Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) Movie — New Design, Same Disrecommendation

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This doesn't fix any other issues you might've had.

Remember that Sonic the Hedgehog movie that was supposed to release in November 2019...mere days ago? Paramount Pictures wants you to forget that was ever in the works—they have put the YouTube trailer of that movie in private view mode. I thought it was a funny gimmick where I wouldn't be able to screen-capture Sonic the Hedgehog's old movie design in that article because he kept moving too quickly for the print screen button. I didn't know two days later that the movie's director would tell everyone that Sonic would get redesigned and I should've saved a copy of the old design for the record.

(Fortunately, other people stole the trailer and uploaded it on their channels without marking it as private, such as this one. I wonder if it'll get copyright claimed.)

Then that redesign got the whole movie officially delayed to February 14, 2020. That's still the official release date, as seen in this new trailer with Sonic's new design: 
 

Nintendo Investor Q&A: No Defined Remake Policy

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Plus, scary China stuff.

You might vaguely remember that I published good Nintendo financial news here a week ago, related to their quarter ending September 30, 2019. Good news is less memorable than bad news (unless Nintendo doing well upsets your feelings or your investment strategy), so I understand if you found the whole affair underwhelming. Regardless, Nintendo's president, Shuntaro Furukawa, took questions from investors and answered some of them.

The last time Nintendo held a Q&A briefing with investors was half a year ago (that's two quarters ago), where I commented:

“No matter who has been the president in the past several years, there's no new information presented in these Q&A sessions. I hope next time, the investors go back to asking silly, amusing questions, because Nintendo management sure won't say anything useful or entertaining. It's the anti-KoopaTV.”

Guess what? The questions were pretty relevant, and Nintendo management was still unhelpful.

Investors generally wanted to know about the Nintendo Switch Lite, which has sold about two million systems. What kind of people are buying it? What's driving their behaviour? Are they more or less profitable than a regular Nintendo Switch customer?

New KoopaTV Feature: Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Logs Series

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - That's right. I'm documenting my training.

I hope you read my article from Tuesday about the reformation of the Olympics team, TEAM KOOPA. We have a dual purpose: win for the glory of Koopa Kingdom, and eliminate Mario and Cappy, who will also be competing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games.

However, it's been a while since I've really done much physical activity, and almost four years since I've trained for the Olympics. That was a disaster. Not the physical act of training, but the whole session and being attacked while in a foreign hellhole land.

But I do need to still get in shape. Fortunately, Ring Fit Adventure has released at such a good time. It's perfect to get my body the way it needs to be so I may fence properly. With a sabre, not with a faux border wall.

Anyway, after failing to buy Ring Fit Adventure at a proper store, I just ordered it from the Internet (after waiting for it to stop being sold out). It came. Here's me with the box:

Well, here's me on the box... It's, uh, 3D box art of Ludwig vs. Dragaux!

Ring Fit Adventure comes with everything it says it'll come with, by the way. The game box and cartridge, the Leg Strap, and the Ring-Con.

Ring Fit Adventure's unboxed contents.
Joy-Cons and Ludwig not included.

So what's with the article title? New KoopaTV feature?

I'm going to document my progress with Ring Fit Adventure—and therefore my overall fitness training—on KoopaTV on a weekly basis. We might even call it Fitness Fridays.

Though there'll probably be circumstances where I HAVE to publish something else on that Friday.

You all in the audience can keep me accountable. In fact, maybe you all can get inspired and contribute stuff of your own. We can take your guest submissions, after all. Hopefully, Ring Fit Adventure is as intrinsically pleasing to play as I think it conceptually is, as opposed to something like Wii Fit.

I'll tell you right now that I'd love to lose ten pounds. What's my starting point? Stay tuned for the first edition of the fitness log to find out. (Just don't expect me to start fitness until after Sunday—for the very immediate future, I need to train in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.)


Ludwig theoretically is going to be doing this series until the Tokyo 2020 Olympics happen, or until he meets his fitness goals. Alternatively, it's possible that his obsession with portraying Ring Fit Adventure in a positive light is totally misplaced and he will absolutely hate the game and never want to play it again. It's also possible that writing these fitness logs will be really repetitive both to write and to read, so Ludwig will be trying to keep things as fresh as he can. Your feedback will be important! Wendy might also do this, maybe.

Pokémon's Personality-Morphing Mints

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This has got to be abuse, right?

There are two ways to view this trailer of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield news:

1. Pokémon are friends and great the way they are, independent of their battling abilities
2. Pokémon are tools for battlers to attain personal glory

If you view the world the first way, this is abhorrent. If you view the world the second way, you'll be very pleased with just how easy and accessible GAME FREAK is making it to get a competitively-viable team in-game, as opposed to having to breed (and abort—if they're merely “released” how come you don't see them in the wild after?) a lot of Pokémon to get the perfect nature:

Consolation to the first way of thinking: According to the official site, the Nature doesn't change. Just the stats behind it. So when the Pikachu in the trailer smelled the Modest Mint, they still keep their Sassy Nature—but instead of Sassy's Special Defence ↑ Speed ↓ trait, Pikachu has Modest's Special Attack ↑ Attack ↓. (Sassy is competitively a horrible Nature for Pikachu, but it's one of the best personalities you can be blessed with.)
 

Ludwig Reacts to Sakurai's Terry Bogard Stream

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Late and alone.

I was never going to be able to watch Masahiro Sakurai's livestream of Terry Bogard facing the fury in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate live at 8 AM Eastern time today. Terrible timing. I got things to do then.

So I have to watch the video-on-demand, and once I get past that, I could unlock access to the rest of the Internet, which surely is discussing nothing but this livestream.

So I'm hyped to watch and react to every moment of this, not because I care about or even know who Terry Bogard is, but I have a lot of Discord notifications to check. Let's go...
 
Watch Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – Mr. Sakurai Presents “Terry Bogard” from Nintendo on www.twitch.tv

Team Koopa at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm looking to end this war.

Surely you have heard this by now, right? Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games has released today on Nintendo Switch in partnership with SEGA.

As you can tell by the title, the actual Olympics occur in 2020 (starting at the end of July) but right now it's 2019. What's happening now is our formal declaration and training period.

You should remember the same thing happened with the 2016 Olympic games at Rio de Janeiro. Team Koopa had an announcement and a training period. Except the actual training was a massive disaster and we had to evacuate Rio before the actual Olympics began. Rio, for its part, was (and probably still is) an unlivable hellhole.

Tokyo is different!

And we have tremendous reason for being there. The 2016 Closing Ceremonies that promoted the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was Cappy's formal introduction to the world. Team Koopa knew it was coming, which was why we were involving ourselves in the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics to begin with.

KoopaTV has basically wiped out Cappy's companion, the Nintendo Labo, as a dangerous threat. Now we're going to finish off Cappy itself, where Cappy started. Mario himself will be there too.

Here's who is coming to Tokyo for Team Koopa: 

September 30, 2019 Nintendo Quarterly Financial Update

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Eat glowingly positive sales numbers!

Well, I looked through Nintendo's financial statements for the quarter ending September 30, 2019. That's six months into their fiscal year, though the whole concept of fiscal years isn't terribly exciting for normal people. 

In terms of stand-out sales figures, 19.01 million people bought Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch (versus 8.44 million on the Wii U), and there are 15.71 million owners of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Splatoon 2 is only at 9.28 million, a mere 260,000 units in 3 months. That's what happens with online-based games when all the new content is done. There's 41.67 million Nintendo Switch systems sold.

The biggest thing here is that 1-2-Switch is finally off the top ten best-selling Nintendo Switch games.
(New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is at spot 8.)

Ring Fit Adventure, having released in October, doesn't appear in these results. We'll have to wait three months for that. But Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said Ring Fit Adventure is a super important title for Nintendo this year, and spent more time talking about it than, say, Pokémon.

Interesting bit about the Nintendo Switch Lite: Nintendo considers it a huge success, but after its first week being launched, the regular Nintendo Switch was outselling it week-by-week. For whatever reason, 43% of Nintendo Switch Lite purchasers already own a Nintendo Switch. Not sure how so many people could be fooled into something financially stupid, but hopefully it's for members of the family and not for themselves.

Lastly of interest, the 3DS segment sold less stuff than the mobile one. That's not because mobile is doing great—growth was almost flat year-over-year, but the 3DS just collapsed despite Nintendo sacrificing AlphaDream for it.

At least the Switch is doing fantastic.


Ludwig's favourite game on that chart is still Kirby Star Allies, which he gave a full review of as a birthday present to himself. He wishes it would suddenly sell enough to warrant Nintendo disclosing updated numbers, but that probably will never happen.


The article covering the quarter ending June 30, 2019 is over here.
By comparison, the article covering the quarter ending September 30, 2018 discussed mostly Kirby Star Allies.
Don't like Ludwig's questions? How about these ones from investors?

KoopaTV's October 2019 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The October newsletter isn't one to fear!

Welcome to the latest edition of KoopaTV's newsletter! October 2019 sure feels like it went by quickly, yet it feels like I haven't written a newsletter in a while. (But I did, and you'll see it in the related articles at the bottom below the footer.)

October 2019 continued KoopaTV's string of solid months, though it was the first month in what's felt like a very long time without an Ace Attorney article during the month or an Enlightenment Movement article. Doesn't mean October was uninspired or not focused on developing KoopaTV canon. In fact, it focused plenty on that. Here's some EVIDENCE:

KoopaTV's Top Five Experiences of October 2019

Actually, there's a lot of articles that I thought were even written in October, so maybe it was longer than I thought. That actually makes limiting this to a top five fairly challenging and I had to spend a lot of time coming up with this chronologically-ordered list. Read these articles if you haven't already... and read everything from this month (and on KoopaTV in general) after that. Well, finish the rest of this newsletter first, because there's some stuff you'll be happy to see announced:

1. A Brave New World in Subnautica  — Kamek writes KoopaTV's second review of 2019, and it's about the indie open world experience Subnautica, which it turns out he's quite fond of.
2. October 15 2019 Democrat Presidential Primary Debate 4 ANALYSIS! — I usually (purposefully) avoid the politics-focused articles in the newsletters, but I think I did a pretty good job with this one in that it's issues-focused and not candidate-focused. You'll learn a lot about your choices here.
3. I'm Extremely Impressed With The Dragon Quest XI S Demo — Dragon Quest XI S is Ludwig's first Dragon Quest game, though for this article, his impressions are just based on the demo. ...Though he did buy the game after writing it! Features cows.
4. Yes In My Backyard: Dilapidated Houses in the City Trial — Ludwig tackles the issue of affordable housing while also going into a failed government programme instituted by King Dedede.
5. Luigi's Mansion 3 and Halloween 2019 — A wide-ranging article continuing this site's distaste for Halloween, plumbers, and the FAKE NEWS media, but also the taste for delicious candy.

Luigi's Mansion 3 and Halloween 2019

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The best candy from the best source of entertainment.

After ignoring fellow Nintendo Switch titles Astral Chain and DAEMON X MACHINA, perhaps I should at least give Luigi's Mansion 3 a release day article. Not that I care about it—and I don't understand why anyone who wasn't a Day 1 GameCube owner would—but Luigi is a very relevant topic for KoopaTV, so here we are. Luigi's Mansion 3 features Luigi, his ghost-dog Polterpup, Mario, Princess Peach, and some dumb escort Toads going to a haunted hotel. Mario and Peach (and the Toads but no one cares about them) disappear and Luigi has to rescue them and not get pwned by King Boo.

There must be a lot of Day 1 Luigi's Mansion fans from 2001 on GameFAQs, because Luigi's Mansion 3 is the most-anticipated game of October 2019 over here:

Luigi's Mansion 3 with 36.36% of the vote.
Personally, I voted for Ring Fit Adventure, though that got the least number of votes.
Clearly, that's not reflected in Ring Fit Adventure being out-of-stock from many retailers. (I'd know. I tried and failed to get it.)

To my surprise (but still not to my interest), Luigi's Mansion 3 is getting a lot of well-rated reviews from most outlets, with the exception of the FAKE NEWS Washington Post. This time, they're fake news because the top of their review page portrays Luigi's Mansion 3 as looking like this:

PlayStation Vueless

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Pronounced view.

Yesterday, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that they will be shutting down their PlayStation Vue service on January 30, 2020.

Since I've never actually written about what PlayStation Vue is, here's an explanation in Sony's own words, complete with trademark symbols:

“PlayStation™Vue streams live TV, movies, news and sports across the USA without a cable or satellite subscription. PlayStation™Vue is available across a variety of PS Vue live streaming devices, including Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV®, Roku® Players and TVs, Android TV, web browsers, mobile devices, PlayStation®4 consoles, and PlayStation®3 consoles.” 

The key bit there is that it's one of those services that appeal to cord-cutters, and it also works for people who don't have a PlayStation. ...Unfortunately, no one really figured that out based on the name, and so Sony decided to focus on their “core gaming business.”

As someone who is currently a cable subscriber but grew up without cable (so I don't understand the whole generation's fascination with SpongeBob SquarePants), I pretty much just watch Fox News Channel and Fox Business with the cable subscription. That's not really a good use of money, so I've looked into the whole chord-cutting movement. There's articles out there about watching Fox News without cable and they suggest these services. One of them is PlayStation Vue. But there are just so many options, and between picking one that is with the PlayStation brand name and one that is without the PlayStation brand name, I'd rather go without it as someone who wants nothing to do with the PlayStation.

Plus, the price kept increasing.

After this announcement was made, one can no longer sign up for a new subscription or free trial with PlayStation Vue.

My problem with these is that $50 a month is stupid for a couple of channels I really want. That's literally the same problem that people have with subscribing to cable to begin with. In the case of PlayStation Vue, Sony never appeared to articulate what makes it stand out from the many competitors out there. ...Doesn't seem to be a big loss to the world. I don't really know why Sony was in this business to begin with, and it seems like they didn't either.


With the recent disclosure that the PlayStation 4 has joined the elusive >100 million unit gaming console club, Sony has better things to focus on. So does KoopaTV, but oh well. If you can explain to Ludwig why these cord-cutting services are better than keeping the cord to begin with, do try to.


Full disclosure: Ludwig just wanted a quick companion piece to when Sony shut down PlayStation Home some years ago.
Compare and contrast this to the Nintendo TVii.