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Thursday, January 31, 2019

December 31, 2018 Nintendo Quarterly Financial Update

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...Featuring lowered expectations that everyone knew would happen.

Today, Nintendo released their quarterly update about the state of their business, covering the beginning of October to the end of December—the biggest time period for them of the year in terms of selling software and hardware. I'd say it didn't disappoint, but their stock dropped 4% today, so it kind of did. That's because Nintendo's goal of selling 20 million additional Nintendo Switch consoles from April 1 2018 to March 30 2019 was reduced to a goal of 17 million. I thought everyone already knew that Nintendo's goal was overly ambitious and they weren't going to reach it, and that would have already been baked into Nintendo's stock price.

Guess not.


Here's some updated sales numbers Nintendo has provided, in my quarterly chart of fun:


Nintendo Switch software sales chart as of December 31 2018
Featuring no sales data on ARMS, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, or the Nintendo Labo!

I'm pretty sure, to this day, ARMS is outselling the Nintendo Labo, collectively. One Labo is too many, so over a million Labo is a concern. In any case, KoopaTV's anti-Labo crusade is clearly having a big impact and the Labo is widely considered across the industry to be a failure. That's another victory.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Ludwig Discovers He Has Wii Points The Day Wii Shop Channel Goes Away

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Let's spend the sunk cost unwisely.

Remember the highly-relevant and important warning article from 2017? Nintendo announced that the Wii Shop Channel would close to all transactions on January 30, 2019. I'm sure you've thought about it every day since, dreading the moment that is now upon us.

(I'd like to say that was all sarcasm, but people freaked out when Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection shut down. Just check the comments section.) 

I haven't thought about it until after I got Piranha Plant. For fun, I decided last night I'd write a short, silly article saying good-bye to the Wii Shop Channel for the last time. After looking through my mess of Wii accessories, going through the pains of finding batteries for the Wii Remote, getting the Wii Remote to sync up to the Wii with that painful red button, setting up the Sensor Bar, realising the Sensor Bar doesn't work, attaching the Classic Controller to the Wii Remote since that doesn't require motion control, and setting up my new Internet connection (compared to what was saved a decade ago)...

...I went to the Wii Shop Channel. And rather than a short silly article, I realised that I'd have to write something far more complicated and comprehensive, because this is what I saw:


Tuesday, January 29, 2019

How To Cope Playing Games With Awful Playable Characters

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm an expert and I have tips to share. This is apparently an intervention.

Today, Kingdom Hearts III was released worldwide. I don't really have anything to say about it beyond my comment here, where I still think the game is vapourware and not really releasing.

Almost no one on KoopaTV's staff cares about Kingdom Hearts III or the series in general except Wendy (and what's the likelihood she'll ever publish content here about Kingdom Hearts?), so I'm just going to segue into fulfilling one of the requests we've received that alludes to Sora, the protagonist of the Kingdom Hearts series (most of it anyway):
I desperately need an intervention article for dealing with characters you hate in media you love. You seem to be able to play games that have the plumber all the time. I need to deal with the fear of giant door opener wielder getting in my Smash Bros.” 

I'm an expert in playing games that feature characters I absolutely despise, ranging from every single Mario game to the fact that Super Smash Bros. now features bad characters like PAC-MAN and Chrom. Here are some ways you can handle games with awful protagonists.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

Booyah! Is Significant. Booyah! Back In Splatoon 2

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Booyah! is a sociopositive signal of mindfulness. Not doing it is sociopathic.

Studies show that starting a Splatoon 2 match or Salmon Run shift with a Booyah!, and then having your teammates Booyah! back, improves team cohesion and performance. On average, non-Booyah! participants perform worse in team-based settings.

Why is the Booyah! button so powerful, and what is its significance in Splatoon 2 play? I'll explore that in detail in this article.

You might wonder why I'm writing about Booyah! now, in 2019, when the game supposedly is on its way out because it's not getting any more content updates. (Which was FAKE NEWS, as revealed by this morning's reveal of an upcoming content update.) It's still a highly relevant topic, as seen by this FRESH! statement in Inkopolis Square this morning:

Pls Booyah Back Splatoon 2 Inkopolis Square post please Faith:3c
“Pls Booyah Back” says Faith:3c.
(I swear I marked it as Fresh! after the screenshot.)


Friday, January 25, 2019

Metroid Prime 4 Development Scrapped... And Restarted

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's all gone now, but like a phoenix, it'll rise from the phazon. ...Or like a Ridley.

The only thing we have been sure of with Metroid Prime 4 is that logo of the 4 we saw at E3 2017; and even that's uncertain since Nintendo's financial documents state Metroid Prime 4's title to be “(temp.)” with a release window of “TBA.”

Nintendo made this Metroid Prime 4 development announcement today that leaves us about where we started with in terms of information, but we can assume an additional few years added onto whenever TBA was going to be:




We can now confirm that Retro Studios is working on Metroid Prime 4 with Nintendo producer Kensuke Tanabe leading them, instead of the prior situation with Mr. Tanabe leading an unknown, new development team. Those mystery men couldn't cut it, so Nintendo is scrapping everything they did for quality reasons and they're having Retro, the Nintendo studio that developed the three prior Metroid Prime games, work on it.

Nintendo might do this kind of thing often, but it doesn't get to public attention or happen to games that already had publicised announcements. The only other example I can think of was the Mother game that failed to come out on the Nintendo 64. That means today is big news, but it's hard to really get into it because we never knew anything about Metroid Prime 4 anyway. The logo still looks the same, too.

Nintendo could've not made this announcement and did the development reshuffling behind-the-scenes and we'd be none the wiser. We'd just be wondering what's taking so long, but people already think that. Remember, it's not a delay when the release date was To Be Announced to begin with! It still fits in that release window.

If you don't want to watch 3 minutes of Shinya Takahashi talk in Japanese with English sub-titles, you can read the full English transcript below:

Thursday, January 24, 2019

Typical Socialist: Nintendo 64 Is AOC's Best Console; Never Owned One

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - There's an implicit message against streaming games somewhere in this.

Apparently, there are a lot of young kids out there being lead into the transsexual life. This isn't a rant about that, but just some necessary background. It turns out that feuding with biology is possible but expensive, so advocates want to help by fund-raising. What's a great way to make money? Charity game streaming, apparently. Hey, if it works for cancer, it'll work for transsexual kids.

And apparently it does actually work, especially with celebrities backing it, like 29-year old recently-inaugurated United States representative (representing the 14th district of New York) and socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or AOC). We haven't mentioned her at all on KoopaTV, but our brother-from-another-mother site discusses her literally every other day. No one will appreciate if we satirise them by never talking about AOC, so we might as well do it once. And it's about videogames!


Ms. Ocasio-Cortez appeared on the stream alluded to in the first paragraph, which was playing Donkey Kong 64. Referring to the publicly-less-appreciated Nintendo 64 game as a “lemon” after the fact, she spoke of how the Nintendo 64 is “probably the best system out of all of them.”

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez Twitter Donkey Kong Nintendo 64 lemons into lemonade
What did Donkey Kong 64 do to deserve that characterisation?

In detail, she explained,

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Register for the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North America Open 2019!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - There's a Splatoon 2 tournament too, if you know three other people for a team.

Get ready to prove your skills in the hit Nintendo Switch game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate! If you're in North America. (You can also prove them in Splatoon 2 for the same prize, but this article ain't about that.) Nintendo of America is teaming up with Battlefy (after previously teaming up with them for the Splatoon tournament in 2017 and the Splatoon 2 tournament in 2018), an eSports platform, to bring you twelve massive tournaments across four regions, with the prize being a trip to PAX East to compete in the Final Event for a worth-$500 “collectible item.” The PAX East trip alone is pretty worth it.

The tournaments are all online-based (up until the PAX East trip), with 2048 players in each tournament. The first 9 matches of bracket are 7-minute Time best-of-1 battles with Items on low, and the last 2 matches are 7-minute 3-stock best-of-3 matches with Items on low.. The whole tournament is single elimination. PAX East has its own rules, but I highly doubt anyone reading this is actually going to win a qualifier, so I don't have to give details on that. If you want them, read the official rules. I already did. Not many people have.

The registration is filling up quickly, and not many people seem to know how to sign up for the second or third qualifier in their region—you're allowed to sign up for all three. I know I did. Here's what you do:

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

President Donald Trump's Second Year Reflection

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Why did I say it's his reflection? It's our reflection about him.

One year ago, I created an article about President Donald Trump's First Year Reflection. The idea is that KoopaTV discussed the President of the United States a lot during his first year from January 2017–January 2018, and it would be interesting to see what sort of coverage we gave him. Positive, neutral, or negative? Were we fair & balanced or not?

I put together a big list of all of the coverage about President Donald John Trump and sorted it by topic and how positive, neutral, or negative it was. Then I put it all in a table at the end, and it turns out that KoopaTV's coverage, spread across 19 articles in a year, was... exactly neutral, with equal amounts of good and bad.

That's a super-interesting result. It made me wonder how KoopaTV's coverage of 2018–2019 was, and if I find that to be an interesting question, surely you do as well. It's time for a similar list for the past year, then! Let's go!

For fun, try guessing what the ratio will be before getting to the end. Last year, we made a mini-contest out of the guessing. This year, I'm not going that far...

All dates on this website (that I can remember) are in dd/mm/yyyy format.

Monday, January 21, 2019

Morton Luther King Jr.: MORTON HAVE NIGHTMARE

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And now, his nightmare will be your nightmares!

More than any other Koopaling besides Ludwig and Wendy (because we're both staff members here), I'm pretty sure that Morton Koopa Jr. is the most talked-about Koopaling on KoopaTV. (If you try to fact-check that and successfully prove I'm wrong, I'll give you 5 Correction Corner points—that's the maximum.) Most of the focus of that talk is rather negative coverage, as I'll allude to in the coming paragraphs.

But did you know that Morton Koopa Jr., aside from being a masterful kart-racer and a feet-on advocate for ending childhood poverty, is also a civil rights activist? It's true. I figured that today, without any provocation, I'd write about that. Not like anything else is going on.

In fact, Morton is famous for his “MORTON HAVE NIGHTMARE” speech that he gave to a large gathering of Goombas, claiming to care about the disparity in treatment of Goombas compared to Koopas within Koopa Kingdom, as well as around the world in other kingdoms with Goombas vs. their dominant population species.

We have some pictures and a partial transcript that go along with that. Sorry, no lyrical music video of Morton this time. Or any video. This is a historical event that no one thought was worth recording, but it is worth sharing. ...Maybe. (It took KoopaTV over five and a half years to share this, though, so maybe not.)

Keep in mind that this stuff is controversial and disturbing. (Viewer discretion advised.) Given Morton's speaking style, the transcript is also a little hard to read. (It was hard to transcribe, too!) There's some analysis at the end from me, just to get things straight.

Friday, January 18, 2019

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes Released... And More Best Buy Shopping Adventures!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I bought Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. There's more to the story than that.

I last wrote about Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes in September, writing about its delay to January 2019 (a very smart delay) and how I was still unsure if I should buy it. Either way, January 2019 is here (specifically Friday, January 18) and the game has released. I decided to go to Best Buy today and see if I would impulsively buy it or not. Moment of truth time.

I do want to support the No More Heroes franchise, after all. But Travis Strikes Again strikes me as something to be wary of... again and again. (There's wordplay in that sentence.) That said, it's something I've been paying close attention to since SUDA 51 appeared on that stage when the Nintendo Switch and its concept was formally introduced.

The first thing I see when I get to the Nintendo section of the store is that Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is nowhere to be found. Instead, another game that I've been agonising over the purchase of was there, and in eye-catching fashion.

Thursday, January 17, 2019

Your Fortnite Account's Credit Cards Could've Been Hacked

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The could've would turn into would've if the method fell into the wrong gloves.

Being a hipster—and I'm not saying I'm a hipster, since I have legitimate grievances against Fortnite—has advantages. We know that hackers target gamers for a variety of reasons, covered here. Hackers want to get the highest return on investment for their time, so they want to go after online games with large userbases that involve e-commerce or micro-transactions. Bonus points if that userbase consists of idiots, children, or idiotic children. There isn't a game that fits all of those criteria right now better than Fortnite, which is pretty much the most popular game on every platform it's on, which is basically anything modern that can play games.

There are probably tons of scammers out there trying to target unsuspecting Fortnite players and extort value from them. I don't encounter these since I'm suspecting and not a Fortnite player, but it's out there. Something about whatever a V-buck is and the desire to obtain more of them is just that captivating. As a result, millions and millions of people have provided Epic Games their (or their parents’) credit card details, stored for easy use.

I've written about the dangers of storing your credit cards with any game provider infrastructure, and that's one of my biggest issues with Nintendo Switch Online right now

And this is exactly why. Check Point Research, a cyber threat intelligence outfit, documented how they were able to—through sophisticated means that could take advantage of a better-than-unsuspecting Fortnite player—hack accounts (and their credit card spending ability, as well as impersonating the victim in voice chats with their friends) through weaknesses in Epic Games's cybersecurity infrastructure. It's not even true phishing since the user isn't putting in their log-in information!

Epic Games single sign on Fortnite account PlayStation Xbox Nintendo Facebook Google
Through single sign-on, they could get you via any major platform, Facebook, or Google.
It doesn't appear that the Nintendo Switch's lack of an Internet browser would save you.

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Your Online Gaming Sessions Are Illegal, Declares Sessions In His Last Session

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And by online gaming I mean online gambling, but there's a lesson there.

Once upon a time, I actually wrote on KoopaTV, “we're happy that Jeff Sessions was just confirmed to be President Donald John Trump's Attorney General!” I can't justify that statement, since it's weird even for the early-2017 President Donald John Trump honeymoon period. Maybe it was sarcasm. I want the benefit of the doubt. I never liked Jeff Sessions (aka Attorney General/Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III), believe me. Still don't.

Jeff Sessions recently got FIRED by President Donald John Trump, and for excellent reasons being that he was useless and counterproductive. Dude hates states rights and liberty, too. And his insistence on non-Senator power is the reason that we even know who Roy Moore is. (And similar sexual harasser Roy of Pherae.)

But right before he did, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the President and the Attorney General on legal matters, issued a memorandum saying that the Wire Act, which was previously thought to just ban online sportsbetting in the United States, applies to all forms of gambling. (Don't actually try to read the memo—it's two-dozen pages about interpreting almost 60-year old comma usage. Not that ancient grammar isn't important, but it's bad reading material, unlike the rest of this article.)

Between 2011 and now (thanks President Barack Hussein Obama—non-ironically), the Justice Department saw the Wire Act of 1961 as only applying to sportsbetting as it relates to online wagering, meaning state-regulated online casinos and lottery are just fine. So states like Georgia set up (online) lotteries like the Georgia Lottery, which funds the crucial HOPE Scholarship in that state. People like Rawk get their gambling fix, and kids get scholarships to go to school. Works out for everyone. But now the online Georgia Lottery is considered illegal.

Why did the Justice Department suddenly come to this new conclusion? Well, I think I know why.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

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.

Monday, January 14, 2019

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...

ATLAS Steam Support refund request multiplayer doesn't work
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?

Friday, January 11, 2019

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!”

Thursday, January 10, 2019

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:

Splatoon 2 Splatfest Team Family vs. Friends results votes wins
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.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

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:

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

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.

Nintendo New Year's Digital Sale 2019 recommended included games
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.)

Monday, January 7, 2019

KoopaTV's 2018 GOTY Awards!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Game of THAT Year 2018... 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.



Friday, January 4, 2019

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.



KoopaTV Game of THAT Year GOTY Nominations and other categories 2018
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.)

Thursday, January 3, 2019

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 right here on the KoopaTV staff, 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.



Koopalings Mario Kart 8 karts cars bikes Lemmy Roy Ludwig Larry Morton Iggy Wendy
All seven Koopalings have been behind the wheel, but Wendy's beyond that hunk of junk.

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

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!

Scratch 3.0 glitch bug dialogue bubble behind list broken
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.
By 2022, Ludwig still didn't fix a single thing.
Ludwig still didn't fix anything in 2023, but he / KoopaTV DID release a Scratch 3-native videogame!

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

KoopaTV's December 2018 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - December and 2018 are over. They were barely around.

How am I already writing a newsletter reviewing December 2018? How is it 2019 already? That went by so fast. It turns out that in its release month, I played over 100 hours of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (and some other games too) and time passed by enormously quickly. In that time, KoopaTV also had an article every weekday again!

How did we manage to do all that? I dunno. It's beyond me. But now we lack a big shiny target to look forward to. Guess that means we better enjoy ourselves in the current moment. ...That sort of goes against the whole point of a newsletter reviewing the past, but, uh, right after you read this, think about the present. ...Anyway...

Oh, wait, no, the nominations for our Game of THAT Year 2018 are happening at the end of this week, with the winners on Monday. We can't move away from the past and go to the present just yet.

Top Five Recommended Experiences of December 2018


December 2018 was a great month for KoopaTV articles. Much better than the likes of November 2018. I'm surprised by the quality on display, especially since I don't really remember December existing. Dunno how we'll top that in 2019. Maybe we won't, so be sure to experience these articles (and everything else from December 2018 since it's worth it), listed in chronological order.
  1. Insight into the World of Light; What Happened to Wendy and for Whom Does She Fight?  — Tron Bonne being Wendy O. Koopa's Spirit match got Rawk interested into researching the Mega Man Legends antagonist.
  2. First Weekend Thoughts On Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — The KoopaTV staff spent the first weekend of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate having a Smashfest at our Sierra Leone HQ, so we all share our thoughts.
  3. Heroes vs. Villains: The Ultimate SplatfestSplatoon 2's December Splatfest pits heroes vs. villains against one another, and with King Bowser Koopa on Team Villains, it's little wonder which pick Ludwig supports!
  4. Kirby Star Allies Review — Complete Version — After waiting for all of the free DLC to come in so the game is content complete, Ludwig finally writes a full review of Kirby Star Allies.
  5. Mario Brutally Murders Petey Piranha (and people still play Mario Tennis Aces online) — Mario savagely murders Petey Piranha, who just wanted to play a friendly game of tennis with him.