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Wednesday, January 1, 2020

KoopaTV's December 2019 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Time is busted, but your KoopaTV experience isn't.

It turns out I don't like December, for personal reasons that I won't get into again. ...I've discussed them in other articles, but basically, I hate my birthday, and the holiday season doesn't make me happy.

Regardless, I hope that KoopaTV's content makes you happy. I like when people come to KoopaTV and are like, “this is great stuff man, keep it up!” (Then I never hear from them again, but that's besides the point.) Makes me happy that you're happy because of me. Alas, it's not my personality to try to be all... touchy with you, or anyone else. Let's get to business and go over this action-packed newsletter, complete with information that has great monetary transfers incorporated into it. I mean, there's a raffle, and if you did anything with KoopaTV in the past two months, there's a chance that you could've won the raffle. Surely, that's worth reading through the newsletter. (It's also an intrinsic pleasure.)

A programming note for the imminent future: KoopaTV's Game of THAT Year nominations (as well as best KoopaTV article nominations... which really make up most of the content) will be published tomorrow, in honour of maintaining KoopaTV's Fitness Friday series on Fridays.

I guess I should mention that this is the first time KoopaTV has existed outside of the 2010s. That's scary. I don't know if the Blog Archive on the right-claw sidebar (on the desktop site) is going to group the 2010s together and have 2020 be its own grouping, or it's just going to treat 2020 like any other year. Guess I'll find out as soon as this is published! (Post-publish note: It's like any other year. I also updated the copyright statement at the bottom of the site from 2019 to 2020. I don't forget those things.)

Top Five Recommended Experiences of December 2019


I liked KoopaTV's December 2019 content! Here's the best from December 2019 that you simply must read, listed in chronological order. I should also note that everything on KoopaTV is worth reading and experiencing:
  1. Super Smash Bros. Speculation is Bad Content — Ludwig discusses the four types of community-based Super Smash Bros. content, and why speculation about future downloadable content based on theories or “leaks” is the least valuable
  2. Hey, Sakurai, I'm From the '80s. Bring Me Back! — Ludwig becomes incredibly upset that he's excluded from Masahiro Sakurai's event tournament about playable fighters that debuted in the 1980s, and proceeds to provide more pieces of evidence that Masahiro Sakurai hates him
  3. The Xbox Series X and Naming — The Xbox Series X was announced in December, and the name confuses many people. Ludwig looks back at its similarly confusing Xbox One predecessors.
  4. Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 6: Darkly Influenced Four Masters  — Mostly covering World 6: The Shrouded Land, Ludwig doesn't see a problem with the country deeming Dragaux to be their lord
  5. Battle Arena Etiquette: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — Believe it or not, Ludwig is a kind gentle-Koopa, and wants everyone participating in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's Battle Arenas to be well-behaved

Hm, that's a lot of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate-related content. All of it is better than speculation, as that first article in the list notes!

Best Three Comments and One Worst Comment of December 2019


How did you all interact with KoopaTV in the last month? Here were the best December 2019 comments in chronological order. Note that just because a comment you made here doesn't appear, doesn't mean it wasn't good... I only have three slots, after all. (Of course, just because a comment you made here doesn't appear, doesn't mean it WAS good... because that wouldn't make sense.)
  1. “What are your thoughts on #ThankYouGameFreak?

    Imagine an Ace Attorney case with a story similar to this case. Maybe it can be about a Blue Badger video game getting leaked. The defendant is the person suspected of being the leaker as the real leaker murdered an employee of the video game company. Maybe seeing this in a fictional setting will get people who defended the leaks to understand why it is wrong to defend breaking the non-disclosure contract.” — ShinyGirafarig
  2. “"A lot of what's in there really should make you doubt that indie developers are supposed to be a bastion of innovation"

    I personally see indie games as a way to make mimic games of games that were long abandoned by the company. See Wargroove for Advance Wars which was abandoned by Intelligent Systems.” — ShinyGirafarig
  3. “In a GameStop in the not-so-distant future:

    "Hello, sir. Do you have any new Xboxes in stock?"
    "We sure do, ma'am. Are you interested in a new Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, or Xbox Series X?"
    "My son only told me that it's the one that ends with an X."
    "Okay, then that leaves you with the Xbox, Xbox One X, and Xbox Series X."
    "...You know, now that I think about it, Jimmy only plays Fortnite 99% of the time anyway. I think he will live just fine without the latest edition."
    "Oh, so you were interested in buying the newest edition. Why didn't you just say so from the beginning? In that case, the Xbox Series X is what you were looking for. However, since you seem to have made up your mind and no longer want one, then can I at least interest you in our new PowerUp Rewards membership program?"
    "No thanks, I'm good."
    "Alright. Have a nice day."” — Kody B.
I like taking different perspectives, because some people might have trouble intuitively understanding how to use empathy when making life choices. Being able to frame a situation in a different way could help break through that trouble! (That also was a theme core to the Battle Arena etiquette guide article.) I also really wanted to yell at leakers this month, so comments along those lines are appreciated.

The bit about indie games is also spot-on. I mean, I've made that observation myself (and in December I wrote... three or so articles about indie games that are all very derived from existing titles), but sometimes I like hearing my own words repeated back to me and I put that as a best comment.

I know for a fact that Kody B.'s comment is a sequel to one he made before, but I can't find it.  ...Do I know that for a fact? WHY CAN'T I FIND IT? Continuity aside, I like the attention to detail that the GameStop employee calls the customer a ma'am, after learning that IT'S MA'AM from an earlier encounter.

As for bad comments... there was some competition for this one, but I chose...

  1. “Wow, very weird picture, looks sarcastic to be honest.” — KATE NGUYEN
Sometimes I don't delete spam comments that bots make to advertise their products (in this case, their name in the original comment links to a massage service. I didn't click on it and neither should you), but I'm not sure this was made by a bot. I'd like to think the massage service actually sent a real person to look at this article, see the picture of Kamala “Komala” Harris, and that was their genuine impression. Of course, it's... barely coherent. “Sarcastic” describes the article's words. I wouldn't use that to describe a picture. Sarcasm is all about the language used. You could claim the picture has a thousand words and all of them are mocking the subject, and the mockery may be true, but I disagree with the idea that pictures have a thousand words. That whole article just barely doesn't reach a thousand words, but there's a whole lot of points made there that the picture does not capture. I also disagree with the idea that the picture is the main purpose of the article, which is why it's in the General category and not in the Artistic Corner category. So, yeah, KATE NGUYEN should find another line of work, and take all the other comment-spammmers with her. KoopaTV comment links are nofollow anyway.

KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 29 RESULTS!


At least it was better than last year!
  1. ShinyGirafarig — 72 points — $25 Amazon gift card code
  2. Lheticus Videre — 64 points — $20 Nintendo eShop gift card code
  3. Kody B. — 39 points — $10 Amazon gift card code
  4. Samantha Lienhard — 18 points — Thanks for commenting!
By the way, I personally write, from scratch, all of my congratulations e-mails I send to the winning participants with their prizes included. The scary part about offering several prizes in one round is that I gotta spend a lot of time writing those e-mails. I choose my words carefully!

(They're not sent as of publishing the newsletter. Don't want to, you know, spoil it. Wait for a little later this week.)


Raffle Drawing


A relatively unique feature for Round 29 is that there's an additional RNG-based raffle drawing, on top of the skill-based and transparent point system that normally occurs for the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program. Every point that anyone gets is one ticket, and in Round 29, there were a total of 200 points. ...Such an even and divisible number makes your chances of success pretty easy to calculate. If you look at the publicly-viewable KoopaTV Loyalty Leaderboard spreadsheet, you can see the ranges of your entries by knowing that, say, Kody B. has numbers 1 through 39, and Lheticus Videre has the next 64 numbers (40 through 103), and so on.

And the RNG says, choosing a number between 1 and 200...

RNG provided by randomnumbergenerator.com.

Congratulations to Lheticus Videre for having ticket #84! I guess I must give him $30 in eShop stuff. That's enough to buy a full-price Ace Attorney game! Y'know, since they're no longer on sale. ...For now.


Announcing KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 30!


Yup. This time, I'm going back to one prize, for first place. $10 Nintendo eShop gift card. Winner-takes-all. Go be that winner. For full details, see the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program page. There are many activities you can do to win, including the ones mentioned in the heading immediately below this one...

KoopaTV Feedback Form Part XXIII and KoopaTV Quiz Part XXIII Now Available!


Check out the forms and quizzes here. These Roman numerals are a serious danger to civilisation. Anyway, announcement regarding the feedback form series: Completion will no longer grant +8 points in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program, but +4 points. I feel that's more proportional to the activity, and +8 was just inflation. Quizzes remain unchanged at +1 for every correct answer, and every quiz has had 6 questions. Including Part XXIII!


Corrections Corner; December 2019


There actually was incorrect content that sat around for weeks, but no one had the knowledge to know that it as wrong, I guess. I'm not going to tell you what it was, though. ...Eh, I can't go around saying KoopaTV is transparent and also say that. It was regarding misspelling the name of a Ring Fit Adventure enemy. It was spelled correctly in other articles and spelled wrong in one particular article. So you could've caught the inconsistency if you paid attention. But I caught it all by myself. Hmph.

KoopaTV Discontinuing MeWe Profile


In the March 2019 newsletter, I announced that, to replace Google+, I would be launching a MeWe presence. Then I said it's not filled with unsavoury people. Over the past several months, I figured out it's mostly stupid children that hate reading. For whatever reason, I've been banned from multiple Nintendo-related MeWe groups (without notification or explanation) and we get no traffic from there. It's a waste of time, so I'm ending it. And no one will miss me.

Reminder: KoopaTV is Hiring!


KoopaTV was, and still is, hiring for all sorts of positions. Be part of a movement greater than yourself and check out KoopaTV's open positions here. That includes guidelines and tips for actually getting accepted!


KoopaTV has little plans for 2020. It's all about the improvisation! If you'd like to influence the improv, go comment an article request here, write a guest article using the guidelines here, or you can directly join the staff by checking out the link immediately above this paragraph. Unrelated: Share KoopaTV content to folks you know! Or to the nether filled with people you don't know.


Last month's November 2019 newsletter is this way!
Next month's January 2020 (!) newsletter is over here. He improvised well.
Last year's December 2018 newsletter is over here. Read it if you dare.
Do you dare read the December 2020 newsletter as well? There's even more action there.

10 comments :

  1. FLRGLPLTS MGARGITY FLARGER AAAAAAAGH! I can't believe I've been sniped AGAIN! Not sure what game I'm gonna get with what I did win, and the extra from the raffle will definitely help so thanks for that. And S.G.--you're going DOWN next time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I already gave away my main strategy to give others a fighting chance such as delaying the feedback and quiz forms until the last few days to lure others into a false sense of security. I could give more of my strats:

      I sometimes don't comment as soon as an article is up. I wait a few days then I comment. I don't suppose people looks at older articles all the time to see if there are new comments posted so it appears I am not commenting as much.

      I gave more requests this time to make up for times I absolutely drew a blank at what to comment in certain articles. It is hard to think of requests but I sometimes find inspiration in the latest hot takes from well known video game reviewers, Let's Players, etc. I was inspired from Mike Matei's Tweet.

      Delete
    2. I left mine till pretty late...I think for one thing I must've made a typo or something on the Feedback Form because I don't recall getting any points for filling it out, just the quiz.

      Even so, I think to really stand a chance against you I need to start leveraging Guest Article points, because Requests aren't something I've really wanted to approach and having an entire category more than me that you source your points from is giving you an insurmountable advantage.

      Delete
    3. Guest Articles will help a lot. Having a full time job and parenting makes me too exhausted to even think of writing them up.

      Delete
    4. You got the points for filling out the Feedback Form, just not at the same time as the Quiz, because I forgot to turn on e-mail notifications for the Feedback Form until after. But the points got counted before the 31st!

      "I gave more requests this time to make up for times I absolutely drew a blank at what to comment in certain articles."
      I'm not sure what to make of that. >.> Does that mean sometimes my articles are so esoteric that one can't give a coherent comment? <.<

      Delete
    5. In real life, I generally prefer not to talk for the sake of talking. I want some sort of purpose involved. Same with my posts. I don't really like to force myself to post if I feel I have nothing to contribute. Some of your articles are topics that do not interest me so I most likely won't post in them.

      Delete
    6. Eh, well... I guess I can't discuss what's interesting to everyone all the time.

      Delete
  2. After searching through my comment history, I did not find any that were a direct prequel to the comment in question. While I have made several comments similar to it, the only one that is remotely related to GameStop are these comments from October 2017. https://www.koopatv.org/2017/10/mario-cappy-solve-michael-jackson-mystery.html?showComment=1508183492000#c1673262662924221943

    Other future likely scenario comments include the following: https://www.koopatv.org/2016/09/porting-wii-u-games-to-3ds.html?showComment=1473039234696#c4977802121145092449
    https://www.koopatv.org/2016/09/super-mario-running-to-apple.html?showComment=1473380731480#c1925128440869569966
    https://www.koopatv.org/2017/05/leaked-first-look-at-mario-rabbids.html?showComment=1495937537917#c8167827724620159636
    https://www.koopatv.org/2017/06/ubisoft-e3-2017-conference-reactions.html?showComment=1497316478790#c6304994793456387392
    https://www.koopatv.org/2018/09/ace-attorney-at-tokyo-game-show-2018.html?showComment=1537922499397#c2132856678132062908

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alright, well, congratulations for giving me a severe case of déjà vu.
      I absolutely thought you did a GameStop skit with the New 3DS/2DS, but as you've displayed, that's apparently not the case.
      ...Thanks for the memories, though! (The real ones.)

      Delete
  3. (I actually sent the codes to everyone. As I've written in the past, Amazon's gift cards are much better to read than Nintendo's tiny font.)

    ReplyDelete

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