For Your Information: John Delaney Isn't Actually Moderate

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Look at his voting record and positions.

I think this is the last time I'll be able to write about former Maryland Congressman and 2020 Democrat presidential candidate John Delaney. He didn't qualify for September's debate. He doesn't have a chance to qualify for October's debate. Our 2020 presidential coverage, at least for the Democrat primaries, won't really extend past the debates...

Tulsi Gabbard also didn't qualify for September's debate due to rather arbitrary (but pre-established) rules from the Democrat National Committee. Disgusting Kamala Harris supporters made a #TulsiDidntQualifyParty hashtag, still having a grudge from when Tulsi Gabbard torched Kamala Harris in the second debate. They were posting happy black women .gifs or something. They might still be doing that. They're a bunch of vindictive people. Note that they know that what Tulsi said about Kamala is right, but they're so caught up in their identity politics that it doesn't matter.

But what about John Delaney? He opened up his second debate performance attacking popular-with-small-donor socialists Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. That got him a lot of ire from progressives on Twitter during the debate, but there's literally no #DelaneyDidntQualifyParty hashtag. He just has a joke #Delaneymentum hashtag used by someone promoting a John Delaney drop out petition with thousands of signatures and has become the Democrat 2020 version of Jim Gilmore back in 2015–2016 with Gilmentum.

The John Delaney campaign has made an announcement stating it won't drop out because it wishes to tell the truth. We're all about the truth on KoopaTV. Levity, too.

Here's the truth.

John Delaney isn't a Republican in disguise. He's not even a moderate. He's an extreme, anti-Trump, big government left-winger just like the rest of them. 

Class President Bowser Versus Recess

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Why Lord Bowser is noble for wishing to cancel recess.

For those who go to school, you're either already back in school, or you will be early next week. If KoopaTV's political banter scares you away (having a tab called “2020 Presidential Debate Index” may intimidate politically disinclined children... and adults, for that matter), I wonder what you think of student governance. After all, your fellow students may run for class president.

If you're cynical, you probably think of those class-presidential aspirations as nothing more than a joke. Well, that's... roughly how we treat the presidential aspirations of the whole United States of America.

There is, however, one candidate for class president that is not doing it for the jokes. In fact, he's very serious, and very capable, and has a plan that benefits... himself, at least.

I'm talking about King Bowser Koopa for class president. If you click that link, you're forced to engage in a riddle just to be aware of his platform. Clearly, Lord Bowser's candidacy is for the more intellectual of the students.

For the purposes of proceeding with this article, the secret message reads, “So he can cancel recess!”

Among other obvious questions, my number one question is why does the top of the page state “Bowser’s running for class president, but it’s not because he wants to help anyone…except for himself!”? Assuming that statement is true, how would cancelling recess help Lord Bowser?

I asked the producer of the Play Nintendo site, and she responded with...

The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Characters Used The MOST and the LEAST In August 2019!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You can bet it'll be this way until Banjo comes out.

The fact is that I didn't do as well as I thought I'd do in the Nintendo-sponsored, Battlefy-hosted Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open August 2019. Sure, I barely got into the top 10% of people who actually played in my region (see the comments section of that article for my journey), but that's still far from the Top 32 required to get into the Bracket Round. My bracket picture in that article was thus considered FAKE NEWS because it included a picture of Ludwig in the Bracket Round, but I wasn't in it and neither was any other Ludwig player.

It was an intense experience all around, and playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with tournament-stakes for four hours straight (controversially extended to five at the end of the fourth hour) is far more grueling than playing Splatoon 2 Splatfest Turf Wars for the same amount of time. 

In the end, the four North American players that will be flown to Japan for the Nintendo Live tournament are Epic Gabriel (Region 6, Florida, R.O.B.), Wrath (Region 6, Georgia, Sonic), YoseFu (Region 5, ??? somewhere near Mississippi, Simon Belmont), and Heeew (Region 3, ??? somewhere near Texas, Richter Belmont).

To make this article more interesting for you, the reader, I've went to the stats sections for all of the eight regions, aggregated all of the data, and determined who the most-used characters are. This is based on 6,743 North American players who played at least one match (out of 12,322 who registered), and a total of 89,136 games played (multiply that by 2 to know the total number of characters used) in the Ladder Round. Here are the results, which you can use for yourself to prioritise which match-ups you should learn:

Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection and the Reploid Remixes

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Again with the Mega Man soundtrack pre-order bonus?

Pretty big news drop today. CAPCOM announced Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection to release January 21, 2020. It's a six-pack of the four Mega Man Zero games and the two Mega Man ZX games, and it'll be out on ALL major platforms and PC. Good stuff. Here's the announcement trailer:

I've already made my thoughts on the first Mega Man Zero Collection (containing only the four Mega Man Zero games, back on the DS) pretty clear in this article. Basically, that had an Easy Scenario in it that made the game not only really easy, but the gameplay was kind of unsatisfying since there was nothing to unlock because you had everything. But without that scenario, the games are prohibitively difficult to complete and unreasonably and permanently punish your mistakes.

Is “Casual Scenario Mode” the same thing with a different name? We'll find out later. At least it's clear that “Save-Assist” is putting a much-needed save point in the middle of the stage. Nothing wrong with that. Mega Man Zero is already brutally difficult based on the level design. There's also some kind of time attack mode called Z Chaser that they want to keep the details of a secret.

I want to draw attention to what they're calling the ten Reploid Remixes, which get their own trailer that is meant to be listened to:

The Best and Worst Nintendo Switch Online Discounts in the World!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The worst discount is more interesting to me, because that's the kind of person I am.

Hey, want to save money? Sure you do.

Normally $35 through the Nintendo eShop, the Nintendo Switch Online Family Membership is on sale at $28 instead of $35 at Target right now. Family Groups are how KoopaTV's members are all on the same plan—it's a quirk for being employed at KoopaTV. You can purchase this to stack with an existing family plan. If you want to be in the KoopaTV Nintendo Switch Online Family Group without being in KoopaTV's staff, the spot currently held by the winner of KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 22 will be up for grabs as the prize for Round 28 (September 1 to October 31...that's starting super soon).

If you're like me and haven't yet purchased the Fighter Pass for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, then you're in luck. It's 20% off on Amazon at the moment. That means it's $20 instead of $25. ...Quite frankly, I still have a philosophical OBJECTION! to buying season passes without knowing exactly what's in them ahead of time. “You know what's in it! A fighter, their stage, and music!” No, I want to know what SPECIFICALLY is in it. If it's a Creeper from Minecraft with a mine stage with “Revenge” as the music, I'd rather buy all the other fighters individually than have that thing on my stage selection/character selection screens. Not all characters and franchises are created equally.

Hey, want to waste money? Sure you do.

Normally $20 through the Nintendo eShop, the Nintendo Switch Online 12-month membership is on sale at $25.18 instead of $32.27 at shop.com right now. ...I recommend you read that sentence again.

What the...? But yet... this is truly what shop.com is offering. I know, it sounds too bad to be true.
$32.27? No, you save $7.09 for $25.18! ...For a membership card that says $19.99 right on it.

That sort of thing is probably why, despite the excellent and premium domain name, shop.com is not among the eCommerce giants that make up the Internet today. Even the likes of KoopaTV can run a more competent eCommerce site than that.


Which of the three discounts written about in this article is your favourite? The 20% off the Nintendo Switch Online Family Membership, the 20% off the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Fighter Pass, or the 26% on the Nintendo Switch Online 12-month membership? (Ludwig decided that if a discount is “off” the price, a reverse discount is “on” the price.) Remember that if you're actively around and participating with KoopaTV for the next two months, you can get a 100% discount on a one-year Nintendo Switch Online membership!

Minecraft's Popularity and Staying Power

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - To the point where there's a whole generation of early Minecraft players that have nostalgia.

Once upon a time, it was January 2016, and I wrote this in an article about Minecraft: Education Edition:

“With any luck, children will associate Minecraft with school and stop playing it at home because it's not cool to do school stuff in your free personal time. Could we finally see the tight grip that Minecraft has on our nation's impressionable youth loosen up? Kids can stop being really annoying Minecraft fans (and will probably obsess over something else that hopefully isn't ugly to view in a social media feed), and videogames get the esteem of being versatile educational tools.

Seems like a win-win to me.”

Put that on the mental list of things I've written that haven't aged well, though arguably I predicted the Fortnite obsession. (Unfortunately, Fortnite is also ugly to view.) According to the kids these days, Minecraft is more popular than ever in a great resurgence, with a whole dedicated retail shelf in game stores. I don't really know when it ever dropped in popularity. It was popular enough in 2018 to shut down several school systems. It was popular enough in 2015 to be used as a Japanese meme against ISIS. Since its 2011 release, it's been ported everywhere and has only been accumulating more and more fans. Minecraft is even either the most-sold game of all time or the second-most.

It bothers me. Especially when the fans go and have multiple generations of people. That's a testament to its longevity and non-stop existence.

There is this extremely irritating Minecraft meme going around that's located where kids hang out, including Discord and other chatrooms, where they try to spam the chat with the correct lyrics to this 2011 Minecraft parody song “Revenge” that I've never heard before; made by this Minecraft YouTuber named CaptainSparklez that I've never heard of. The song has almost 200 million views on YouTube and the guy has almost 10.5 million subscribers, but whatever, that's just a symbol of how many braindead Minecraft fans there are. Apparently the song was popular back then and now a bunch of people got nostalgic for it. Who knows.

I hyperlinked to the song but didn't embed it, since it's rather terrible and not worth listening to or reading the lyrics of. (Whether in complete form or dumb kids with attention deficit disorder badly attempting to complete the whole thing in pieces.) I listened to it solely as research for this article, and I regretted it immediately. But since I subjected myself to that aural poison, there's no way I'm not gonna try and do something productive with that experience (write an article).  Here it is. You got me to write an article about your meme even though this site supposedly has a policy against that.

Please stop it. You can even keep playing Minecraft. Just stop the damn “Creeper aw man” crap.

Unfortunately for you, while I didn't embed the song, I do need a picture in this article for it to be popular.
...And according to the kids, anything and everything with Minecraft becomes popular. So here we go!

This article exists because Ludwig remembered he wrote that paragraph about Minecraft: Education Edition while he was reading Microsoft's letter to the Office of the United States Trade Representative which mentioned it as an example of how games are good for America. And he is really annoyed by that forced meme. He's almost 100% sure that this article will backfire and make kids continue it instead of stop it, which he will view as a commentary on how easily reverse-psychologically manipulable children can be.

Benjamin Hunter Returns In Ace Attorney Trilogy Languages Patch; CAPCOM Publisher Sale 2019

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Oui oui.

Back in May 2018, KoopaTV first reported on the unfortunate mental health issues of Los Angeles prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. The prosecutor fled to France to die and took on the name BENJAMIN HUNTER.

A month later, we gave an update on Miles Edgeworth/Benjamin Hunter. He was still alive, though curiously was training an ape. 

After that, we haven't heard from Mr. Hunter. Many assumed he's dead, since that was his intention.

Well, thanks to the new language patch in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (available today on Steam, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch for French, German, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese), we've discovered that Benjamin Hunter is, in fact, alive. We found this out from a French (?) detective, Dick Tektiv. 

“Exact, my guy... M. Benjamin Hunter en personne !”
Approximately means, “Exactly, my guy. Mr. Benjamin Hunter in person!”

 
Mr. Benjamin Hunter, in fact, still appears in the French courts. We're glad he's still alive. However, it doesn't seem like we were supposed to be aware of that information, and Dick Tektiv gave it to us inappropriately:

Classic 2D Events at the Olympics Are Of No Interest

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Super Mario Bros. 8-Bit Sprites are ugly.

A month ago, I dedicated an article showing the latest footage of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, which showcased Lord Bowser trouncing Mario at a variety of sports. In that article, I wrote,

“As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing inspiring about the sporting events’ gameplay, sound design (or music), and especially not the graphics.”

Nintendo wanted to contradict my last statement about graphics, so they released this trailer that reveals “Classic 2D Events”, claiming to “take the series to a new dimension with 10 classic 2D events starring your favorite characters[.]”

I object to this characterisation.

The KoopaTV Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Will be updated all the time. Not just once a year!

Dear readers, players, fans, trolls: Welcome to KoopaTV's Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Report. We at KoopaTV's staff are strongly supportive of doing good in our world and yours.

We've also been reading what the consultants are saying. People, especially younger people (Millennials) in our target demographic, want to be part of something greater than themselves. A community. That goes for both customer and potential future staffers. To that end, and without sacrificing or selling out our principles in any way, we're publishing this always-active Corporate Social Responsibility report. This will look at our activities from a variety of perspectives, demonstrated by the headings.

In fact, we'll have a table of contents:

KoopaTV's Social and Societal Contributions

Disaster Relief in Sierra Leone

Accessibility Activism

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Free Rescues

KoopaTV Promotes Literacy and Self-Worth Across Koopa Kingdom

KoopaTV's Environmental and Sustainability Contributions

Ludwig Ventures to Best Buy... Does He Get Fire Emblem: Three Houses?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Did I buy the game? ...And what else did I see there?

I needed to refill my stash of Nintendo eShop gift cards. If I don't have a supply of those at my desk, you all won't be happy, since I'm supposed to give those codes away in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program.

So I went to Best Buy to buy some more.

And I saw many, many troubling things in the world of retail.

For one, Nintendo apparently replaced Lord Bowser as the face of the $50 Nintendo eShop gift card with... LINK. Is this how Andrew Jackson is going to feel? What was wrong with Bowser?

But there's a lot more insights. For example, take a look at what's left of the amiibo section. This used to be a big shelf: 

A Player vs. Player Battling Update For Pokémon Sword & Shield

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - RENTAL TEAMS.

Last week, I was praising The Pokémon Company International from refraining from weekly updates for Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. The fact that I'm starting off a new article this week with that message probably means that we got a new update and that cadence makes me frown.

Oh well. Watch the obligatory trailer. But as far as I'm concerned, the most important information is tucked away on the official website:

Last week I wondered if Galarian Weezing's second ability would explain why it's a Fairy type. Neutralizing Gas doesn't scream “Fairy” to me. Well, eh, that's not true. The fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream did all kinds of things like that. Perhaps I'll nickname Galarian Weezing “Puck”.

Dynamaxing requires a Key Item (the Dynamax Band), but the actual Pokémon doesn't need an item. They can hold whatever they want, unlike a Z-Move or a Mega Evolution. That means you can flexibly choose who will Dynamax as the battle unfolds, instead of committing to it ahead of time. I think that's a net positive.

The most important aspect of today's announcement is the Battle Stadium, the online player vs. player area. There's Ranked Battles, which match-makes you based on your win rate by putting you in tiers. This partially resets after every “season” to make sure people keep playing instead of getting at the top and no longer playing, a weakness in other ladder systems that lack decay. There are also Casual Battles, because it's important for matchmaking services to offer ranked and unranked matches. (Take notes, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.)

The most important aspect of the most important aspect are Rental Teams, though.

Now, despite how bad the movesets look on the left, these are player-generated Rentals, not GAME FREAK-generated.

There is a reason why Battle Factory was my favourite facility in the Battle Frontier (back when it existed). I don't like team-building. I REALLY don't like team-building in-game. I have amazing Pokémon knowledge and good decision-making and adaptable thinking.

Rental Teams means that I can enjoy Pokémon Shield's story mode for the story and not have to worry about training for effort values or mass-breeding for the best individual values (eugenics). If I want to have fun competitively, I can just download someone's Rental Team! And you can bet there will be vast communities out there listing all of their Rental Teams. Good addition.


Ludwig skipped over a lot of minute details about some new items and specific effects of some Max Moves, but he figures no one cares about that. Do you care about the player vs. player aspect of in-game Pokémon? If so, what do you think about these additions? If not, why don't these additions make you care?


Back to new Pokémon and features being introduced in September... and more food.

DuckTales Died For Street Fighter-cosplaying Duck Figures?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I think it's worth it?

Last week, CAPCOM announced that DuckTales: Remastered would be leaving digital storefronts on August 8–9, 2019. It's gone now from all consoles and Steam.

Nevermind that no one's been thinking about DuckTales: Remastered recently. In fact, the last time we did, it was March 2014 and it was an entire gaming generation ago. The caption associated with DuckTales didn't age well, I guess:

“Why leave DuckTales to die when it can see new life and new sales from new folks?” 

No explanation was provided, though Disney is probably responsible. It seems highly doubtful that CAPCOM woke up one day and decided to kill it off—though Disney likes doing that with licensing and expirations. Probably pretty similar to what happened to the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series on the Nintendo eShop. Either way, you can still redownload DuckTales: Remastered if you purchased it previously but removed it. No one is stopping you from still playing it. And, of course, good ol’ reliable physical versions still work.

Nintendo did their weird thing where they scrubbed DuckTales: Remastered from their website entirely. (Archived game page here.) CAPCOM still has their page up, because the game still exists. Developer WayForward (CAPCOM is only the publisher) still has the page up on their website, because the game still exists. ...I guess after this article is published those pages might go disappear.

Anyway, where those ducks have fallen (perhaps they got hunted, as was a popular sport back in the DuckTales heyday), new ducks have taken flight. And this remains CAPCOM-related, so this probably is a big conspiracy. Behold, the TUBBZ cosplaying Duck collectibles, featuring Street Fighter:

Tips, Tricks, and Insider Information to the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open August 2019

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Read this, and you'll be well-prepared to perform excellently this Saturday.

Have you joined the thousands of people across Mexico, the United States (except territories and Puerto Rico), and Canada (except Quebec) in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open August 2019? If you haven't, you can join here. If you have, you may have some questions. KoopaTV, through interviewing the tournament administrators at Battlefy (they like us enough to send me a shirt, which in no way biases my coverage) and reading the rules for you—plus having a lot of experience in the prior tournaments in this series—is here to help with some answers.

What you're about to read are the basics of the tournament, such as the prizes, rules, and tournament structure... and then my tips on how to win and take full advantage of those rules for your benefit. You'll also read some undisclosed insider information I managed to get from interviewing a Battlefy representative.

The Basics: August Open Prizes, Rules, and Tournament Structure

The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open August 2019, unlike Nintendo's other partnerships with Battlefy this year, will feature NO ITEMS in ANY round of play. It's a best-of-three (first to two won games wins the set), three-stock, seven-minute format. The stages are the same mixed bag from the June Open: Final Destination, Battlefield, Smashville, Yoshi's Island (from Super Smash Bros. Brawl), Pokémon Stadium 2, Castle Siege, and Frigate Orpheon. All stages have hazards off, and your Battle Arena will need to have the stage selection set to Random.

This is the ruleset for the entire duration of the tournament, which begins and ends on August 17, 2019. It begins at 9 AM Pacific/12 PM Eastern, and continues for four hours in the Ladder Round. After that's done, there's the single-elimination Bracket Round for the 32 best players in each region for a 256-person bracket which begins at 2 PM Pacific/5 PM Eastern. Expect to play for a while.

To make my point more clear, I created this picture of the tournament structure:

The Trump That Saved Christmas From Tariffs On China...Because of Game Boy Camera Lies?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...He saved it from himself, but hey, who's keeping score?

While we were rating how Microsoft and Nintendo (but not Sony) did at E3 2019, those three major console manufacturers were writing to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, out of great concern for President Donald John Trump's announced tariffs (taxes) on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports, in pursuit of addressing things like intellectual property theft.

I did write years ago during the 2016 campaign that candidate Donald Trump would take China intellectual property theft seriously as President Donald John Trump, writing,

“Which candidate for United States president best sides with the videogame industry, an industry that thrives on exploiting intellectual property? Donald Trump, the man who will have a zero-tolerance policy on China's abuses? Or Hillary Clinton, the woman who tried to destroy the industry within the United States of America, and has no position or plan on China and its intellectual property abuse?”

Alright, if the videogame industry has to write a letter to President Donald John Trump to not screw up the videogame industry over China, then candidate Donald Trump might not have been the best candidate for the videogame industry on the China issue. ...Eh, well, still can't be worse than Hillary.

REGARDLESS. The tariffs have been delayed until December 15 (from September 1), which means that, unless you're highly irresponsible and buying directly from China (retailers will stock up prior to the tariffs taking effect), the holiday season will be free of the price increases that tariffs would necessitate. Hooray. For now.

Christmas is saved. And Black Friday/Thanksgiving.

And Chanukkah too, I guess. But there's more to the story, especially regarding the contents of the console manufacturers’ letter.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Online Tourney Events Aren't Worth Writing About

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's much lower effort.

I just wrote about how Splatfests have officially ended in Splatoon 2, and that I'll miss writing Splatfest articles on KoopaTV for a while—or perhaps we'll never see them again if “Splatoon 3”  doesn't go as planned. In that article's italicised footer, I asked if there are any alternatives to Splatfests out there so we can keep writing that style of article.

Cue last weekend. Nintendo invented a special Event tournament for its new (4.0.0) Online Tourney mode in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. What's special about it? It's themed Heroes vs. Villains. Here's the description:

“It's a clash of good against evil! This tourney is on for a limited time and allows only certain fighters.

The further you advance, the better the spirit you'll win!”

Does that mean that Nintendo will be bringing back Splatfest-esque competitions, just in another game? And KoopaTV should write about them? Heroes vs. Villains is literally even a Splatfest theme from Splatoon 2 (made in coordination with the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate)—and of course I chose Villains back then.

The answer to those questions is “no.” Here's why:

June 30, 2019 Nintendo Quarterly Financial Update

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I thought there'd be questions. More importantly, answers.

It is August 9 today. Does the article headline seem a bit weird to you? Yeah, I'm talking about stuff from June 30. But it wasn't released until July 30. ...And it's been still late ever since because I've been waiting for an investor question & answer session or an actual company briefing with slides and information. Those are the most interesting part of these.

But there isn't any and if I keep waiting for one, I'll probably miss this quarter entirely.

Unfortunately, without questions and answers, there isn't really anything interesting in this. Here's the obligated chart of >million-seller Nintendo Switch titles that aren't the very top echelon and would break the scale. Now Super Mario Maker 2 is on there, with 2.42 million sold:

Seriously, who the hell is buying New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe?
Also, I'm very displeased to report that Kirby Star Allies has stopped being relevant to Nintendo.
(Ludwig still thinks March is 30 days long, but that'll be fixed in three months.)

 
For some reason, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe managed to sell over a million copies in the three months between April 1 and June 30. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate hasn't managed to do that.

There are 36.87 million Switch consoles sold, and 17.89 million of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold. Only 14.73 million Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold. Those are scary high attach rates. Meanwhile, Splatoon 2 is only at a mere 9.02 million.

Without questions and answers, I have nothing but numbers to throw at you. Perhaps there's no session because Nintendo is busy with a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report or something. Yuck. It features such momentous statements like,

Compliance Code of Conduct
Maintain a resolute stance against anti-social forces.
Our position on anti-social forces is unwavering.

...Yeah, whatever. So's my commitment to writing articles on these quarterly updates, even if it's total filler for this site.


There's some bits of that CSR report that warrant much further commentary and investigation, but that's outside the scope of this article, even if this article only exists to serve as a reference for later.


KoopaTV published its own CSR report less than two weeks later.
The last quarter was the full fiscal year ending March 2019, so you can read about that here.
The one last year for June 30 2018 was also full of just sales numbers too.
Next quarter is the quarter ending September 2019. Read about it here. 
The next year for June 30 2020 has some specific analysis on specific games.

Cadence of Hyrule Free Demo Available! Impressions Inside...

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You're free to demonise my impressions. They're controversial.

Today I got a Nintendo Switch News notification that Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda (henceforth referred to as just Cadence of Hyrule) has a free demo. Sure, I'll try it. It did dazzle us during that Nindies session some time ago. It's developed by indie company Brace Yourself Games in an amazing development story where Nintendo pretty much just said, yes, sure, you can use our intellectual property.

Fun times. But is Cadence of Hyrule itself a fun time?

Cadence of Hyrule is immediately striking in that its music—over a couple dozen remixes of The Legend of Zelda series music that each have contextually-differing tempos and senses of urgencies—is fantastic. A clear contrast from the aural failings that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild last brought to the series. Plus, the graphics remind me of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, which is always a positive.

Looking through the general options menu, there's all sorts of options for accessibility including language selection and a friendly-to-the-colour-blind option. The demo takes you right to making a new game (with yourself or with a second player), and as far as I could tell, I was beginning the game like the full game would be. (It was later made obvious that, no, the full game doesn't have this same progression.)

I couldn't tell from the demo how involved the story would be throughout the game, but the gist seems to be some music-related jerk named Octavo (not to be confused with DJ Octavio of Splatoon) is doing something bad in Hyrule even though he doesn't belong there, and he has four Champion bosses that are enforcing whatever his bad thing is.

As for gameplay... 

Galarian Regional Variants and TEAM YELL!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This is a positive direction.

Shells up: On KoopaTV, you'll notice that the coverage of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield is substantially more interesting than vast quantities of National Dex complaining spam—there's a legitimate concern there, but it won't interrupt how we'll cover the game's pre-release news drops.

And the last news drop was last month about Gigantamaxing, so this is a good improvement over every week from three years ago and GAME FREAK is taking our advice about not revealing everything in the game ahead of time. 

Today's news drop comes in the following themes:

1. New Pokémon!
2. New people!
3. New features!

Most of these are available in this two-minute trailer put out by The Pokémon Company International, with the official Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield website filling in the gaps:

Reggie Fils-Aime Gets POLITICAL About GUNS and GAMES!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I called it!

It hasn't even been a full four months yet since former Nintendo of America President and Chief Operating Officer, Reggie Fils-Aime, retired from the company to enjoy his life. Right as he was retiring, he created a Twitter account. I wrote an article that was received as an out-there, wild take: Reggie would use his account for political posting and trolling President Donald John Trump, very similar to former FBI Director James Comey.

My offbeat take is CORRECT. But some background first:

Over the weekend there were some unfortunate mass-shootings that took place in El Paso, Texas (shout-outs to a KoopaTV fan there that ALMOST went to the fateful Walmart but avoided it) and Dayton, Ohio (no KoopaTV fans there). Those are under investigation and I'm not going to comment on their particulars. I also doubt I'll comment on them after their investigations are complete. It's a gaming site, not a crime blog.

Unfortunately, people look to politicians—not prayers—for answers and comfort in times of disturbance and turbulence. Even more unfortunately, the current president of the United States of America, President Donald John Trump, isn't good at providing coherent answers or comfort. He singled out “the gruesome and grisly video games that are now too commonplace” in his conference about the incident, as something in the culture that glorifies and promotes real violence. This is far from the first time there's been a shooting and President Donald John Trump has identified violent videogames as something that should be examined. He even had a roundtable with industry figures about it—though he didn't pay attention during it because he doesn't truly care about the subject.

It's a good thing that President Donald John Trump doesn't deeply care about violent videogames when he states things like that. However, videogame industry people care greatly about the topic, and that includes former executives like Reggie Fils-Aime. Check out his tweets:

Unless You're A Solid Snake Fan, EVO 2019 Was Great!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I thought it was great. Couldn't be worse than before.

There was a time, as recently as last year, that the collective Super Smash Bros. community was having large doubts about the future of the fighting game at the Evolution Championship Series tournament series (popularly shortened as EVO). EVO 2018 was, in a word, a disaster. If you needed another descriptive word, it was an embarrassment.

EVO 2019 totally changed that. For starters, no more Super Smash Bros. For Wii U. For that matter, no more Super Smash Bros. Melee. Only one Super Smash Bros. game: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, at the prime Sunday night last game slot. As a result of consolidating all of Super Smash Bros. into one game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was the highest-attended game in terms of stream-viewing and entrants, at over 279,000 viewers and 3,500 entrants. Even some Super Smash Bros. Melee players participated, notably Plup at 17th place. Plus, the four winners of the Super Smash Bros Ultimate North America June Open 2019 that got tickets to EVO 2019 as their prize all did very respectably, with HPT Seth at 49th place, Heeew and Wisdom at 97th place, and RamonM64 at 257th place. Very good for winners of an item-friendly tournament.

We all ultimately watched a diverse Top 8 for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which ended in MkLeo beating Tweek's Pokémon Trainer (the tournament was pre-4.0.0 so Ivysaur got a lot of down-air spikes throughout the tournament) after a bracket reset (MkLeo was from loser's side), which Tweek totally choked because he kept insisting on going to the less-favourable Pokémon Stadium 2.

You can watch the grand finals for yourself here. They're definitely emotional and intense and hype. It went past midnight in Eastern time, and some of the matches before the grand finals were getting me very sleepy and I didn't think I could keep myself awake to watch the grand finals. But I was jolted wide awake once the action happened:

Thoughts on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Version 4.0.0 and Splatoon 2 Version 5.0.0

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm terrified of fighting HERO!

At the remaining days of July, we got updates to both Splatoon 2 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It's the final major update for Splatoon 2 (and very possibly the last minor update as well), though Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has many to come.

Splatoon 2 Version 5.0.0 Thoughts

There actually isn't a lot to say. As promised at the Splatoon 2 World Championship 2019, version 5.0 would deliver a Splatfest Turf War mode in Private Battle (the local multiplayer mode), featuring Splatfest stage music, the Shifty Stations, and prior Splatfest team ink colours. This presumably also includes the dreaded white ink. Fortunately, I will never experience Private Battle in Splatoon 2, so this isn't something I gotta deal with.

There is also the Splatfest Tee Replica as a new shirt, which makes the Ability Doubler gear ability permanently available. It's a bad ability, but at least it's not permanently gone.

That's it from a content perspective. Shooter weapons got stronger against the Booyah Bomb's armour, and there were some modifications to the Shellendorf Institute and New Albacore Hotel stages that I don't care about. The Octobrush weapon in Salmon Run also got a big buff (though the patch notes misspelled “swinging” as “swining”) with 50% more damage. That should make it somewhat more usable now and make Salmon Run shifts with the Octobrush not an auto-skip decision. The Inkbrush is still unaffected, unfortunately.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Version 4.0.0 Thoughts

You probably care more about these thoughts than the Splatoon 2 ones, don't you? Well, alright. There's some rather insignificant additions (like World of Light getting a Very Easy mode—I haven't played Easy mode, but I've heard it's already a breeze). Slime got a $.75 Mii Fighter hat that's very reminiscent of the ChuChu Cap in Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, which is my preferred outfit.

Slimes are also represented along with many other elements of the Dragon Quest series in this update: 

KoopaTV's July 2019 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Another good month.

I would like to extend a welcome to all of the new people who have come to KoopaTV over the past month! At the beginning of every month, I write a newsletter covering everything important that happened in the previous month, as well as some new updates and site news.

...I recommend you check out the informational pages tab on this site and read what's linked off there.

The Top Five Recommended KoopaTV Experiences of July 2019

The first feature of these newsletters is usually a look-back at the top five of the previous month's published works. We usually publish once every weekday, so that means about one in four and a half or so articles will be featured. Here's this month's that you really gotta check out, provided in chronological order:

1. Koopa Kingdom Immigration Family Relocation Services—Kamek's excellent article that shares his expert knowledge in family and child relocation services... in three tips! A lot of Americans could sure take his advice!
2. Perilous Pill Popping: A KoopaTV-Exclusive Investigation Into Dr. Mario—Meanwhile, the two Koopalings on our staff, myself and Wendy, infiltrated Dr. Mario's medical practice as doctors and uncovered some truths (and more questions) about Megavitamins and the nature of the Viruses. And, of course, what Dr. Mario may be plotting.
3. Final Decision in the Chaos vs. Order Final Splatocalypse—It's the last Splatfest decision article that we'll be writing... possibly ever, or at least for some years until Splatoon 3, which I also write about. (Not that it exists yet.)
4. How The Media Botched The Bocchi Bullying Debacle—Some media outlets reported that an innocent 15-year old girl was bullied out of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competitive community for beating a top-level player, and this resulted in widespread consternation for Smash Bros. fans. The problem? There was no evidence of this bullying ever taking place.
5. Fire Emblem: Three Houses Released; Dorothea Is Pretty Cute—As the title indicates, Fire Emblem: Three Houses came out on July 26. But as an old-timer Fire Emblem elitist, should I buy Fire Emblem: Three Houses? We had a guest artist contribute some very cute art of Dorothea to try to convince me to do so, which you should check out because it's rather convincing.

If an article you like or may be interested in checking out wasn't on that top five... don't fret! EVERY article on the site is worth reading, and there are some articles not on that list that continue some storylines from earlier in KoopaTV's existence, as well as some that will be set-ups for future stories. So yes, check out everything. Moving on...