Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 15: Here's A Quiz!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - If you don't know where the bathroom is, try the river.

Welcome to yet another edition of KoopaTV Fitness Fridays, and thanks for sticking by. The whole point of this is to get fit and tell the world about it so I can stay motivated, but I gotta say, the possibility that the whole Tokyo Olympics might get cancelled due to virus outbreak is concerning and not helping the ol’ motivation. Note: This article, thanks to the nature of the world discussed in it, somewhat functions as a walkthrough. That means there's spoilers everywhere for Ring Fit Adventure.

On Sunday night (February 16), I started up Ring Fit Adventure once more, to take on World 15: Quizton. (Retaining difficulty level 29.) The gimmick of this world seems to be the population is fond of pop quizzes, which I'm not as good as anymore now that I've long since transitioned from school. (And while I was in school, pop quizzes weren't a popular tactic from teachers and professors anyway.) We go to the town to try to find a road forward, and meet the Mayor of Quizton. He agrees to help us... so long as we complete his quiz. The rest of the townspeople also ask quizzes, though they don't offer any dialogue boxes to choose among options. They just give you the answer if you press the A button after they ask the question.

I wonder what the Splatfest was that resulted in this stupid law.

Fortunately, Hubby and Honey in General Store 13 don't ask any questions to get us to buy their new outfits, which are the Burning Ant (all red) and Skip Hopper (an ugly lime-green set that also restores hearts with repeated knee lifts). Despite having no set bonus, I'll wear the Burning Ant set.

The Mayor's quiz has higher stakes than the townspeople NPCs. The town has two different paths, north and south. The correct path that will lead us further is based on the following question:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct Live Reactions!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Did Animal Crossing: New Horizons take advantage of its opportunity to impress?

I believe everyone on KoopaTV's staff has owned and enjoyed an Animal Crossing game at some point in our lifetimes. Yet, there's no great Animal Crossing advocate on our staff.

Regardless, Nintendo put out a Direct, and someone's gotta get content up on KoopaTV.org. As you may have come to expect, I got the short end of the flimsy shovel, but whatever, I'll do this myself. Not at the time it actually aired (some folks have jobs that franchises like Animal Crossing seek to relax the stresses of) but hey, I came into watching the video-on-demand with no spoilers whatsoever:
 

...The question to keep in mind, though, is “Is there anything in this Direct that's worth spoiling?” Or do people simply watch it, nod, and say “Okay.” Well, find out in my live reaction log below. I have at least one good, ALL-CAPS sentence moment with it:

Nintendo brings you the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open Spring 2020 tournament!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Nothing should stop you!

I don't know about you, but I still consider every Nintendo-Battlefy tournament to be a big deal. They have announced the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open Spring 2020, taking place on either February 29 or March 1, depending on where in North America you'll be during the tournament. The fact that it transcends over two months in the calendar means that they can't name it after a month, so it's named after a whole season. Guess that implies there won't be enough until the summer, so you better make your performance count.

Spring 2020 brings a Halloween colour scheme.
Halloween sucks, but I support normalising it so people stop making a big deal out of it.

What's at stake? Well, the last three of these online-based tournaments—February 2020, November 2019, and September 2019—had a guaranteed round-trip flight, lodging, $350 visa card, and ticket to major tournaments taking place in... Detroit, Oakland, and Detroit, respectively. Those aren't places that are hospitable or nice to visit, quite frankly.

But this time, the prize is in Orlando, Florida, to be able to participate at CEO Dreamland 2020 from March 13–15. Orlando is a nice place to go, especially in March. There's a lack of hurricanes. The weather is nice. Full Sail University is there, which is a game design (and other media/entertainment) college that Nintendo used to plug often. If you're into theme parks, Orlando has them.

Also new for the upcoming tournament versus the one a month ago? Québec citizens are now allowed to participate (in Region 7), and the rules regarding the $350 visa card were changed from “$350 Visa gift card provided to winners only” to “$350 Visa gift card provided to winners only to be used for expenses”, which is a significant nerf preventing you from just pocketing the cash-equivalent.

Speaking of nerfs, I don't think there will be any changes to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate within the next ten days, so it will still be on 7.0.0. It will be very interesting to see how much Byleth's play rate collapses a month and a half after his introduction compared to two weeks after his introduction. I'll certainly publish that data in March.

I have good news if you already have a Nintendo Switch, already have Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but don't have a Nintendo Switch Online membership and you already used the generous free trial: My Nintendo is offering an ADDITIONAL seven-day free trial! You can use this while you're participating in the tournament. You have until March 6 to take advantage of that, which pretty much means it exists just so everyone can enter this tournament.


On March 1, Ludwig will be writing up his progress in the comments section of this article while in the tournament. The majority of entrants will be participating in the first round of the tournament, which functions as a pools round to weed the hundreds of per-region entrants into a top 32. In this, you play in a ladder-based format, meaning you get to play as many games as you can fit in three hours, and you can keep playing even if you lose several in a row. Fun times. It's free to enter.

People Actually Watched the Sonic the Hedgehog 2020 Movie?!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Well, it's not my glass of milk.

The last time I wrote an article dedicated to the Sonic the Hedgehog movie—and understand that coverage of this movie (mostly through its protagonist design decisions and delay) makes up the majority of Sonic the Hedgehog intellectual property coverage on this website (not counting things related to Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, which tends to omit Sonic's presence entirely)—I wrote that it won't be a great movie.

The delayed date finally passed, and the movie released over the previous weekend. Apparently, its performance during that weekend made Sonic the Hedgehog the best-performing (in terms of dollar value) videogame adaptation movie ever.

A lot of people are comparing Sonic the Hedgehog to the Detective Pikachu movie, but I've always rejected the comparison. The Detective Pikachu game is terrible with no redeeming qualities, and I'm not sure most movie-watchers knew that it was a specific game. The game only really existed to become a movie, all for a quick Communist cash grab.

For what it's worth—and it's not worth much for videogames but I don't know if that also applies to movies—the critics’ reviews see the Sonic the Hedgehog movie as mediocre. Normal people seem to like it for its feel-good qualities.

A lot of moments from the (second) trailer never actually happened in the movie, so that was fake news. I don't have data or statistics to back this up, but from my experience reading what people are saying about the movie, a plurality of the discussion is around the last two scenes of the movie. One of those scenes briefly appeared at the end of the very first trailer, so I don't consider it a spoiler:

Exclusionary Ace Attorney Ad

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I know Phoenix Wright is disbarred, but what did Miles Edgeworth do to deserve this?

If you're reading this now, that means the February 2020 CAPCOM Publisher Sale is over. Did you take advantage of it? Did you completely miss being able to purchase Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy at 50% off? If that opportunity passed you by, it sure ain't MY fault. But it could've been CAPCOM's. Observe:

Left: CAPCOM using a Facebook ad to target people interested in CAPCOM stuff, I guess.
Right: The CAPCOM Publisher Sale page on Steam that the ad leads to.

 
Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth are suspiciously missing from the Facebook ad, despite being prominently in the centre of the original artwork. (You can get a list of all of the characters in that artwork back when it was used a year ago for the CAPCOM Store.) CAPCOM's designer very consciously replaced the attorneys with GreatSword and Palico from Monster Hunter World, since I guess Rathalos in the background was going to be cut off and they needed some form of Monster Hunter representation since Monster Hunter was responsible for CAPCOM even being afloat for a while.

But there's a surplus of folks from, say, Resident Evil. Does the zombie cop really have to be there? As I mentioned in my header text, CAPCOM has every right to disassociate with disbarred, crooked Phoenix Wright. But Miles Edgeworth still has a viable career, and in multiple countries! Surely they could prevent a whole franchise from disappearing, and especially one with such an amazing discount behind it.

Can one extrapolate this purposeful Ace Attorney snuff and extrapolate that CAPCOM doesn't have any greater plans for the franchise? ...Sure. Should you? I don't think so. Though, after several years, I'm doubting that “Ace Attorney 7” ever really existed. We'll keep hoping.


The proper way to read the article title is that it is an ad that excludes ace attorneys, not that it's an ace attorney ad that excludes everyone else. It's not often that KoopaTV gets to make TWO Ace Attorney articles off of one event, especially a very limited-time sale, but KoopaTV is an Ace Attorney fan site with arguably more gusto than being a Koopa Kingdom propaganda outlet. Which permutations would you have made with CAPCOM's source image's characters to fit within the Facebook ad? Is Ludwig just trying to be an unwarranted victim? Was CAPCOM making up for Ludwig excluding everything BESIDES Ace Attorney in his promotion of the sale? Discuss in the comments section.

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 14: Ghostly Abdominals

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Don't be an ageist jerk. (Except if one is so old they're senile.)

As of when I'm starting this, Week 13 wasn't even published yet. There is a funny situation about that, and it's still not even resolved as of publishing. Either way, there's two Ring Fit Adventure fitness logs published on KoopaTV in one week, except this one is actually on Friday (hence KoopaTV Fitness Friday).

At the end of Week 13 I started World 14: Moppets Gone Missing. Here's the continuation of that story, starting on Sunday:

At the end of Week 13 I completed the first half of the map (left side).
Week 14 is dedicated to this half.
(My difficulty level in week 14 is still 29 out of 30.)

The first thing I do in World 14 second half is enter... General Store Number 12. Honey and Hubby are discussing the dangers of fog and children disappearing. They now sell Ginger as an ingredient, and the Bleached Skeleton clothing set, as well as the Blue Skeleton clothing set. The skeleton clothes are black with white/blue painted-on bones and the same power rating (more than Peacock Contender). Bleached has no set bonus, but Blue will restore your hearts if you do repeated knee lifts. That's a useless set bonus, since it's a ridiculous notion that I'll be in a heart deficit with my abundance of healing items and monstrously high defence stat.

There's a story-relevant woman in town, Martha, who is crying about her daughter (named Carrie) disappearing. Ring volunteers us to find her, though it's also noted that ALL of the children have disappeared in this unnamed land. Meanwhile, the other townspeople are speaking of an abs instructor who used to hold seminars and sing abs-related songs, but that person has disappeared. But if I score at least 1500 points in 40 seconds in Bootstrap Tower (Novice), I can get the Abs Master top clothing, which looks suspiciously similar to Abdonis's zipper-challenged jacket. You have to try to fail this challenge.

Disturbingly, it turns out that the Ab Master not only is Abdonis's jacket, but it also comes with Abdonis's hair. Does that mean that his isn't natural?

I'm not wearing this creepy thing in public, believe me. It's going right to the wardrobe and staying there.

Help Me Understand Shigeru Miyamoto's Senile Nintendo Video Content Answer

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - What does this mean?

Last week, I wrote about Nintendo's nine months financial results for fiscal year ending March 2020. (Also known as the quarter ending December 31, 2019.) Shortly after, Nintendo published a question & answer summary featuring president Shuntaro Furukawa and famous Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto.

Among other things, they believe the Nintendo Switch is “just entering the middle of its life cycle.” And then there was this strange answer, provided by Shigeru Miyamoto, on the question of... 

“The touchpoints that consumers have with Nintendo IP, especially Mario IP, are currently Nintendo Switch, smart devices, and the like. I understand this will expand to theme parks, a movie, and so on, but what lines separate these different media? I expect each medium probably has some certain set themes, not just introducing the Mario character anywhere. I would like to know what will be different about each touchpoint, and what will be the same.”

(In other words, this questioner is asking about Nintendo licensing their intellectual property across a variety of media types, and if there is a specific, thought-through strategy that differentiates each media type, or if Nintendo will just spam Mario.)

Now, the answer from Shigeru Miyamoto, which I will quote in full for your context...

CAPCOM Publisher Sale; February 2020: Ace Attorney Trilogy (Switch, Steam) at 50% Off!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Love yourself with Ace Attorney. Even if no one else loves you.

I have significant news for you: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (2019 edition) is at its lowest price EVER: 50% off, or $14.99, if you're buying from the Nintendo Switch or Steam. (It's currently $19.79 or $20.09 on PlayStation and Xbox respectively. Don't tell me there's a Switch tax.)

But you only have until the morning of Monday, February 17, to take advantage of this deal. That's how long the CAPCOM Publisher Sale of 2020 lasts. Well, there'll probably be multiple CAPCOM Publisher Sales of 2020. 2019 had at least two: one in May, and one in August. That August one is more important. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy was 33% off at the time, and they had just released the language patch letting you play the game in French, German, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese—in addition to the base languages of English and Japanese. Personally, I just started playing the game in French in honour of Benjamin Hunter. It turns out that nearly everyone but Phoenix Wright himself (who is in the current year now a struggling crazed homeless guy) has weird names.

This is the first successful OBJECTION in the series. Something about a total contradiction of the autopsy report?
The whole French language is a mess.

 
You can switch between languages from the title screen menu, but you can't switch languages mid-play. Each language has its own set of up to 10 save slots, per Trilogy game. (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations.)

I've recently heard someone tell me that they “[n]ormally enjoy watching streams of [visual novels] as opposed to actually playing them myself.” There is a massive difference between watching someone else play Ace Attorney and actually playing it yourself, based on the principles of you having the opportunity to think the solutions out for yourself—which is significantly more fulfilling than watching someone else do it—as well as taking advantage of player agency and going through optional/incorrect dialogue at your own pace. (Ace Attorney is the kind of game where reading that is its own reward, since the dialogue is amazing. Not that I can tell in French.)

At only $15 ($5 per game... and each of these are lengthy, substantial games at a couple dozen hours each), you can easily find out for yourself the difference and you will not regret it.

Don't be like Phoenix.
Take advantage of the CAPCOM Publisher Sale before it's too late!
(That's what he's saying. That he's late. Not, uh, that he's retarded. ...You don't want to be accused of that, either, of course.)

I'm obligated to mention that if you'd rather play on the Nintendo 3DS, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy are 50%, 70%, 60%, and 60% off respectively. The 3DS also has demos.


There are also other CAPCOM games that are on sale, as well as many other games on sale from other publishers. KoopaTV only has the time to shill for Ace Attorney, however, so you'll have to discover those other games on sale for yourself. Not that they're necessary when the best franchise in videogames is on sale. Ludwig wants to complete the entire Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in French before the end of 2020, but he underestimated just how different French is from English. If you want a rebate covering 2/3 of the cost of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy on the Switch while it's on sale, go win the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program.


Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy was most recently (before February) on sale one month ago in January 2020 at 33.33% off.
CAPCOM paid money to tell people about their sale... but they excluded Ace Attorney from their imagery! Why?!

Some (but not all) Pokémon Leakers Found: Lousy Gaming Journalist!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Excommunication. Plus, Home.

First of all, these aren't the same group of leakers that were involved in the Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield strategy guides. That's progressing smoothly so far, with The Pokémon Company International (TPCi) getting a bunch of subpoenas served on various Internet service providers. They already got long lists of defendants' IP addresses thanks to hiring private forensic investigators. You can follow that case here.

No, before the game released, there was some source that was leaking the game contents from the game itself, not just its guidebook with its artwork. We now know where that source came from—an undisclosed reviewer at the Portuguese Nintendo-based website FNintendo. If you're familiar with popular four-letter swear words, that website name might not SOUND like a site that's on good terms with Nintendo, but they apparently were for a little over a decade. Now Nintendo and The Pokémon Company International have FNintendo on their shit-list of outlets they won't work with. 

We added FNintendo to our shit-list, too, at least until they name-drop who the reviewer is. FNintendo has provided a statement saying that they've dropped their relationship with this person and they've accepted their fate on Nintendo's shit-list, but they have not provided their identity.

Why is this important? Well, if we don't know who that person is, then they could try to join another outlet and hide their very shady past. What if this disreputable individual tried to join KoopaTV's staff (it's a really easy process, as you can find out for yourself over here) and we wouldn't be able to do a complete background check because this person is unknown?

In other news, Pokémon HOME being out in the vague “February 2020” actually means it's out now. It's already a mess, though many things are at launch. Personally, I won't invest in it...ever.

By the way, other outlets reported that Pokémon HOME would be free for the first month. If you read my article on it, you'll see that KoopaTV did not report that. Specifically, TPCi always said:

“To commemorate the release of Pokémon HOME, we will make Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter available at no cost for a one-month period after Pokémon HOME is released. ”

Keep in mind that is NOT written as “Pokémon HOME is at no cost.” Totally different product. Pay your mortgage-subscription, you sucker. Don't get into those reverse-mortgages you see advertised on TV. And don't keep giving outlets that LEAK or provide FAKE NEWS your views.


Ludwig doesn't want agreement-breaking leakers on the KoopaTV staff, or in the greater general gaming journalism business. These are very bad people who are not only untrustworthy, but also are actively trying to ruin people's gaming experiences for some short-lived attention. KoopaTV will never leak unreleased titles. (KoopaTV likely will never be in that position anyway, though.) If you're Portuguese and you're looking for a good site, KoopaTV is available. ...Just hope you can read English.

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 13: Where in El Dorago is Lord Dragaux?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...In the fog?

Normally, KoopaTV's Fitness Friday series are supposed to be published on... Fridays. Last Friday, we faced a difficulty with Facebook and Nintendo Switch screenshot sharing, which continues to this day. (We're working around it with Twitter.) Still, regardless of when these come out, expect in-depth coverage of my playthrough, on a week-by-week basis, of Ring Fit Adventure as I try to get in better shape for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. By the way, by necessity, KoopaTV's fitness log series totally spoils the story of Ring Fit Adventure, and may spoil gameplay too. You better be alright with that.

I had a crisis over the weekend (February 1–2). I ran out of milk. You can't expect me to FUNCTION without milk, you know. I only got 37th out of 533 in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open February 2020 due to contending with a severe milk shortage. It's more difficult than dealing with post-traumatic Pichu combos. Anyway, that's why I didn't play Ring Fit Adventure on Sunday. I will say, though, playing high-level Super Smash Bros. Ultimate works up a sweat all by itself.

But on Monday (February 3), I went to the store and bought milk. BACK IN BUSINESS. Where did we leave off from last week's (week 12's) fitness log...? Ah, World 13: El Dorago. Looks like this:

The state of World 13: El Dorago, at the start of me playing on February 3, 2020.
I'm still on difficulty level 29.

Let's try that bottom-left spot... This Dragaux Stadium is littered with squat-powered springs... and your spring-induced height gets reset if you take a breather and stop squatting. Argh, physics.

By the end of it, we encounter...