Irrationality: Gillette and So-Called “Toxic Masculinity”

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Everyone is up in ARMS, and there's nothing worse than that.

All of a sudden, venerable American shaving company Gillette got into the news over a commercial they made. In their over 100 years in business, it might be the most attention-grabbing commercial they've ever put out, which probably means it was a great success.

Gillette markets bladed razors to mostly men and sometimes women, with their slogan being “The Best a Man Can Get”, created 30 years ago. In honour of the 30th anniversary of that slogan (having their anniversaries matter is their first mistake; though I suppose going 87 years without a notable or existing slogan is chronologically the first mistake before that), Gillette released this commercial (pretentiously referred to as a “short film”) known as “We Believe.”

What does Gillette believe in? Well, here's the embed of the commercial. I want you to, if you haven't already, watch the whole thing without any preconceived notions.

Just to make sure that you're not mishearing something, or if the video gets deleted or you're not allowed to listen to audio from where you're reading this article, here is the video's OFFICIAL transcript. You'll notice nowhere is the phrase “toxic masculinity” used by the Gillette narrator, unlike in the title of this article.

What Is A Good Game Purchase?

By WENDY O. KOOPA - Considering Purchases...

Atlas was the first game I ever refunded since I started playing on PC. I have never refunded anything else, considering all of the digital platforms I have bought my games on. Steam, Humble Bundle, GOG to name for example...

You can really see how often I go to Steam Support.

So this got me thinking, what made me super picky on the games I buy now?

NSMBUD is a Dud, BIS is the Bes'

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - (That title is going to be awful for search engines.)

Today on January 11 2019 Nintendo is having TWO releases in the Mario franchise: New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch (formerly New Super Mario Bros. U on the Wii U... and technically New Super Luigi U as well, but that game is only remembered for being the shitposting board on Miiverse and shitposting isn't included in the Switch version), and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey on the Nintendo 3DS, formerly Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story on the Nintendo DS. Clearly, Nintendo hasn't stopped their porting strategies. While the Nintendo Switch receiving Wii U ports is extremely common, the 3DS getting DS ports is more rare but not unheard of, given backwards compatibility.

While hopefully Super Mario Maker (especially if that gets ported too) makes “original” (if you can call them that to begin with) New Super Mario Bros. series titles cease to exist. Or maybe there is no direct alternative. I've been sick of them even with a 6-year absence. There are so many better platformers out there.

I'm saying this even though I'm in New Super Mario Bros. U (and its allegedly “Deluxe” form that doesn't add anything besides a new playable character in Toadette that makes the game easier if you use them, like the port of another Wii U platformer that is much better than New Super Mario Bros. U).

But I'm also in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey — and without ever being in the original Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. Now THAT is a significant addition to the game.

“Ludwig,” you begin to ask, “if you were born as Toadette and not as Ludwig Von Koopa, you'd be saying the exact opposite in terms of how you feel about the two games being released today!”

Splatoon 2 Family vs. Friends Splatfest: White Ink Was A Bad Idea

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Gold ink, too. That whole Splatfest was a disgrace.

The first weekend of 2019 featured two things: KoopaTV's staff deliberating over the Game of THAT Year 2018 nominees (moreso the KoopaTV article awards than the games), and the Family vs. Friends holidays Splatfest. This article is about the results of that Splatfest, as well as the actual Splatfest gameplay itself. Click that Splatfest hyperlink to see that I was steadfastly on Team Family, and why I made that decision. (Good article.)

Here were the results, though:

Team Family (here as Team “Fam”) won Popularity, and lost the actual Turf War matches to Team Friend.
So Team Friend unfortunately won the Splatfest.

Very regrettable results. I got to Fam King solely by playing Splatfest Battle Normal and stopped, but I know that I was above average within Team Family.

That said, I had my first ever 100x battle and lost it. Whoops. Can now confirm through personal experience that it's not a Fortnite battle royale, though!

What were the factors that caused Team Family to lose to Team Friend? Fundamentally, I think it's the ink colours. Allow me to explain the built-in advantage that Team Friend had over Team Family because of the ink colour differences.

Phoenix Wright Impersonator Arrested For Poisoning—Exclusive Fight Footage Inside!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Ace Attorney's reputation restored.

(LOS ANGELES, California) Yesterday, head of Tender Lender Furio Tigre (42) was arrested after a fierce turnabout battle that spanned both inside and outside of Courtroom No. 4, reversing a courtroom decision one month earlier that held former policewoman and Trés Bien waitress Maggey Byrde guilty for the murder of Glen Elg, a programmer at Blue Screens, Inc.. 

Ms. Byrde was accused of poisoning the coffee of Glen Elg while he was alone at the French-styled restaurant, but her defence attorney, Phoenix Wright, demonstrated that the court case a month earlier in December was a mistrial. Interestingly, it was believed that Phoenix Wright was also Ms. Byrde's defence attorney in that trial.

However, as revealed in court yesterday, Glen Elg's poisoner was Furio Tigre. Mr. Tigre also admitted in court to having posed as Phoenix Wright in the December trial of Maggey Byrde, having fooled the court by dressing up as Phoenix Wright and using a cardboard attorney's badge. Mr. Tigre's intentionally shoddy defence was a stain on Mr. Wright's reputation as an up-and-coming Ace Attorney.

Mr. Tigre was said to conduct his business, a loan company, through fear and intimidation. KoopaTV exclusively obtained photography and footage demonstrating that he handled being investigated by Mr. Wright and the Los Angeles Police Department much the same way:

Nintendo New Year's Digital Sale 2019 — Actually Worthwhile Sale

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The tagline is FAKE NEWS, though.

If it feels like I just wrote an article about a Nintendo eShop-based sale, it's because I did — the CAPCOM Winter Sale 2018 that lasted from December 17, 2018 to January 2, 2019. Immediately coming to replace it on January 3, 2019 and lasting until noon on January 10, 2019 (also known as very soon since we've had other important articles to publish since then) is the Nintendo New Year's Digital Sale of 2019. Like CAPCOM's sale, it's actually extraordinary in its scope and quality, and also notably features the one snub from CAPCOM's sale. That's right... Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy is on sale right now for Nintendo 3DS, quieting thoughts that the Trilogy's soon-to-be release on the Nintendo Switch would result in its 3DS incarnation not being discounted.

The sale features fantastic games and a game I'll buy.

First of all, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy is 60% off. The tagline from Nintendo is “Save up to 30% on select digital titles that are sure to brighten up your New Year.” The idea that Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy would not brighten someone's New Year is preposterous. It's the one game I'd most recommend someone with a 3DS purchase.

And you should get up-to-speed with it quickly, because tomorrow's article is going to be Ace Attorney-related with content from the third game in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy. (It's a trilogy because it has three games in one. And these are each lengthy titles. EXCEPTIONAL DEAL.)

KoopaTV's 2018 GOTY Awards!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Game of THAT Year 2017... and other categories.

You have been eagerly anticipating this all weekend, and it's finally arrived. KoopaTV's 2018 Game of THAT Year awards ceremony, mostly featuring the best KoopaTV articles from 2018! (Plus some obvious, non-surprising game categories.)

I've been anticipating our awards, too, since the KoopaTV staff most of our weekends debating things. Actually, to be honest, not much happened on Saturday, more happened on Sunday, and the majority of decisions were made on Monday right before this article was published. If it were just up to me, this would be very simple. But it's up to the entire KoopaTV staff to vote based on our nominations — check out the nominations by category here because it's an important reference for the winners — so there's some give-and-take and compromising that results in KoopaTV's signature takes that seem strange and out-of-line compared to the rest of the Internet.

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

KoopaTV's 2018 GOTY Nominations!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And other categories.

These were decided and talked about in our Koopa Keep Discord server. Behold!
 
The déjà vu from years past is intentional. (To be eligible, those running have to start their existence in America from January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2018.)

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

But yeah, this isn't just about gaming, but also ourselves. ‘cause we're art to be recognised and applauded, too. Just to make it clear, we have an “each KoopaTV article may only be nominated once, total.” rule that obviously doesn't apply to the gaming half.

This article is such a rehash of the 2017 one that I just drew over the 7 to make it an 8!

Actually, this isn't a complete rehash of 2017. As I wrote in the footer of 2017's Awards article, we now have categories for Best and Worst comments on KoopaTV, as well as categories for each KoopaTV article category! That means more effort on my part. Hope you like it.

(We removed Best Communications Platform as a category, though.)

Project Wendy: Wendy's Driving Exam!

By RAWKHAWK2010 - A better "Project Wendy".

In case you haven't heard, a phenomenon occurred after New Year's known as "Project Wendy" where popular Smash YouTubers collaborated to upload all these satirical Wendy O. Koopa Smash videos ("how to play her well", "why she should be nerfed", etc.) at the same time. Project Wendy bombarded many Smash fans' phones with notifications and there were people who even asked KoopaTV if we were responsible.

Obviously no, we didn't...but that doesn't mean these lying YouTubers have to be the ONLY ones with a "Project Wendy"! In fact, I've already gone out of my way to orchestrate one myself! And it's actually entirely real!

So what is it, you ask? Well, Wendy is in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate but she's also here, and with a pretty detailed history. There's this whole thing that happened last fall where she got trapped in an elevator and I encouraged her to find different forms of vertical transportation going forward. We didn't really talk about LITERALLY "going forward" though (only up and down), and horizontal transportation is kind of even more important whether she just had a deadly incident involving it or not. So what's efficient, convenient, and fast? Well, trains aren't efficient since they crash all the time (see multiple KoopaTV articles about this). Planes aren't convenient since have fun waiting days for your flight. Meanwhile, cars (with wheels; you'll see why I specified that) are fast and actually pretty pick-up-and-go, but since they're not public transportation, you first kind of have to actually become qualified to drive.

All seven Koopalings have been behind the wheel, but Wendy's beyond that hunk of junk.

Scratch 3.0 Made KoopaTV's Made-in-Scratch Game Content Broken

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Thanks to a forced upgrade that ruined backwards compatibility.

Today, January 2 2019, the MIT Media Lab released the third version of Scratch, a programming language. The primary reason we didn't release a new videogame on KoopaTV for 2018 was that we knew that if we developed it in Scratch like all of our other videogames, that it would immediately become obsolete with the release of Scratch 3.0. For reference, all of our original videogames from 2013 to 2017 were made using Scratch 2.0. I knew from the middle of 2018 that Scratch 3.0 would release right at the start of 2019, so I figured to wait on any development.

Scratch 3.0 notably ditches Flash as the game technology and opts for HTML5, meaning you can theoretically play the games on mobile trash devices instead of actual computers. (No idea how the controls would work for our games since they're built for computers, and your mobile trash probably doesn't have enough RAM to play them well.) That's a great thing in terms of making our videogame content available to more people, since for some reason a big chunk of our traffic is mobile.

What I didn't know would happen is that they would convert all of the Scratch 2.0 games into Scratch 3.0's engine, and as you might expect, Scratch 3.0 treats some things differently. One of those differences involves how lists are treated, as well as from-engine dialogue boxes. (My game design up to this point has relied on dialogue boxes appearing in front of lists, but now they appear behind lists, and there is no way to change the layering.)

The impact depends on the game—and I haven't looked at all of them—but I don't feel that confident in making a blanket statement that everything is good, nor do I know the extent of all of the engine changes. I assume The Wonderful 1237 is the most heavily impacted game since that's extremely list-heavy, but there may be many other changes I don't know about yet. (The Wonderful 1237's demos are going to be a pain in the ass if those are broken.) This notably impacts the The Wonderful 1237 Negative Ad Soundboard released just last week!

Not only is there now a sort of annoying Scratch logo overlay, but
the size of the lists and the fonts used changed, as did the layering.
The question used to be over the list, but now you can't see the question prompt.

Ironically, Trayvon Tyson's Punch-Out!! is completely safe because it got banned from Scratch, so I had to upload it as a Flash project to Newgrounds, where it is intact from the changes to Scratch. Defend Anita Sarkeesian also looks pretty well-off right now. (Get a Gun is as good now as it was in 2014.)

I'll be trying to fix everything I can soon. I'd rather be playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and creating new KoopaTV content, but... We need to keep these amazing games playable for you!

Click here for the full list of games.

If you don't care about our games (and you should because they're great), then take this lesson away: be careful about backwards compatibility if you release a new version and automatically upgrade old things.


Ludwig didn't want to post two KoopaTV-category articles in a row, but while he knew that Scratch 3.0 would release today, he didn't know that it would impact already-existing content. At least you know that if KoopaTV continues to use Scratch as a development platform for games, the next game may be mobile-friendly!


You can get absolutely massive points in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program for creating content around KoopaTV's videogames. If you have something in mind and need me to prioritise the fixing of something specific, please let me know.