By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Well, thanks for taking my article to heart, sort of? Might've missed the point, though.
A year ago, there was supposed to be a Nintendo Direct on September 6, 2018. It got delayed for one week due to a natural disaster, the 2018 Hokkaido earthquake, which ended up killing four-dozen or so people.
In a take that's pretty characteristic of me, I criticised Nintendo for the delay of the Direct due to the disaster, which didn't personally impact Nintendo folks and wouldn't stop the production of the Direct since it's pre-recorded. Meanwhile, they rescheduled it during a natural disaster that was affecting the Americas, being Hurricane Florence.
This year, you may remember from the article about the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open August 2019 that the grand prize was ultimately being part of the North America team for the mid-October Nintendo Live 2019 international tournament taking place in Kyoto, Japan. Right at Nintendo's doorstep. That ultimately ended up with the formation of the North American team after hard-fought Super Smash Bros. Ultimate matches, and they were all set to participate— Epic_Gabriel, YoseFu, Wrath, and UnderDoc substituting for substitute Heeew.
Then came Typhoon No. 19, or Typhoon Hagibis. Devastating natural disaster ripping through Japan that is still going on as of writing. It's already killed six-dozen or so people and that's going up, so it's more fatal than last year's earthquake. Lots of cancelled flights and emergency declarations.
That includes the whole North America team. They weren't able to make it to Japan and attend Nintendo Live. ...Yes, that means the tournament still occurred over the past few days, during the typhoon. Oddly enough, they assembled an invitational “Dream Team” of Nairo, Mr. R, and Mkleo, and two of those come from North America and somehow were able to show up to Japan. ...How's that work? Well, I don't have an answer to that. I also don't know how Team Europe managed to fly to Japan.
The Dream Team managed to defeat Japan's chosen ones (Europe failed, obviously, and the American team was replaced by question marks), and were rewarded with a photo opportunity with Super Smash Bros. series producer, Masahiro Sakurai. I did write in my August Online Open article, “Super Smash Bros. series producer Masahiro Sakurai is also known to attend that tournament in the past, so players may meet him.” I was criticised for getting people's hopes up, but... Sakurai was there. He watched the whole thing. You can watch it too, here, if you really want.
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| Well I hope no one expected a super-substantial prize in a tournament with... Squad Strike, Final Smash Meter, Smash Balls, Assist Trophy, Stage Morph, and Brinstar. And this was the final stock of the entire tournament. Nairo won by breaking open that Smash Ball. (He later said in his victory interview that he loves items, and he made no mention of Hong Kong.) |
But America's hopes did get up for nothing... but not because of me. It's because of that typhoon, and Nintendo apparently learning from their mistake a year ago to not postpone or cancel pre-scheduled events due to natural disasters.
I don't think that's the lesson Nintendo was supposed to learn, though. It was not to discriminate between the lives of Americans vs. Japanese people. Not airing a pre-made Nintendo Direct during a Japanese disaster but airing it during an American disaster that causes massive power outages and destruction instead is discrimination.
Having a live tournament occur in Japan during a typhoon ravaging Japan is just stupid and a safety risk. The act of airing a Nintendo Direct isn't putting anyone in physical danger. The act of hosting a tournament is putting people in physical danger.
Sort of a substantial difference and that's the line I'm drawing.
Do you think Ludwig has a point here, or is he trying to have it both ways? By the way, a typhoon is just a Japanese hurricane. He should note that the hurricane didn't really go after Kyoto but instead it ravaged Tokyo—though the tournament organisers didn't know that was going to happen and they were constantly sharing that they were keeping an eye out on the typhoon until the last moment up until the event actually began. Do you feel bad for the winners of the North American Online Open that their prize was essentially negated?
Fun fact: I tend to get the terms typhoon and tsunami confused. In spite of living in Florida, which deals with the typhoon's twin brother, the hurricane. For another fun fact, I heard long ago that the reason hurricanes and typhoons are called different things because they rotate in the opposite direction of each other. Of course, this was when I was in elementary school so it might not have been strictly true then let alone now.
ReplyDeleteAlright, seems like you want me to do a DuckDuckGo search on your behalf.
Deletehttps://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/cyclone.html
"What is the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon?
The only difference between a hurricane and a typhoon is the location where the storm occurs."
There's also a "Did you know?" section on the right-hand side:
"Air spirals in toward the center in a counter-clockwise pattern in the northern hemisphere (clockwise in the southern hemisphere), and out the top in the opposite direction. "
Hurricanes and typhoons both have great opportunities to hang out in the northern hemisphere, as both the United States and Japan know very well.
...What the heck is DuckDuckGo?
DeletePrivacy-based search engine that doesn't store your searches like Google does.
Deletehttps://duckduckgo.com/