Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 11: Three Sucky Friends at the Valley of Wishes

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I have trouble with friends and I wish it was different, so this world is personal!

What is a fitness log and why am I doing it? This article should answer your questions. And the end of last week's Fitness Log, Week 10, should tell you where we are at in our current Ring Fit Adventure quest: World 11: Valley of Wishes.

The first thing I do on Sunday night is try my first Multitask Mode donation. Then, I increased my difficulty level by 1 to 29. Then... there's a Fitness Gym guarding a Treasure Chest in the Adventure overworld. It's the Waist Set gym, involving...

1. Russian Twist (x58) — I'm not really sure what you need to do to get 100 points every time. Sometimes I get those. Sometimes I get somewhere else in the 90s. I figure it has something to do with what angle the Ring-Con has to be in?
2. Pendulum Bend (x26) — You should get 100 points every time for this. The game is grading you on the Ring-Con being held perpendicular to the floor, which you'll be able to do regardless of if your form is actually correct or not.
3. Overhead Hip Shake (x58) — The most fun activity in this game. Easy 100 points for every one of them. Just shake your hips left and right!
4. Standing Twist (x58) — Same point story with the Russian Twist.
5. Tree Pose (x24) — All of the above are Abs Fit Skills, except for this one, which is Yoga. You should get 100 points on every repetition. The game is incredibly sympathetic to you for the Tree Pose, suggesting you can hold your leg much lower than they suggest and still be fine. You're graded only on the easy arm movements, after all.

I got an average score of 96 points, or an A-rank. Good enough to earn 500 coins from the Fitness Gym. That Treasure Chest, by the way, has the Chair Pose Lv.2 Yoga Fit Skill (single-range, recharge turns of 2, for 260 base attack). I levelled up to level 91 in the process, and unlocked the Standing Twist Lv.2 Fit Skill from the skill tree (205 base attack, 3 recharge, and all-range). Perhaps I'll learn how to use it properly in the next level...

I Brought A Drednaw Plushie To My Dentist Appointment

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - What kind of response did I get? Plus, a photo!

Six months ago, I wrote about a poor experience I had at my dental cleaning. Well, that's nothing new—dentist visits are always torturous affairs. I absolutely have dental anxiety. The dentists know that, by the way.

That article from six months ago's headline was, “Remind Me To Bring A Plushie To My Next Dentist Appointment”, and I put in the article's footer that today was the day for the appointment. Truthfully, I didn't need a reminder... anxiety means the thought of the appointment consumed my thoughts for this whole week. And last week, too. Though long-time KoopaTV fan Kody B. gave me a reminder anyway.

Speaking of time periods in the past, two relevant things happened a month ago. One, I got an Oral-B Pro 5000 for my birthday, which is a super-powerful, high-tech automatic toothbrush. (To my knowledge, there is no relationship or association between Kody B. and Oral-B.) Two, I got a Drednaw plushie from The Pokémon Center online store, which was offering pre-Christmas free shipping on plushies. I wanted to get a Wooloo plush too, but they were and still are sold out. Still, I do like Drednaw.

And no, there isn't any hypocrisy in me refusing to buy Pokémon Shield and me buying/wanting to buy plushies of Galar Pokémon.

Perhaps you see where this is going. Yes, I brought Drednaw to the dentist appointment. I think it's fitting, given that Drednaw is an expert with teeth, jaws, and biting. Dentists should appreciate that, right? Though the “dread” part might not be the best for soothing anxiety...

What is Multitask Mode in Ring Fit Adventure?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - What you do when not playing Ring Fit Adventure.

My playthrough of Ring Fit Adventure on KoopaTV doesn't currently demonstrate this, but Ring Fit Adventure has other main menu options besides the adventure mode. One of those is Multitask Mode, which you don't actually play in-game. Pressing this option for the first time on the main menu will give you this explanation, and then will return you back to the main menu:

“In this mode, you can work out using only the Ring-Con without the need for a screen.
Enabling Multitask Mode records the number of presses and pulls you do with the Ring-Con while you watch television or do other activities.
To enable Multitask Mode, first set the Nintendo Switch system to sleep mode or turn it off. After that, attach the Joy-Con (R) to the Ring-Con and press the Right Stick as shown in the diagram.
While Multitask Mode is enabled, up to 500 reps of presses and pulls you do will be recorded. When you return here afterward, you'll get a bonus in Adventure mode according to how many presses you did. (This bonus is available once per player per day.)
If you're connected to the Internet, you can send the extra press/pull counts you've earned in Multitask Mode to your friends as a present. (Only once per friend per day!)”

You can also wait for 60 seconds to pass while not doing anything with the Joy-Con to turn Multitask Mode off.
It will also automatically turn off once you've gotten 500 reps.
(The Vibration button is B, and the Sounds button is A.)

Once you have more than zero repetitions, you'll be able to gift them to either yourself or to any of your Nintendo Switch friends who have Ring Fit Adventure. That gift gives you a generous (read: worth the effort) amount of coins, experience points, ingredients, and drinks, and the quantity of goodies is increased if there are more presses/pulls behind it. 

President Donald Trump's Third Year Reflection

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Technically, it's us reflecting on ourselves when talking about him.

For the past two years, KoopaTV has reflected on our coverage of President Donald John Trump. Why? We committed a long time ago to wanting to be fair & balanced as we discuss the performance of a man that we, representatives of the foreign government of Koopa Kingdom, endorsed and helped elect. We owe it to our Earth readers.

In KoopaTV's first year of coverage, we wrote 19 articles where the main topic was about President Donald John Trump, with 9 articles with positive coverage, 1 article of neutral coverage, and 9 articles containing negative coverage. However, KoopaTV's second year of coverage was not only reduced with only 9 articles in that year, but only 2 of those were positive, 2 were neutral, and 5 were negative. 

So what happened from January 2019 to January 2020? For this article, I continued what we've done in previous years and I compiled the following list of all of KoopaTV's coverage about President Donald John Trump, and noted for each item the topic, and if our coverage was positive, neutral, or negative. As an easy summary, there's a table at the end.

Articles that mention President Donald John Trump in passing, but aren't about him, are excluded from this. Every Democrat presidential primary debate article is excluded since those aren't about him by definition!

For fun, try guessing what the ratio will be before getting to the end.

All dates in this article are in mm/dd/yyyy format.

Learn in 7 Seconds Why Byleth Isn't An Interesting Choice in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Byleth brings no new mechanics.

There are a whole lot of people out there who took the announcement of Byleth as the fifth Fighters Pass character from last week as, “Oh, great, now Fire Emblem has eight characters or 10% of the entire Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster.” I'm not one of those people.

I do, however, remember things that Masahiro Sakurai has said about characters. One thing he said right after he introduced Byleth is that, “Right from the start, we intended to make the most out of new gameplay mechanics. [...] When we add a new fighter, we don't simply make their attacks or their movements a little different. Instead, we try to offer you a whole new style of play.” He also said with Terry's stream, “Whether or not the character is fun to play as, is more important than whether the character is new or old, or whether the character is recognizable to everyone.”

I asked, in my live reaction log, what new gameplay mechanic was introduced with Byleth? Was Byleth added to be more than being a new recognisable character from the latest hit Nintendo Switch game? Well, according to Byleth fans, it's the whole real-time weapon change. If you press a button and a direction, it'll use a different weapon than if you pressed a button and another direction, or no direction at all!

The Nintendo UK VS Twitter account makes this argument as well, claiming that Byleth is no ordinary sword user:

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 10: Game Gyms and Grandminions

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm pretty sure grandminions are the equivalent of grandchildren. A minion's minion. They haven't yet learned how to be a good minion.

Fun fact. Before I began this week's Ring Fit Adventure fun time (KoopaTV Fitness Fridays), King Dad wanted me to go vacuum the castle floors (and pick up any banana peels that intruders left behind) because now just seemed like a good time of year. Why me and not a servant? He said it's good exercise, and cited a Ring Fit Adventure tip as justification. I'll edit in a screenshot of the tip here if I ever see it again. Ugh. This game has some mindset downsides for sure...

...Anyway, let's talk about Sunday! What's the difficulty level? Now it's 28 (from 27). What's the world? World 10: Grandminion Gauntlet. Apparently, this country is where children come to play, but Guru Andma, one of the Four Masters and Dragaux's personal balance trainer, has apparently trained a bunch of Grandminions to stand between me and Dragaux.

The Grandminions, who are apparently children, have taken over all of the world's Game Gyms and are challenging me to do better than them. As I foreshadowed last week, this world is full of minigames. First up? Gluting Gallery, which I must complete with a B rank or higher. Hey, that's like all of the Game Gyms from the other 9 preceding worlds. Hmph.

...Actually, no, there's one difference. This is Gluting Gallery (Advanced). All of the minigames up to this point have been at the Novice difficulty level. In Advanced, the game elements move faster. There's far more tokens and bombs. The patterns are much different. And the actual minigame duration lasts for longer as well. It's a huge difficulty jump. Still, I got an A-rank, disappointing the Grandminion named Gutso.

The Grandminion Armie is guarding the Game Gym Robo-Wrecker (Advanced). Something to note here is that all of these Grandminion children are saying that Guru Andma has warned them about my presence, and that I'm a baddie. Unlike Guru Andma, their talking portraits don't have Dragaux's dark influence aura, so these kids are just under the influence of regular propaganda, as opposed to mind control.

Anyway, Robo-Wrecker (Advanced)—which I got an A-rank in—differs from Robo-Wrecker (Novice) in that some of the robots have a protective barrier over them, so you need to mash them twice (one to bash the shield, and one to bash the bot) in order to succeed. They also come in much greater frequency.

Ludwig's Live Reactions to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – Mr. Sakurai Presents "Byleth"

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I got spoiled in the title, and so will you.

This is a live reaction not in the sense that I reacted to it right at 9 AM Eastern. I wasn't available. I have a job. Miraculously, I resisted the temptation to goof off during my job and look at anything gaming-related at all. Totally focused on my work. So I had no idea what was going to happen when I got home.

Because of me being totally absent throughout the whole day, including KoopaTV's Discord server, I couldn't coordinate any multi-staffer viewing of the Direct. Radio silence, you know. So I did it all by myself. But I'm pretty qualified, since I have Fire Emblem: Three Houses and have played through it twice already, as you'll read me repeatedly state that during this log.

Do you think I'll like the information presented by Masahiro Sakurai as he describes the fifth Fighters Pass character/stage/music (paid downloadable content) for the best-selling Nintendo Switch game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate? Check out my reactions and see if your thoughts are correct.

Impressions on the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX Announcement and Demo

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Beautiful graphics and quality-of-life improvements. But is it worth a buy?

Last week, we had the January 2020 Pokémon Direct. While most of the time was spent on the Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield Expansion Passes, the first two minutes was spent on another announcement: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX, which is a Nintendo Switch remake of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team from the Game Boy Advance, and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team from the Nintendo DS. That makes the source material over 14 years old.

I wrote, around when the last Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game was released (late 2015 with Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon for Nintendo 3DS), about all of my Pokémon Mystery Dungeon history and experience. I like the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon spin-offs much more than the mainline RPGs. That means that while those mainline games are disappointing, the Mystery Dungeon titles make the franchise worth it. Though there wasn't one for Generation 7—all there were for spin-offs were stupid made-to-be-mobile titles.

That means I should celebrate Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX's existence, right? Well, before giving thoughts too pre-emptively, I wanted to play the demo. And yes, they released a demo that goes from the very beginning up right before you can enter Mt. Steel...which for those who don't know, is pretty early in. It transfers save data to the full version. Still, from that, I can definitely give you my impressions.

January 14 2020 Democrat Presidential Primary Debate 7 ANALYSIS!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - We're about to be done wasting time!

Welcome to KoopaTV's first politics article of 2020! I'm here to analyse, in KoopaTV style, the seventh Democrat Party presidential primary debate that just occurred tonight (or last night, or whenever you read this) conducted by the FAKE NEWS professionals at CNN. On stage and vying to become the next president of the United States of America are Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Tom Steyer. Read about the all of the debates and the candidates here. (It's even updated to reflect that the likes of Marianne Williamson and Cory Booker dropped out very recently!)

The first actual votes in this process occur in a few weeks at the beginning of February in Iowa, and Iowa is where this debate physically takes place. 

But there's only six people in this debate, while much more will be trying to win the Iowa caucus soon. Disappointed? I am, and so should you. My favourites aren't even up there, which leaves me with some difficult decisions. (More on that at the end of the article.)

For now, let's cover the debate that actually happened, not the debate we wished happened. First, debate talking time, as calculated by CNN themselves:

Everyone's Having a Nintendo New Year (2020) Sale

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And all I do is promote Ace Attorney like an automaton.

I am obligated to write an article about Nintendo's tremendous New Year Sale (of the new year 2020) on the Nintendo eShop right now, which ends January 17, 2020 at 2:59 AM Eastern. There's over 900 games on sale, the majority of which are on the Switch. Many other interesting companies, such as XSEED, Inti Creates, SEGA (including ATLUS), and most importantly, CAPCOM, are in this too.

You may remember CAPCOM just had a Winter Sale mere weeks ago, and I was very fortunate to get someone I just met on that sale's last day to buy Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy at 33.33% off. As of today, she's absolutely in love with the game, and is right about to finish the fifth and final case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. It was the last good thing I did in 2019. Maybe getting you to buy Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy at 33.33% off (on the Switch; 60% off on the 3DS along with the sixth game in the series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney–Spirit of Justice; while the fourth game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is 50% off; and the fifth game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney–Dual Destinies is 70% off. All of these are originally $30, except for Apollo Justice, which is originally $20.) will be the first good thing I do in 2020.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 is a weird 44.33% off to be $33.99, so it can try to masquerade as a handheld game or something. I'm in the game and training hard, but I can't recommend it anyway. ARMS is also on sale. Of course it is.

But in terms of Nintendo games I actually endorse, there's Splatoon 2 and Kirby Star Allies, at 30% off each. I can tell you that Splatoon 2 is still actively played, despite the lack of content updates. In fact, that's where I met that girl whom I convinced to purchase Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy mentioned in the second paragraph.

Take a look at everything on sale over here. Here is a Nintendo Switch link leading directly to purchasing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy.


If it's not obvious, the best thing you can do if you own Nintendo systems is to stock up on Ace Attorney games. You likely won't get the chance for these to be on sale for another several months. That'd be a shame. Let Ludwig know if you found something else you're interested in, too.


Ludwig actually bought stuff when this New Year Sale happened in 2019; though many of the games on sale then (besides Ace Attorney) are no longer on sale now.