2015. This may be the last game to be released in the year 2015 (and in some timezones we're in 2016 already), but at KoopaTV, we've intended it to be a contender for the best.

We would like to introduce you to Capture the Confederate Flag. This is a game thematically inspired by all of the confederate flag controversies earlier in 2015. It'd be cool if the game could release immediately during that fallout, but game development takes time and can't take advantage of current events.

We're aware that in the digital space, the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia is being censored from many gaming portals. We hope that won't happen to our game for its tasteful portrayal of Southern heritage.

Capture the Confederate Flag features characters and themes that avid KoopaTV fans may recognise, such as Robert E. Stoutland and Confederate Metagross. It also uses the Stars and Firebars sprite I made over two and a half years ago that I thought was clever enough to be its own article. (Though it wasn't the only article that day.) We've also seen one of the villains. So let's just embed the game already:

War Between The States: Apple vs. Common Sense

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Even history is censored.

And you really thought that Rawk was just connecting unrelated concepts in his article on the Confederate Flag and Rare Ltd. on Tuesday? No, the ongoing debate and controversy over the Confederate Flag is intricately related to the videogame industry.

How? Well, just look at Apple and their new move on their App Store:

"Apple appears to have joined the growing list of companies removing merchandise depicting the Confederate battle flag, pulling a number of Civil War games from its App Store."

One such game was Ultimate General: Gettysburg from Game Labs LLC. According to Game Labs, the game is the

"most accurate, historical, playable reference of the Battle of Gettysburg. All historical commanders, unit composition and weaponry, key geographical locations to the smallest streams or farms are recreated in our game's battlefield."

And out of the desire to be accurate and true to history, Game Labs has rejected Apple's consolation of "if you remove the flag from the game you can put the game back on the App Store."

All CAPTURE THE CONFEDERATE FLAG Voice Acting, Sound Effects, PLUS...!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...Plus the final boss music. I promised it.

It has been a great three months on the trail, promoting KoopaTV's latest videogame, Capture the Confederate Flag. It's received many accolades from people, including KoopaTV's Best PC Game 2015 and Best New Character 2015. I heard it's fun, too.

I think enough time has passed that it's safe to dump spoiler-laden content onto you.

If you're comfortable with that, then keep going with the article. (I put the click here for more break BEFORE video embeds if you're viewing this article without being directly linked to it!)

If you're not, play the game by clicking on the first hyperlink in this article.

There is nearly NINE MINUTES of content here. That's much higher than any of our other games!

The Right to Freedom

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm not really talkin' 'bout Starmen and Fire Bars.

Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA-05) is running for the special Senate election in his state of Massachusetts, thanks to now-former Senator (and failed presidential candidate) John Kerry becoming the Secretary of State. This guy is a damn dinosaur and has been in Congress since the 1970s.

So he tried to hold a fundraiser with Georgia's Ben Jones (a fellow Democrat and famous person), which got canceled by Markey because the Congressman is offended by the Confederate Flag, and Mr. Jones is an avid defender of that symbol.

So why am I writing about this? Because I'm offended by Ed Markey being offended! Mr. Markey stated,

 Confederate relics are highly offensive and should not be displayed in public settings, period.

CAPTURE THE CONFEDERATE FLAG: The Advertisement Video!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The advertisement video for Capture the Confederate Flag.

Not convinced to play Capture the Confederate Flag yet? Or biding your time? Perhaps you've already played it. Whatever your situation, we are pleased to announce the official Capture the Confederate Flag advertisement video! It'd be a trailer, except it's coming out after the game's release. Trailers are only before. I think.

Here's the script:

Capture the Confederate Flag Strategy Guide Part 1: The Basics

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Game mechanics and a little strategy.

It has been almost a year since KoopaTV's 2015 PC game, Capture the Confederate Flag, came out, which you can play here for free. It is a game with a lot of depth to it and a lot of player freedom, which is unlike the previous two games for KoopaTV we've produced.

As a result of its relative complexity, I think it's deserving of a strategy guide detailing all of that. We're going to start with THE BASICS here, including what the objective is, along with controls and mechanics. This series will continue after this part, and this part gets more spoiler-y as time goes on.

Here is Part 2 of the Capture the Confederate Flag Strategy Guide, featuring a tour through the states, and the Secret Power move that goes with them.

If you haven't played the game yet, you probably really should get around to doing that. Not sure what you're waiting for.
 

Interactive User Interfaces... Helping You LEARN!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Is this a lesson I could apply to Capture the Confederate Flag?

You know, at every opportunity you can get — and there's a lot of opportunities out there thanks to how great and open the game development community is — you ought to read developers' experiences making their games. A lot of the time, especially for smaller developers, they're pretty happy to just tell you their stories. They do this not only 'cause, hey, stories are great, but also so fellow developers can learn and we can all make better games together. They're called postmortems.

Juicy Beast Studios, the maker of Toto Temple Deluxe (available on the Wii U for $10!), failed to really make a profit on releasing it for all three of the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, and the Wii U. I didn't help that since I didn't buy the game either, but that's besides the point. Their developer didn't have any Miiverse presence, so honestly, I didn't even know Toto Temple Deluxe existed or anything about it. I... don't really actively check the Nintendo eShop in my spare time. Maybe I should. I hear it has awesome music.

“[W]e weren’t really able to get a featured spot on any the [SIC] storefronts, except for Nintendo who actually featured us on both the American and European front pages. Thanks Nintendo!”

The game is multiplayer-only (besides bots), up to four players. It's frenetic and exciting. You control your character to get the goat first and keep it away from the other players. Here's... not quite the trailer, but it's more informative, better, and way more-watched than the launch trailer:

(...Hm...TotoTV is a KoopaTV competitor.)

There's something really interesting about how the user interface was developed, though. Juicy Beast published an article on just that here, and I'd like to delve into that and use Capture the Confederate Flag as an example of the design philosophy at play... or, to be accurate, what I SHOULD'VE considered when making Capture the Confederate Flag. (I won't patch it now or anything, though.)

Compatibility Testing and PC Gaming Pain

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Testing is hard enough. Testing for gaming computers is a nightmare.

Once upon a time, or about three weeks ago, KoopaTV released Capture the Confederate Flag on the PC to the world. It won KoopaTV's Best PC Game of 2015 award shortly after. Unfortunately, the game was met with protest. Not over its subject matter, but over its...system requirements? Detractors began calling it “Capture the Confederate Lag”, because nowhere on the game page does it give system requirements.

As a result, people with really bad computers (such as off-the-shelf laptops) didn't have the best experience they could have with the game. This made people believe that the game was bad, and people across the Internet began to question if KoopaTV's Game of THAT Year decision-making process was... rigged.

Most assuredly not! But people have their doubts, and it stems from their compatibility issues.

This is a problem for anyone that develops games for the PC!

Capture the Confederate Flag Strategy Guide Part 2: Secret Power & The States

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Learn everything you need to learn about the Confederate States of America!

Now that you know the basics of KoopaTV's free hit PC game, Capture the Confederate Flag, it's time we take a deep dive into the specifics of the fully-explorable world contained therein.

We're going to go state-by-state, telling you what's there, and what your Secret Power move does! As we mentioned before, Secret Power's effects depend on where you're using it. We really wanted to highlight the differences of each state, and provide some educational content as well. So, there was a lot of design and research that went into these Secret Power moves. Secret Power may be Robert E. Lillipup's only attack, but it's very flexible.

I want to state ahead of time that all Secret Power moves have the basic properties of being 60% their size as Lillipup, 80% their normal size as Herdier, 100% their normal size as Stoutland, and 120% their normal size when you're riding Metagross. The result is that it's easier to hit opponents with the bigger hitbox. Also, in general, all of the moves are cancelable, meaning you can cancel the move's animation by pressing the space-bar again to start the move again.

Washington D.C.

Borders

Virginia to the west.

Features

This is where the Confederate Flag is being held. You'll need to continually return here throughout the game.

Sometimes, Robert E. Lee's casket will appear before the flag does. By walking up to it, you'll trigger a short cutscene, and something will happen, be it evolution or picking up a particularly important item.

Enemies

None, although Hillary Clinton will start following you from here, so you better leave soon.

Secret Power Move:

Name: Powerless.

Picture:

“Go back to Dixie you mutt.” Lillipup in Washington D.C.

Effects: You'll trigger a voice that says, “Go back to Dixie you mutt.” Nothing happens otherwise.

Base Damage: 0.

Evolution Differences: None. There's a different voice that plays if you're riding Metagross, but this can only happen in the most difficult ending to get.

Explanation: Robert's power derives from being within the South. When outside of it, he is out of his element and is effectively powerless.

Symbols of Stigma: a RARE Story

By RAWKHAWK2010 - She's got stigmas like you wouldn't believe~

As has been made clear in the past few days, select dudes were waiting with bated breath for someone like the Charleston church charger to come along. Not because they were in any hurry to feel sympathy for the victims or their families, but because it would incur a massive out-pour of guilt for said opportunists to jump upon like a goat on a hobo, so that they could achieve their own insidious ends and get everything banned/stigmatized/dead that they don't personally like.

And it appears to be working, beginning with total annihilation of the Confederate flag. Regarding whether the flag should remain at the Charleston capital after appearing in photos with Roof, Governor Nikki Haley said no, Mitt Romney said no, Jeb Bush said no, and even Lindsey Graham said no, which means he just lost the few 2016 votes he might have actually had and will now be performing even more shittily in the Republican Presidential Primary Debate Super Contest than originally predicted. Not to mention that Wal-Mart has opted to pull all Confederate flag-branded items from their stores for being "offensive", despite the fact that just about everything sold in a Wal-Mart is "offensive" to one sense or another (from the ghastly produce to the third-world bar soap).

As the creator of such classics as "Rebel Crossing" and "I Wish I Was In Stoutland", I obviously won't take this sitting down. Well, I might, but I'm sure as hell still going to write about it. Because in defense of the Confederate flag, there's a timely story to be told here. A story about another powerful and beautiful symbol spat on and ridiculed by the "writers of history", which at long last Rose Again as it always knew it would.

The symbol of Rare.

KoopaTV 2015 GOTY Awards!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - With other categories as well. A lot of other categories.

We got the whole Internet eagerly awaiting our ceremonial awards for 2015. What was the best game of 2015? What was the funniest KoopaTV article? Who is our favourite guest contributor?

You can and should check out and remind yourself about the nominations here.

Without further ado, let's start the ceremony. Oooh, let's put the page-break in a really enticing place. You definitely gotta click to see the rest of this article now.

Videogame-related Awards for 2015

Riding on Stoutland in Pokémon Sun and Moon? And Tapu Koko revealed.

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And a lot of other stuff.

As I said would happen, today The Pokémon Company International has a bunch of news regarding brand-new Alola Pokémon! ...Well, most are brand new.

Here, watch their video:

And check out the official website. That video didn't have Rockruff (a rock-type Lillipup) or Komala (a Cubchoo that wiped its nose, stole Timburr's log, and went to sleep. Don't believe me? Look towards the bottom of this article). 

They also formally revealed Tapu Koko, which astute E3-watchers and KoopaTV readers may remember as that deity the starting island people had a festival for.

How Similar Are Splatoon and Paper Mario: Color Splash?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...Uh... not on any serious level.

I remember writing sometime early on in KoopaTV's history that the site will have a larger purpose than merely being a vehicle to communicate Nintendo's marketing schemes. Well, guess we've shamelessly changed attitudes since then. Though, in my defence, you guys request this sort of thing, with a request coming in for me to give my analysis on this tweet from the Nintendo of America Twitter:

If you like #Splatoon, you’ll love #PaperMario Color Splash! Here are just a few reasons why: https://t.co/3DittQInSO pic.twitter.com/nPJhRFupDV

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 28, 2016

My task is to go over the points that Nintendo makes in the following infographic, which I personally believe to be a piece of self-aware humour, but I'll take it seriously for this article:

Tear Down the Statues—Replace With Bowser Statues Instead!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Superior monuments.

Once upon a time, in KoopaTV's first month (so expect Early Installment Weirdness), I wrote an article about people keeping Confederate States of America-era flags up. I made the point that the United States of America is guilty of many of the sins (plus more!) that the Confederacy was, yet people proudly fly the USA flag but disapprove of flying the CSA flag. My point was that it's either okay to fly both flags, or it shouldn't be okay to fly either. My intention was the former—but the latter is also logically consistent, so that is also acceptable.

At the time and for a while since, I've been bashed for this line of thinking, but it turns out that horseshoe theory is real and many years later, people have come to agree with me. Not only are protestors/rioters (inspired from the death of George Floyd) removing Confederate/pro-slavery statues and monuments, but they are also destroying American ones as well; even pro-Union/anti-slavery monuments. Even George Washington! They also tried to topple the Emancipation Memorial featuring Abraham Lincoln, and I'm infamous for my dislike of that guy, in a famous article comparing Abraham Lincoln to Mad King Ashnard. For the same reasons, by the way, that the protestors dislike Lincoln.

I also support the destruction/removal of the Mario-featured Mt. Rushmore, like some of these protestors (and Native Americans) do.

Therefore, I'm actually supportive of tearing down those American and Confederate statues. People against that claim that statues are necessary for people to learn history, as if the presence of a statue has a knowledge-boosting area-of-effect on the population of whatever town it's in. If the town doesn't have a statue about a given topic, then I guess the residents will never be able to know about that topic? Not like Wikipedia exists. Probably does a better job of teaching than looking at a statue and reading a plaque, anyway.

However, there are much better alternatives in statue manufacturing out there. Take a look at what Koopa Kingdom has accomplished with our momentous monuments:

Eiji Aonuma Versus Developer Ideologies

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - But I LIKE using games for propaganda!

KoopaTV sometimes pretends that The Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma doesn't exist. If you search him up, we basically never mention him. His only real reference was with regards to his video message that The Legend of Zelda on Wii U would be delayed. He's probably the most low-key guy at Nintendo in proportion to his influence and position.

In an interview with Aonuma and the British gaming magazine GamesMaster, Aonuma stated,

“I haven’t and won’t be trying to put any message or meaning into the [Zelda] games. [...] Occasionally I receive messages from fans telling me how playing Zelda games has changed their lives. While of course this makes me incredibly happy to hear, I feel a great sense of responsibility as well, so part of me feels that developers putting their own ideologies in games is kind of scary.”

Of course, developers put their own ideologies into games all the time. It's become the norm at this point. Whether it be the ideology that abortion clinics should be plentiful and easy-to-access, the ideology that gun ownership among females should go up, or the ideology that Ron Paul is awesome, there is literally an entire sub-industry within gaming (“serious games”) that tries to persuade people of whatever message the developer/developer's client is pushing.

KoopaTV's 2015 GOTY Nominations!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And other categories.

These were decided and talked about in our [Koopa Keep] AOL Instant Messenger Blast. Behold!

The déjà vu from years past is intentional. (To be eligible, those running have to start their existence in America from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015.)

And just so you remember, that stands for "Game of THAT Year". That's the KoopaTV touch.

There is no “Worst KoopaTV Comment” of 2015 because, uh, y'all were actually good this year. I think the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program got most people to want to comment non-anonymously, which resulted in people not commenting total trash because they would be putting their name to it. OR after being around for so long, everyone who hates us has us blocked already. We may be one of the most blocked websites on the Internet, then!

But yeah, this isn't just about gaming, but also ourselves. 'cause we're art to be recognised and applauded, too.

KoopaTV.org's Game of THAT Year 2015!
Nominations! And other categories!

Digitised Manuals Means Less People Read Them

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Putting the environment ahead of the player.

All of the videogame publishers (if you can find a counter-example go ahead) have gone ahead and eliminated physical instruction booklets. Now on all the big videogame consoles and handhelds, if you buy a new physical copy of a game, all you get is the card/disk and a health warning or something. You might also get an expired Pokémon Omega Ruby/Pokémon Alpha Sapphire Special Demo code and other advertisements. But nothing on the game you bought and how to play it.

Here's a statement from Microsoft as to why this is the case:

“As of 2012, Microsoft no longer includes printed manuals for most Xbox games. This change allows us to improve the environmental impact of our products and saves you the need to manage additional materials.” 

Meanwhile, a "JM Garcia" from Sony's PlayStation Blog has these contradictory quotes about the digitialisation of instruction manuals (while advertising the PlayStation's repository of digital manuals, Docs for PlayStation):

“If you’re like me, you don’t like having to search through a paper instruction manual [...] Docs launched alongside PS4 last November and it has replaced printed manuals for first-party PlayStation titles, as well as select third-party games.”

So because this random guy doesn't like using the table of contents in an instruction manual, they'll eliminate the option altogether and instead put that very same table of contents and structure in an exclusively digital format. ...Morons. Let's hear from someone else.

Capture the Confederate Flag Strategy Guide Part 3: Boss Rush!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You thought returning the flags to every capital was the final step? You gotta defend them.

You have learned the basics of what it takes to succeed in KoopaTV's in-house flash game, Capture the Confederate Flag. You then learned the peculiar attributes of each unique state in the fully-explorable, interconnected world of the Southern United States.

You have evolved from a Lillipup to a Herdier to a Stoutland. However, Robert E. Stoutland's job is not over yet. You may have bested Hillary Clinton's devious scheme to keep the Confederate Flags locked away in the Washington D.C. museum, but one man has returned from the grave to undo all of your hard work, and subjugate the South forever.

Abraham Lincoln!

Abraham Lincoln summons his own Pokémon, his Braviary, to eliminate the threat of Southern pride once and for all. However, Robert E. Stoutland has his own Pokémon to ride: Metagross!

What follows is an epic battle taking place in every state in Capture the Confederate Flag, ultimately ending in some place that doesn't even seem to be on this Earth. Somewhere that's missed G-d's grace. We'll get to that at the end of this guide, but first, you must survive this boss rush! We'll tell you what new tricks Braviary learns in every state, and how to handle them. And, unlike the last guide, this part of the game is totally linear. That means the order of the states is scripted.

Stars and Firebars

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This is contrary to yesterday's sub-title.

I quickly realized defending the Confederate States of America was akin to defending Koopa Kingdom: Both are dismissed as evil — without debate — by their foes, who enjoy mainstream popular support. So why not actually do some sprite work? 

Beautiful, huh?