Is Yoshi's Crafted World a Must-Buy?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm making a lot of these “Such and such is out now!” articles lately. Switch getting a lot of games?

Today, the game known as Yoshi's Crafted World has released for the Nintendo Switch. We covered the Yoshi's Crafted World demo here a month and a half ago, though when the article footer contains,

“If you wanted Ludwig's actual thoughts on the Yoshi's Crafted World demo in terms of gameplay and whatever, you could ask about those in the comments section, but who cares about details like how fun the game is when there are critical questions and concerns about Yoshi's morality at play?” 

that is likely a good sign that I didn't talk about gameplay in that article. (Still a very important article to read.)

That said, no one in the comments section asked about gameplay. Perhaps it's because it's the same gameplay in every Yoshi game. Exploration-based (for collectible purposes) platforming that sometimes involves babies and sometimes doesn't. Kamek and/or Lord Bowser (as an infant) are always involved. They usually have unique and appreciable art styles, or they're made by Artoon or Arzest and are horrible games.

Yoshi's Crafted World has one gimmick that tries to differentiate it from other Yoshi games. The launch trailer doesn't explain it but the description on YouTube does:

Notch Removed From Latest Minecraft Splashes

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - He doesn't seem to mind it, though I'm not so nihilist.

After Microsoft bought out Mojang for Minecraft in 2014, founder Markus Persson (referred to as Notch) has gone his own way, leaving the company and living the life as a rich guy, occasionally lending his mind on some minor game development projects to keep his Brain Age low.

Between before the buy-out and now, Notch has had his name on the splash in Minecraft's title screen. The splash is the yellow text that would appear diagonal against the Minecraft logo on the title. There are hundreds of these splashes and the one that appears is random. Now Microsoft has mysteriously removed Notch references from the title, and as of yet hasn't revealed why. Removed splashes include:

1. 110813! (Referencing the wedding date of Notch and his ex-wife, August 13, 2011. Sweden is one of those weird yy/mm/dd countries)
2. Made by Notch!
3. The Work of Notch!

I had to watch a lot of awful Minecraft videos like this one
in order to get a screenshot of one of the now-removed splashes.
Why did this kid record his screen like that?

How does Notch feel about this? Well... He's taking it well, actually.

A Discrimination Investigation Into Blue Screens, Inc and Director Lisa Basil

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - A KoopaTV exclusive follow-up.

Recall the case of Glen Elg, a programmer working at California-based company Blue Screens, Inc, who was murdered in December of 2018. One fake trial and then a real trial later, the legendary Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright made it clear that Mr. Elg was killed by loan shark Furio Tigre.

But what happened later with Blue Screens? What do they even do? KoopaTV figured something was suspicious about the company. Little is known about it other than that they employ programmers and work in technology, specifically analysing data management systems used by industrial companies and delivering optimal source-level and operating system components. The details are a trade secret, but their end-products are in the form of compact discs, a rather outdated medium. Presumably these launch executable files that change the core of one's computer or server. Their clients must have a lot of trust in them to give them access to such highly-sensitive technology.

A woman named Lisa Basil is the director of Blue Screens. She herself is not a programmer, but she manages the company's programmers and presumably “handles the business side.”

KoopaTV found out something astonishing about Lisa Basil, and it relates to what Blue Screens did after Glen Elg passed away.

Final Fantasy VII: Finally on a Nintendo Console

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This is Cloud the person known for past achievements, not cloud the future of gaming.

Fun fact: Rawk was going to write an article bemoaning Cloud's presence in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (and Super Smash Bros. 4). There's a lot to complain about there (total lack of music and World of Light/Spirits presence), but he had to rethink it, and ended up canceling it upon the announcement that Final Fantasy VII was coming out on the Nintendo Switch.

But this isn't like the Final Fantasy VII remake that will never come out. No, last month they released Final Fantasy IX and announced that Final Fantasy VII would come out today. And today, it's out.

And you can experience Final Fantasy VII for the first time on a Nintendo console!

It's only $16, too! Compared to Final Fantasy IX, which is $21. They're both PlayStation 1 games. Not sure what the price difference means. Did Final Fantasy IX take more effort? The ports already existed on previous systems. Who knows. Maybe it's an admission that Final Fantasy IX is better? 

There is a lot of symbolism and whatever about Final Fantasy VII being on a Nintendo console, since this was the game that took Final Fantasy off Nintendo consoles and to the PlayStation. The Switch is finally enough of a competent console, to Square Enix, that they'll bring these games back.

I actually did start playing Final Fantasy IX on Sunday. I'm already pleased. Especially with Vivi. He's precious. Much better than Ganondorf.

Black Mage is his race... and Vivi is my favourite character... I'm obviously not a racist!
White Mages, though? I don't know about those... Zidane stealing Potions is working out very well so far.

Ludwig has a big backlog of games on the Nintendo Switch, including Final Fantasy IX, so he's not going to be purchasing Final Fantasy VII anytime soon. He eventually intends to. If you'd like Ludwig to get through his backlog, then perhaps you'd also be interested in helping staff KoopaTV so Ludwig can play games instead of write articles? If that interests you, check out the Hiring page for more information!


These digitally-distributed ports don't violate Ludwig's boycott of Electronic Arts, which included the PlayStation version of Final Fantasy IX in the United States.
Ludwig really wishes that the Final Fantasy VII REMAKE would come to a Nintendo console as well.
FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered also comes to a Nintendo console. ...It's basically the same as a non-remastered version.

Apple Arcade: New Subscription Service...?!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Curation. But it's not a big deal, really.

This article is about Apple, fair warning. Never wanting to be outdone by their immortal enemy and fellow big app store provider, Google (see last week's announcement about Google Stadia), Apple had a keynote address where they announced a bunch of initiatives we shouldn't care about, plus one gaming one called Apple Arcade. No, it's not like the Arcade Archive series where it's a bunch of old arcade games ported to a modern system. It's new games curated to a platform that spans your iPhones, your iPads, your Apple TV, and your Mac. ...Gaming on a Mac? Yeah, I guess.

Here's their trailer, which, uh, portrays this as a big deal (“everything is changing”), but not the “future of gaming” that Google was blabbering about last week. Interestingly, they'll be releasing around the same time: later in 2019. 
 

While the Apple App Store already exists, and I really dislike its policies and the people who use it, Apple Arcade is like a super-special version of the App Store. Instead of free-to-play ad-ridden micro-transaction nonsense, you pay a subscription fee (exact pricing unknown) and get access to however many games there are (>100) with no advertisements or in-app purchases. How developers get paid is unknown (100-way split?) but Apple is going to help fund development.

And no data tracking. You actually have privacy. (Unless you consent to not having privacy.) I guarantee that's a huge differentiator compared to Google's service, as well as other Apple products. I actually like that privacy is now something you pay for. See how much it's valued.

Unlike a streaming service and Super Mario Run, you can play the games while not connected to the Internet. Major positive.

Let's look at the games.

The Division 2 Doesn't Divide Critics: Except Variety

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Well, that's why they call it Variety...

Have you read Matt Paprocki's review on Variety.com of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's The Division 2? Well, it's quite... interesting. You won't learn much about The Division 2 (rather unfortunate, since it's the first The Division 2 review I've actually read), but you will learn about how frustrated Mr. Paprocki is about Fox News host Tucker Carlson being on TV and defending conservative values and gun rights.

It's a kooky review, but Variety is culturally important (I didn't know they wrote about games—though games are part of the culture, so it makes sense) in the United States. And, importantly for the videogame industry, they have a seat as a Metacritic-approved reviewer.

The scores are positive for almost everyone... and Variety is the only negative one.
For a game about division, that's pretty good.

That means it's worth giving some attention to this review, since it affects the industry.

The reason for the review's... unorthodox style, according to the writer, Matt Paprocki:

Google Announced Stadia: The Cloud-based Streaming “Future of Gaming”

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - If this is the future, I don't regret picking Team Past.

At this year's Game Developers Conference, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai (not to be confused with Pichu), went in front of all of the game developers in attendance, declared he doesn't play games much, and then announced the Stadia. “A game platform for everyone.” It's not a console. It's a whole set of data centres that you can access from any Chrome browser-enabled device, be it a laptop or a smartphone.

Google has gone from organising the world's information and making that information accessible for everyone, to “making technology accessible for everyone.”

The whole presentation is here. I watched it all, and the rest of the article will be summarising what I find to be the key points, as well as key omissions:

Google makes a point to repeatedly classify the gaming industry as three groups of people: game players, game watchers, and game makers. Interesting that they put passive watchers on the same plane of importance as the people that make up the supply-demand relationship in the industry. And since it's Google, you can bet that the watchers all happen to be on YouTube. Not, say, Twitch or Mixer or DLive or any of those. That's important, since their use case is you watching a YouTube video about a game, and then being asked if you want to play the game right then and there, without a download. (Or without paying, apparently.)

Speaking of people, the gaming industry vets (since Mr. Pichai isn't a gamer) behind the Stadia are Phil Harrison (who Rawk used to stand with back when he was part of Microsoft) and Jade Raymond (former executive at Ubisoft), who is now the head of the new first party gaming studio that Google has opened to make Stadia exclusives: Stadia Games and Entertainment.

Nindies Showcase Spring 2019 Live Reactions!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Live in the sense that we're reacting to it hours after it aired. Still new to us!

We were just thinking, after publishing the guest post about Lord Winklebottom Investigates (which has 6 days left on its Kickstarter campaign), KoopaTV really should engage the indie gaming community more. Well, then Nintendo announced that they'd be showing a Nindies showcase today. Let's try it out by reacting to its contents as they happen! (Or as we watch them after the fact. 12 PM is a bad time.)

Here's the 25-minute Nindies (Nintendo Indies) Showcase of Spring 2019. Live-reacting to it are myself and Rawk. Wendy gets an emoji's worth of commentary at the end.

Splatoon 2: Free Demo, second Nintendo Switch Online trial, 20% off

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's a special demo... it's not a test!

Right now until the 25th of March, Nintendo is offering an incredible and free offer that you can convert into a purchase-worthy discount: Splatoon 2 has a free, non-barebones demo of Turf War, Ranked Match, and the most important mode of all, Salmon Run. If you don't have Nintendo Switch Online, it comes with its own 7-day trial of it—independent of the already-existing 7–9-day free trial of Nintendo Switch Online.

Why is Nintendo offering this? 

1. Only one in four Nintendo Switch owners own Splatoon 2, but it was 1 in ~2.7 Wii U owners who owned Splatoon. There's definitely more potential for people to buy Splatoon 2
2. Nintendo is on a quest to have more people subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online. That's a strategic goal for them
3. This isn't anything new. They did a way-post-launch demo of Splatoon before on the Wii U, though they still called that a Testfire Demo. (That also predicted that Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election)

The game is better than the official promotional art implies.

I encourage you to take advantage of this limited-time opportunity. A few tips and caveats...

• Story mode is not in the demo. Story mode/single player, viewed as a tutorial, is how new players are supposed to learn the controls and basic skills that would serve them well on the battlefield
• Use the map feature often in Turf and Ranked to know what's going on and what areas need your attention. It's not available in Salmon Run
• If you hear a Booyah!, please return the Booyah!
• Use a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller and set motion controls in the settings menu to your preferred sensitivity setting. Integrating motion controls is far superior than not doing so

Enjoy Splatoon 2 for free while you can! (And if you really like it, you can buy it for 20% off during the week the demo is available.) I'll be trying to get anti-Splatoon grouch RawkHawk2010 to give Salmon Run a try after he disliked the Turf War-only Splatoon 2 Global Testfire so much.


While you shouldn't expect much in the way of more updates to Splatoon 2 if you're just now buying it, the game already has more than $60 worth of content. Certainly more than $48. And it's even better if you use the savings to also buy the Octo Expansion! Ludwig hasn't actually downloaded the demo for the purposes of confirming assumptions made in this article, since he already owns the full game and administers the KoopaTV Family Group for Nintendo Switch Online.


Splatoon 2 already has a history of substantial demos, like the demo Splatfest they did.
Splatoon 2 does the same kind of demo a year later, but 30% off.

Fire Emblem Support System and the Inhumanity of Networking

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Just how much do you truly value your network of people?

I was reading Peggy Noonan's latest DECLARATIONS column in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, about the college admissions scandal going on in the news. (You can read it for yourself behind this paywall.) 

One of the morals of the column ended up being that you should strive to make friends, as opposed to just “networking”. Networking is a term that Ms. Noonan doesn't define, but it's commonly understood to mean that you're making shallow, quantity-based connections with random people you meet at events or gatherings, with the purpose of possibly being able to use them “as commodities” (her words) for your personal benefit later. (Such as getting a new job.)

How do you connect this to games? That's the whole philosophy of the Support mechanic in the Fire Emblem franchise! Supports have evolved over time and are appealing to the fans for a variety of reasons, which I'll cover in this article. How well does each Fire Emblem Support structure hew to the friends-not-networks philosophy?

Fortnite EULA Update: You Don't Need an Ace Attorney to Understand It

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You just need a parent, basic reading comprehension, or KoopaTV!

Back in the days last year when you could use the Nintendo Switch's Video Capture on Epic Games's Fortnite, I wrote a scathing article about how much I dislike Fortnite. Topping the article was a Video Captured 30-second YouTube clip of the end-user license agreement and how bad it was visually presented. I didn't think that video would get any views outside of that article. And until today, I was right. But now this video has nearly 6,000 views and counting.
 

I'm not asking you to watch that video. There's nothing interesting there. What is interesting is the comments section of that video, which now has over 100 comments on it. If that was on KoopaTV's comments section, all of them would be in the running for our monthly “worst comment of the month” award in our newsletters. 

I'll get to why the video suddenly has views and comments in a moment, and explain what is really going on in case you're concerned for your Fortnite existence (scroll down for a summary of the game's EULA written in plain English!), but among the worst comments that represent the fear in people's hearts:

Hawking and Vortex: The Pi Day Parting

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Rip in Pisces.

I haven't looked for any, but I haven't come across any tributes to Stephen Hawking, the famed British theoretical physicist, who died a year ago on March 14, 2018. And I definitely haven't seen any tributes to former British KoopaTV staffer Vortexica, who we last saw on March 14, 2018. Coincidence? Well, here were his last words last year on this date, never-before revealed in public:

“Oh hey, looks like I've got fans on KoopaTV. How nice.
Also, RIP Stephen Hawking. :vul_cry:
I never did finish reading his book...” 

The second-to-last time any of us had heard from him was his last public appearance, KoopaTV's live reactions to the March 8, 2018 Nintendo Direct. Yeah, he had a week absence there, only to appear after Stephen Hawking die, only to never appear again.

As for why Vortexica said he had fans on KoopaTV, I was telling him the results of the KoopaTV Feedback Form Part XV, where Charssie said that Vortex was his favourite staffer as a person and as a writer, and Nandin said Vortex was his favourite staffer as a writer. Vortex was touched by that... and yet we still never saw him again.

Since then, Brexit has been a complete disaster, and I'm saying that as someone who didn't believe the United Kingdom leaving the European Union was inevitably always a bad idea. Brexit itself made Vortexica feel “apprehensive” but also “hopeful for the future.” Not hopeful enough to stick around with us.

I wrote an article on behalf of the staff about Vortexica being decommissioned, which is when we considered him legally deceased. Since then, we've learned absolutely nothing about his whereabouts, if he has any, or if he was actually killed. I proposed it might've been the work of Cappy (who hasn't gotten a mention in 2019 yet?!), and the whole “Vortex is in danger!” story arc of early 2018 was based around Cappy being interested in the United Kingdom, and then infiltrating it during the royal wedding.

As for Stephen Hawking, I wonder if there's a Rawk Hawk pun somewhere there. What would've been more appropriate: Vortex leaving because Mr. Hawking is British, or Rawk leaving because the Hawk King is gone?

...Well, that's not a good question to ask if I want to retain staff. I'll ask this instead: which of Stephen Hawking's many books do you think Vortexica never finished reading?

Ludwig mentioned the Feedback Form series in this article, so he's pleased to announce that you can now fill out KoopaTV Feedback Form Part XVIII and KoopaTV Quiz Part XVIII! Just go here for the links! This will probably be the last RIP Vortex article on KoopaTV, so don't enjoy it. Because that's sad.

Dropping Your Keys

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Literal, physical keys. Not Steam keys or anything like that.

Remember that tangential concluding paragraph at the end of my oh-crap-I-still-have-Wii-Points end of the Wii Shop Channel article? Nah, you probably didn't read it or get that far, because who cares about the Wii Shop Channel?

Well, the point there is my bit about my Wii U lanyard and how I'm discontinuing it as the last vestige of my Wii U usage. That was a bad idea. Since then, I went and lost my car key. Since I'm not an evil scumbag, I won't go buy a Nintendo Labo Vehicle Kit and get one of those Toy-Con master keys to hijack any vehicle possible. Let's just say, to satisfy the KoopaTV vehicle philosophy quota of the month, that planes not having keys to lose is still a great advantage of why planes are better than cars.

My car key was just a single key not attached to anything, since I de-attached the Wii U lanyard. No key ring or anything. I don't carry around other keys since I have nothing else that is kept locked. That makes it really easy to lose because it lacks a distinct and noticeable physical presence.

I'm not the only guy who has key-losing problems. Check out this Team Rocket Grunt in Pokémon FireRed and Pokémon LeafGreen who is supposed to be guarding the LIFT KEY that opens the elevator leading to Giovanni's office in Team Rocket's Hideout.

Splatfest: Would you rather be a KNIGHT or a WIZARD?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - My answer may surprise you, and my reasoning may convince you.

This may seem like a question of fantasy to you, but it's real for me. And personal.

This month's Splatoon 2 Splatfest, taking place this weekend on a worldwide basis, asks...

“Which would you rather be? A knight or a wizard?”

It's important to note that it's not asking which of knight or wizard you currently are, but which you would rather be. The use of the word “rather” indicates that, if given the opportunity to change your life, which option would you pick to do so?

You may note that the fact I emphasised that probably hints my choice. Before I get to that, I really did just want to make the question clear. This article isn't just about my opinion—but you may find it useful as well.

...I also suppose that my opening sentence is inherently wrong, because “rather” questions are fantasy and not reality, by definition.

President Donald John Trump Finally Takes Daylight Savings Time Position

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This has happened only because we at KoopaTV first asked him! Forever ago.

In the footer of yesterday's annual Daylight Savings Time article (which is a must-read if you want to know how Mario, of Mario's Time Machine fame, gave the dreaded inspiration of Daylight Savings Time to Founding Father Benjamin Franklin), I implied there wouldn't be an article today. But something magical happened today that I had to write about it.

President Donald John Trump, after not responding for two years (and not responding to the follow-up, either), has finally replied to KoopaTV, and the world, on his Daylight Savings Time position! 

Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2019

“Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!” he tweeted on Monday morning. Now, we asked him in our letters to demonstrate leadership in Congress to get Daylight Savings Time abolished, as opposed to made permanent, but that's at least still better than the status quo of changing the clocks twice a year and engaging in biannual time travel.

That said, his tweet is just a tweet. There's no policy push behind it yet. President Donald John Trump writes inane tweets all the time and most go absolutely nowhere. 

Fortunately, there is hope coming from more reliable places. Meet Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. He has a lot of policy proposals that I'm sure we'll talk about later this year when the debates happen. Among them is also a call to make Daylight Savings Time permanent, for the express purpose of preventing more time-switching:

The Origins of Daylight Savings Time: Mario's Time Machine

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - A KoopaTV Daylight Savings Time article published on the Sunday it actually happens?

I'm declaring it now: Sunday March 10 is and will remain the worst day of the year 2019. Let me list the calamities on this day, each of which alone warrants it being a very bad day:

1. In most of the United States, it's Daylight Savings Time, a practice where the government is somehow in control of time, and you must change all of your clocks by an hour ahead (so you lose an hour of sleep)
2. It's MAR10 Day, or “Mario Day”, a horrific and once-unofficial acknowledgement of a pun that now has big sales and official recognition behind it in celebration of Mario, the Koopa-killing plumber
3. I have to get a haircut today. It's just a trim, they say... 

I'll refrain from talking about my hair for this article (articles about my aesthetic personal problems are weird) and I'll just talk about the connection between Daylight Savings and Mario.

...And yes, there IS a connection. After years of sleuthing, I can finally combine my passions of hating Daylight Savings Time and hating Mario into one article. (See related DST and MAR10 articles below the footer for background.)

Support Lord Winklebottom Investigations

By SHINYGIRAFARIG - You Can Play As A Giraffe.

I made a guest post a long time ago about how fiction influences and how giraffes are barely represented in media which leads to little exposure and therefore not many know they are now a critically endangered species. 

I find The Adventure Pals very relatable. I also love giraffes.

Well Charlotte Sutherland is working on making a point and click adventure game with the vast majority done on her own and she is planning to release for the Switch alongside PC, Mac and Linex. She is a registered Switch developer so hopefully we can trust that she will put it on Switch if the Kickstarter gets funded.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/256029787/lord-winklebottom-investigates/ 

Update: There's a new Kickstarter for it since the old one failed: 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/256029787/lord-winklebottom-investigates-murder-mystery-gira

The Nintendo Labo Entering Virtual Reality

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Nintendo really is entering virtual reality after all.

Normally, if a KoopaTV article has the name “Nintendo Labo” in the title, you may expect hysteria on my part. However, I'm going to reserve that for a future article, and just deal with virtual reality discussion.

With that said, Nintendo has just announced the fourth Nintendo Labo Toy-Con kit: The Nintendo Labo VR Kit. That's VR for Virtual Reality, a hot technology in general that is seeing its way into a lot of non-gaming settings. Virtual Reality really started getting its popularity as a gaming technology, but I don't think gamers really care about it anymore.

Interestingly enough, I've already made at least two references to Nintendo and Virtual Reality on KoopaTV, and both are extremely on-topic to this new Labo announcement.

Two Right Ways and One Wrong Way To Present Information In-Game Through NPCs

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And of course, I go into detail about the wrong way.

Suppose you are a game developer. You're aware of the (lamentable) trend that instruction manuals are a fading memory, and players don't want to read those anyway. They want in-context information presented at least somewhat naturally, not in an out-of-game experience. And so, you want to present them that kind of information in an accessible-at-any-time format that they can optionally check out whenever by using the protagonist's talk/interact-with-the-environment button.

You have three options with the usage of dedicated non-playable characters (NPCs), which can also take non-character forms (like an in-game book shelf):

1. Upon starting a conversation, the NPC prompts the player to select from a menu of topics they'd like to hear about. They pick one, hear the topic, and the conversation ends. The player could talk to the NPC again and select a different topic if they wish.
2. There are several NPCs that the player can interact with, with each having a different topic to cover. Talking to the NPC again will make them repeat their topic.
3. Have one NPC that cycles through topics each time you talk to them. Sometimes at random and sometimes in a set order.

Options #1 and #2 are perfectly acceptable. #1 is advisable if you want to promote a specific character as a great resource for the protagonist character, like a mentor or a know-it-all. #2 is fine if you don't want your helpful NPCs to have much characterisation. Maybe a set of colour-coded triplets who are each an expert on a different subject.

Option #3, an NPC that cycles through topics in a non-player-determined order, is awful, and that's the subject of this article. Take a look at this disastrous scenario from Team Kirby Clash Deluxe:

Difficulty Modes and Unlocking Story Content

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - What kind of rewards do you like?

A month ago on the Requests page I got this request from ShinyGirafarig, relating to her newfound Advance Wars-esque darling, Wargroove from Chucklefish:

“In the Wargroove fanbase, people are divided about earning one star only if played in easy mode compared to earning 3 stars if players did well enough in normal mode. Chucklefish is even asking for feedback about it here wargroove.com/whats-next-for-wargroove/

For those who want to earn 3 stars in easy mode, they explain that there are unlockables behind earning enough stars that they won't be able to get if they get one star per map. They also say people who struggle with TBS games would just look at a day by day walkthrough, making it a chore to earn 3 stars per map. Those who only want three stars to be tied to difficulty say that stars should be earned for good play.

My request is how should games handle unlockable rewards for casual players vs hardcore gamers?” 

(Of note is that Chucklefish's development blog doesn't have a comments section on it.)

I just want to note that I haven't played Wargroove before and I'm taking this request anyway. Therefore, I'm making a lot of assumptions to write this article. Please correct me if any of them are wrong.

Regardless, tomorrow morning (March 6—I picked a great time to do this request) Chucklefish will be taking actions to address this exact issue in a 1.2.0 patch of Wargroove. Here's their new system they're planning to implement, and how I think it makes sense compared to the unlockables philosophy I outline later in the article:

Don't Let Sakurai Die

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Yet another “Sakurai overworks himself and you don't care.” article.

I've been a consistent advocate for Super Smash Bros. series director Masahiro Sakurai's personal health. Ranging from “A Sonnet for Sakurai” that starts off hoping he doesn't die while developing Super Smash Bros. For Wii U, to writing that he deserves a day off following the release of Super Smash Bros. For Wii U.

And it turns out that hoping he gets a day off wasn't at all facetious on my part, according to this Nintendo Dream interview with Sakurai translated by Nintendo Everything. 

Check out this ridiculous quote from Sakurai about that topic:

KoopaTV's February 2019 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's time for a return to a (temporarily-retired) KoopaTV feature!

Did you know February is the shortest month of the year? ...You did? Yeah, everyone knows that. But did you know that despite that, KoopaTV in February 2019 didn't get the short end of the stick? Surprisingly decent month.

February was actually a fun microcosm of what makes KoopaTV a unique site, from that first week dedicated to Pancakes vs. Waffles, to an Enlightenment Movement article, and even some activism. Plus, caring about stuff that no one else does. Really hard to say that KoopaTV is like any other site you see out there. More on all of that throughout this newsletter!

Top Five Recommended KoopaTV Experiences of February 2019

There's no KoopaTV being a premium videogame commentary story without great experiences happening on a consistent basis! And that happened. Here's my evidence: the top five recommended KoopaTV experiences of February 2019.

(Everything on KoopaTV, whether or not it's on this list, is worth your time.)