The Division 2 Doesn't Divide Critics: Except Variety

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Well, that's why they call it Variety...

Have you read Matt Paprocki's review on Variety.com of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's The Division 2? Well, it's quite... interesting. You won't learn much about The Division 2 (rather unfortunate, since it's the first The Division 2 review I've actually read), but you will learn about how frustrated Mr. Paprocki is about Fox News host Tucker Carlson being on TV and defending conservative values and gun rights.

It's a kooky review, but Variety is culturally important (I didn't know they wrote about games—though games are part of the culture, so it makes sense) in the United States. And, importantly for the videogame industry, they have a seat as a Metacritic-approved reviewer.

The scores are positive for almost everyone... and Variety is the only negative one.
For a game about division, that's pretty good.

That means it's worth giving some attention to this review, since it affects the industry.

The reason for the review's... unorthodox style, according to the writer, Matt Paprocki:

Google Announced Stadia: The Cloud-based Streaming “Future of Gaming”

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - If this is the future, I don't regret picking Team Past.

At this year's Game Developers Conference, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai (not to be confused with Pichu), went in front of all of the game developers in attendance, declared he doesn't play games much, and then announced the Stadia. “A game platform for everyone.” It's not a console. It's a whole set of data centres that you can access from any Chrome browser-enabled device, be it a laptop or a smartphone.

Google has gone from organising the world's information and making that information accessible for everyone, to “making technology accessible for everyone.”

The whole presentation is here. I watched it all, and the rest of the article will be summarising what I find to be the key points, as well as key omissions:

Google makes a point to repeatedly classify the gaming industry as three groups of people: game players, game watchers, and game makers. Interesting that they put passive watchers on the same plane of importance as the people that make up the supply-demand relationship in the industry. And since it's Google, you can bet that the watchers all happen to be on YouTube. Not, say, Twitch or Mixer or DLive or any of those. That's important, since their use case is you watching a YouTube video about a game, and then being asked if you want to play the game right then and there, without a download. (Or without paying, apparently.)

Speaking of people, the gaming industry vets (since Mr. Pichai isn't a gamer) behind the Stadia are Phil Harrison (who Rawk used to stand with back when he was part of Microsoft) and Jade Raymond (former executive at Ubisoft), who is now the head of the new first party gaming studio that Google has opened to make Stadia exclusives: Stadia Games and Entertainment.

Nindies Showcase Spring 2019 Live Reactions!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Live in the sense that we're reacting to it hours after it aired. Still new to us!

We were just thinking, after publishing the guest post about Lord Winklebottom Investigates (which has 6 days left on its Kickstarter campaign), KoopaTV really should engage the indie gaming community more. Well, then Nintendo announced that they'd be showing a Nindies showcase today. Let's try it out by reacting to its contents as they happen! (Or as we watch them after the fact. 12 PM is a bad time.)

Here's the 25-minute Nindies (Nintendo Indies) Showcase of Spring 2019. Live-reacting to it are myself and Rawk. Wendy gets an emoji's worth of commentary at the end.

Splatoon 2: Free Demo, second Nintendo Switch Online trial, 20% off

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's a special demo... it's not a test!

Right now until the 25th of March, Nintendo is offering an incredible and free offer that you can convert into a purchase-worthy discount: Splatoon 2 has a free, non-barebones demo of Turf War, Ranked Match, and the most important mode of all, Salmon Run. If you don't have Nintendo Switch Online, it comes with its own 7-day trial of it—independent of the already-existing 7–9-day free trial of Nintendo Switch Online.

Why is Nintendo offering this? 

1. Only one in four Nintendo Switch owners own Splatoon 2, but it was 1 in ~2.7 Wii U owners who owned Splatoon. There's definitely more potential for people to buy Splatoon 2
2. Nintendo is on a quest to have more people subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online. That's a strategic goal for them
3. This isn't anything new. They did a way-post-launch demo of Splatoon before on the Wii U, though they still called that a Testfire Demo. (That also predicted that Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election)

The game is better than the official promotional art implies.

I encourage you to take advantage of this limited-time opportunity. A few tips and caveats...

• Story mode is not in the demo. Story mode/single player, viewed as a tutorial, is how new players are supposed to learn the controls and basic skills that would serve them well on the battlefield
• Use the map feature often in Turf and Ranked to know what's going on and what areas need your attention. It's not available in Salmon Run
• If you hear a Booyah!, please return the Booyah!
• Use a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller and set motion controls in the settings menu to your preferred sensitivity setting. Integrating motion controls is far superior than not doing so

Enjoy Splatoon 2 for free while you can! (And if you really like it, you can buy it for 20% off during the week the demo is available.) I'll be trying to get anti-Splatoon grouch RawkHawk2010 to give Salmon Run a try after he disliked the Turf War-only Splatoon 2 Global Testfire so much.


While you shouldn't expect much in the way of more updates to Splatoon 2 if you're just now buying it, the game already has more than $60 worth of content. Certainly more than $48. And it's even better if you use the savings to also buy the Octo Expansion! Ludwig hasn't actually downloaded the demo for the purposes of confirming assumptions made in this article, since he already owns the full game and administers the KoopaTV Family Group for Nintendo Switch Online.


Splatoon 2 already has a history of substantial demos, like the demo Splatfest they did.

Fire Emblem Support System and the Inhumanity of Networking

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Just how much do you truly value your network of people?

I was reading Peggy Noonan's latest DECLARATIONS column in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, about the college admissions scandal going on in the news. (You can read it for yourself behind this paywall.) 

One of the morals of the column ended up being that you should strive to make friends, as opposed to just “networking”. Networking is a term that Ms. Noonan doesn't define, but it's commonly understood to mean that you're making shallow, quantity-based connections with random people you meet at events or gatherings, with the purpose of possibly being able to use them “as commodities” (her words) for your personal benefit later. (Such as getting a new job.)

How do you connect this to games? That's the whole philosophy of the Support mechanic in the Fire Emblem franchise! Supports have evolved over time and are appealing to the fans for a variety of reasons, which I'll cover in this article. How well does each Fire Emblem Support structure hew to the friends-not-networks philosophy?

Fortnite EULA Update: You Don't Need an Ace Attorney to Understand It

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You just need a parent, basic reading comprehension, or KoopaTV!

Back in the days last year when you could use the Nintendo Switch's Video Capture on Epic Games's Fortnite, I wrote a scathing article about how much I dislike Fortnite. Topping the article was a Video Captured 30-second YouTube clip of the end-user license agreement and how bad it was visually presented. I didn't think that video would get any views outside of that article. And until today, I was right. But now this video has nearly 6,000 views and counting.
 

I'm not asking you to watch that video. There's nothing interesting there. What is interesting is the comments section of that video, which now has over 100 comments on it. If that was on KoopaTV's comments section, all of them would be in the running for our monthly “worst comment of the month” award in our newsletters. 

I'll get to why the video suddenly has views and comments in a moment, and explain what is really going on in case you're concerned for your Fortnite existence (scroll down for a summary of the game's EULA written in plain English!), but among the worst comments that represent the fear in people's hearts:

Hawking and Vortex: The Pi Day Parting

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Rip in Pisces.

I haven't looked for any, but I haven't come across any tributes to Stephen Hawking, the famed British theoretical physicist, who died a year ago on March 14, 2018. And I definitely haven't seen any tributes to former British KoopaTV staffer Vortexica, who we last saw on March 14, 2018. Coincidence? Well, here were his last words last year on this date, never-before revealed in public:

“Oh hey, looks like I've got fans on KoopaTV. How nice.
Also, RIP Stephen Hawking. :vul_cry:
I never did finish reading his book...” 

The second-to-last time any of us had heard from him was his last public appearance, KoopaTV's live reactions to the March 8, 2018 Nintendo Direct. Yeah, he had a week absence there, only to appear after Stephen Hawking die, only to never appear again.

As for why Vortexica said he had fans on KoopaTV, I was telling him the results of the KoopaTV Feedback Form Part XV, where Charssie said that Vortex was his favourite staffer as a person and as a writer, and Nandin said Vortex was his favourite staffer as a writer. Vortex was touched by that... and yet we still never saw him again.

Since then, Brexit has been a complete disaster, and I'm saying that as someone who didn't believe the United Kingdom leaving the European Union was inevitably always a bad idea. Brexit itself made Vortexica feel “apprehensive” but also “hopeful for the future.” Not hopeful enough to stick around with us.

I wrote an article on behalf of the staff about Vortexica being decommissioned, which is when we considered him legally deceased. Since then, we've learned absolutely nothing about his whereabouts, if he has any, or if he was actually killed. I proposed it might've been the work of Cappy (who hasn't gotten a mention in 2019 yet?!), and the whole “Vortex is in danger!” story arc of early 2018 was based around Cappy being interested in the United Kingdom, and then infiltrating it during the royal wedding.

As for Stephen Hawking, I wonder if there's a Rawk Hawk pun somewhere there. What would've been more appropriate: Vortex leaving because Mr. Hawking is British, or Rawk leaving because the Hawk King is gone?

...Well, that's not a good question to ask if I want to retain staff. I'll ask this instead: which of Stephen Hawking's many books do you think Vortexica never finished reading?

Ludwig mentioned the Feedback Form series in this article, so he's pleased to announce that you can now fill out KoopaTV Feedback Form Part XVIII and KoopaTV Quiz Part XVIII! Just go here for the links! This will probably be the last RIP Vortex article on KoopaTV, so don't enjoy it. Because that's sad.

Dropping Your Keys

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Literal, physical keys. Not Steam keys or anything like that.

Remember that tangential concluding paragraph at the end of my oh-crap-I-still-have-Wii-Points end of the Wii Shop Channel article? Nah, you probably didn't read it or get that far, because who cares about the Wii Shop Channel?

Well, the point there is my bit about my Wii U lanyard and how I'm discontinuing it as the last vestige of my Wii U usage. That was a bad idea. Since then, I went and lost my car key. Since I'm not an evil scumbag, I won't go buy a Nintendo Labo Vehicle Kit and get one of those Toy-Con master keys to hijack any vehicle possible. Let's just say, to satisfy the KoopaTV vehicle philosophy quota of the month, that planes not having keys to lose is still a great advantage of why planes are better than cars.

My car key was just a single key not attached to anything, since I de-attached the Wii U lanyard. No key ring or anything. I don't carry around other keys since I have nothing else that is kept locked. That makes it really easy to lose because it lacks a distinct and noticeable physical presence.

I'm not the only guy who has key-losing problems. Check out this Team Rocket Grunt in Pokémon FireRed and Pokémon LeafGreen who is supposed to be guarding the LIFT KEY that opens the elevator leading to Giovanni's office in Team Rocket's Hideout.

Splatfest: Would you rather be a KNIGHT or a WIZARD?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - My answer may surprise you, and my reasoning may convince you.

This may seem like a question of fantasy to you, but it's real for me. And personal.

This month's Splatoon 2 Splatfest, taking place this weekend on a worldwide basis, asks...

“Which would you rather be? A knight or a wizard?”

It's important to note that it's not asking which of knight or wizard you currently are, but which you would rather be. The use of the word “rather” indicates that, if given the opportunity to change your life, which option would you pick to do so?

You may note that the fact I emphasised that probably hints my choice. Before I get to that, I really did just want to make the question clear. This article isn't just about my opinion—but you may find it useful as well.

...I also suppose that my opening sentence is inherently wrong, because “rather” questions are fantasy and not reality, by definition.

President Donald John Trump Finally Takes Daylight Savings Time Position

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This has happened only because we at KoopaTV first asked him! Forever ago.

In the footer of yesterday's annual Daylight Savings Time article (which is a must-read if you want to know how Mario, of Mario's Time Machine fame, gave the dreaded inspiration of Daylight Savings Time to Founding Father Benjamin Franklin), I implied there wouldn't be an article today. But something magical happened today that I had to write about it.

President Donald John Trump, after not responding for two years (and not responding to the follow-up, either), has finally replied to KoopaTV, and the world, on his Daylight Savings Time position! 

Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2019

“Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!” he tweeted on Monday morning. Now, we asked him in our letters to demonstrate leadership in Congress to get Daylight Savings Time abolished, as opposed to made permanent, but that's at least still better than the status quo of changing the clocks twice a year and engaging in biannual time travel.

That said, his tweet is just a tweet. There's no policy push behind it yet. President Donald John Trump writes inane tweets all the time and most go absolutely nowhere. 

Fortunately, there is hope coming from more reliable places. Meet Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. He has a lot of policy proposals that I'm sure we'll talk about later this year when the debates happen. Among them is also a call to make Daylight Savings Time permanent, for the express purpose of preventing more time-switching: