DON'T BUY THE NINTENDO LABO: What you NEED to know!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The Nintendo Labo has released today. Don't fall for its trickery.

Today, Nintendo released their build-it-yourself-peripheral-toys-to-play-shoddy-software combination, the Nintendo Labo.

By... sheer coincidence, of course, today KoopaTV formally declares war against Nintendo Labo and urges all readers to not purchase it. Anyone who has already bought a Labo is urged to return it to your retailer and get a refund. 

Don't buy the Labo. It's as simple as that. That isn't... much of an article, so let's review what got us to this point, and why exactly the Nintendo Labo endangers the lives of you and (your?) children.

Planes are still SAFER than cars!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Don't let horrific recent events bias your opinions.

Since KoopaTV, and specifically by yours truly, is literally the only place and person on the Internet that wrote an opinion article discussing why planes are superior to cars for the Splatfest on that subject from the first Splatoon, some people are blaming me for the tragic plane death with Southwest Airlines Flight 1380. There was an engine failure that somehow cracked a cabin window, resulting in “uncontrolled decompression” that nearly sucked Passenger Jennifer Riordan out of the airplane. (This is why I never sit in the window seat, along with me being afraid of heights.)

She didn't fly out the plane, but she did die anyway.

This is understandably spooking people who would want to fly planes. Then people think about United Airlines and that guy being dragged off the plane even though he paid for his seat already. These scared people are turning to long road trips by car as an alternative... or even worse, by train. (If you're worried for your safety and sanity, DON'T RIDE TRAINS!)  Or... even worse than that... BY BICYCLE. PLEASE DON'T RIDE ONE OF THOSE!

While I can't address customer service in this article (there aren't statistics on how rude taxi drivers are, or how many Uber drivers are rapists and murderers), I can address safety. Planes still beat cars in that regard, and are still better than cars for all the reasons I discussed in that Splatfest article in the first paragraph.

Life as a Salmon Run Profreshional after Version 2.3.0

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The Splatoon 2 version that changed the Salmon Run experience forever.

Almost six months ago, I received a request from an anonymous reader asking me to write about Splatoon 2's most fun mode, Salmon Run. Obviously, I didn't feel a rush to take the request, but eventually I realised it was worth commentating on the topic, especially my thoughts on the difference between Salmon Run before Splatoon 2 version 2.3.0, and Salmon Run after Splatoon 2 version 2.3.0.

If you don't remember or know what happened with 2.3.0, look here for the change log. In terms of Salmon Run, here is the notable change:

“Made it so that more Rank can be carried over at the start of the next job when the player has the title of Profreshional and a Rank of 100 or higher.”

Basically, if you reach Profreshional rank 100 to 190, you start at 100. From 200 to 290, you start the next time at 200. Etcetera until Profreshional 400 to 999, where you start at 400. As shown before the update in this article, if you were a Profreshional of any caliber, you'd start at 40. (For the uninitiated, Profeshional is the highest rank you can get (and it's trivial to achieve), and the number is the difficulty level. 40 is pretty easy. 400 isn't.)

So if I ended Saturday's Salmon Run at 400, then next time I play Salmon Run, I'll start at 400. Beforehand, there was mandatory scaffolding where you'd start at 40 and you'd get used to the unique weapon set for the rotation and how that goes with the map. Now, you better be ready from the first time you play that rotation, or you'll drop in rank. You might drop to 380 and never win again, so you'll start the next time at 300. It creates pressure to keep playing past the DAILY SUPERBONUS.

A Way Out Outsells Expectations

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - We discuss the Friend Pass, and why EA is even funding this game.

I remember two things about Hazelight Studios, but they are the most important two things:

1. Their founder, Josef Fares, is a coarse jackass, judging from his appearance at The Game Awards 2017.
2. They were making and have now released their two-player mandatory co-op game, A Way Out.

A Way Out was actually very memorable from the Electronic Arts E3 2017 press conference. I cited it as the “most cool, innovative concept from EA's conference”. Usually I don't remember random games from E3 conferences I don't care about, but I remember A Way Out. Well, it released at the end of March, and has since sold over ONE MILLION COPIES.

HOLY SHIT, this means that 2 million players have played the game. Thank you so much❤️ https://t.co/W8WP6HI44Z

— Josef Fares (@josef_fares) April 13, 2018

I take issue with Mr. Fares's math, claiming that two million people have played A Way Out.

Let Tax Day 2018 Be The LAST Tax Day, EVER! Enact the FAIRtax!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - An income tax cut is great and all, but no income tax altogether is even better!

Just in case you're confused or not American — the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (President Donald John Trump's substantive tax cuts bill passed at the end of 2017) applies to next year's taxes, or Tax Day 2019. Tax Day 2018, which covers the taxes for calendar year 2017, isn't changed by the legislation.

If you look at the KoopaTV article on that tax cut legislation, you'll read in several places me bemoaning that it's not the FAIRtax, which is a national retail sales tax that replaces the income and payroll taxes. For a little more information, take a look at this quick video:
 

For a lot more information, including FAQs, lots of research (the FAIRtax is said to be the most researched tax legislation in the history of humanity), and more, check out the FAIRtax website at fairtax.org. (Note their use of the best top-level domain.) Meanwhile, I'm going to spend this article telling you why I think the FAIRtax is the best tax plan and what America needs — and if implemented, there will never be a Tax Day ever again.

Update April 17, 2018: The IRS payment systems glitched up and people couldn't actually pay the IRS money today, so they're extending Tax Day to April 18th. I mean... they're making our argument for us that they should be abolished. /end update

Yooka-Laylee isn't Half-Bad...or is it?

By RAWKHAWK2010 - And is this seriously KoopaTV's seventh Yooka-Laylee article?

As someone who weathered the Yooka-Delaylee storm so that I could experience the game on Nintendo Switch, I'm at last prepared to provide my thoughts. Do I really want to? Well, not really. Reviews aren't really thing. It's why my Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney "review" is a gaggle of Miiverse screen captures. It's why my Paper Mario: Color Splash review hasn't happened and never will. But in this case...I suppose I must oblige:

It's me! (Six paces above "Ray and the Family Dickinson".)

And with that,

Rawk's Review of Yooka-Laylee:

Whatever the hell a Beyoncé is, keep it away from Nintendo!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I DON'T want Nintendo experimenting like this.

I don't want to hear your justifications for it. “Nintendo is trying to be edgier!” “Stop being a prude, Ludwig!” “You should be proud that Nintendo is pushing its envelope! Doesn't KoopaTV do that?” “This isn't even Nintendo; it's Ubisoft!”

I hesitate to actually embed this on my website. So I won't. I'll hyperlink to it. With a nofollow tag on the hyperlink. That'll show them. If you're brave enough, then see if you can survive the whole 66 seconds:

Just Dance Unlimited: Naughty Girl by Beyoncé - Official Gameplay Trailer - Nintendo Switch 

Since you're on KoopaTV to begin with, you probably don't value your own sanity that highly. Still, I'll try my best to describe what happened: In some apparent advertisement for Just Dance 2018 (and the game-streaming subscription service, Just Dance Unlimited), Nintendo and Ubisoft made and/or approved of a terrifying video of the #SASSY #NOFILTER Rabbid Peach from that awful Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle game that should've never progressed past being FAKE NEWS.

As you might expect for an advertisement for a bad dancing game, it's Rabbid Peach dancing to music I've never heard of. Apparently, it's from something called a “Beyoncé”, and that entity is quite popular on Earth. It's totally unknown to me why, because its song is atrocious to listen to.

Experience for yourself the Russian-American MISSILE Arms Race in this FREE BROWSER GAME!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Play Soviet Missile Run right here on KoopaTV!

The news cycle is moving so ridiculously fast — there are many events that I should be opining on but haven't gotten the chance to — but it's also important to look back on what has happened in the past to see how everyone got to the present situation.

That's... sort of what President Donald John Trump did in this tweet regarding the United States of America's current diplomatic relationship with Russia, as much as the normally non-reflective President can:

Our relationship with Russia is worse now than it has ever been, and that includes the Cold War. There is no reason for this. Russia needs us to help with their economy, something that would be very easy to do, and we need all nations to work together. Stop the arms race?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2018

 
Just so you understand just how bad the relationships are right now, forty minutes earlier, the President tweeted this:

Wii U — Consumer-friendly failure. Nintendo Switch — the opposite!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The market doesn't support consumer-friendly measures, I guess.

Here is a radical idea: Nintendo went from a very consumer-friendly console in the Wii U to one that... is decidedly less so, with the Nintendo Switch. The result? The Switch, last we checked, is stomping the Wii U's lifetime sales in its first year. Can't wait for Nintendo's annual report at the end of this April!

It's something I thought of as I was finally returning my Wii to its original packaging this weekend (consider it a grave), instead of having it sit around for years unconnected to anything and just collecting dust and taking up space. There are all of these Wii Remotes laying around, and if you go back all the way to Nintendo Land, you can see what Nintendo was trying to do. Since they sold a hundred million Wii consoles, and some multiple of that in Wii Remotes, then Nintendo would have a huge hardware and accessory base to work from for their next console.

And so they made the Wii U, which set out to have asymmetric gameplay experiences as its core selling point. Nintendo Land was supposed to sell that concept to the market place, bundled with every Wii U. The Wii U GamePad in conjunction with all the Wii Remotes out there would enable those experiences, and it was sort of correctly assumed that everyone in the world would have a bunch of spare Wii Remotes to work with. You didn't have to buy any new controllers!

Nintendo made a big mistake, though...

Reunion, and Turnabout Anime CONTRADICTIONS! Justice For All?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Let's focus on the Ace Attorney anime.

In one month, Funimation will release part two of season one of the Ace Attorney anime on Blu-Ray/DVD, featuring the plot of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All.

If you can't wait, or you just want to watch some free Ace Attorney content, you can go ahead and watch Episodes 14 and 15 (alternatively known as the first two episodes of part two of season one) on Funimation's website. Here is Episode 14, or Reunion and Turnabout — First Trial. Here is Episode 15, or Reunion and Turnabout — Second Trial.

(That first trial episode actually has no court case taking place at all! It's, as Dr. Turner Grey would say... FAKE NEWS!)

But the contradictions don't end there. No, they occur within the trial itself. There are plot holes much bigger than the mere bullet holes in the Kurain channeling costume's sleeves! (And folding screen.)