KoopaTV's October 2020 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm more than spooked. I'm anxious!

I gotta tell myself this is supposed to be a newsletter focusing on what happened during the previous month of October 2020, but so much of October 2020 existed to set up for November 2020... And it's hard to take things one step at a time.

But skipping ahead would actually be a disservice to you and to KoopaTV, so let's focus on October 2020. We had great, fresh, new content again this month. Let's just... go right into that.

KoopaTV's Top Five Recommended Experiences of October 2020

All of our content is considered to be works of art, and they build upon one another. The vast majority of other sites you'll encounter don't have that philosophy. The caveat to that is that you'll want to go through, well, everything on the site. It's worth it. With that said, we've put together this top five list for the pieces published during October 2020, in chronological order:

1. The Deductive Thrill of Ace Attorney, Sudoku, and Picross — This article already starts with a rarity: Me apologising for something. Specifically, I've been down on Picross in my past, but now I'm way up on it. In the article, I present a new videogame idea that, to my knowledge, hasn't been done before.
2. How Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit works, and the SPYWARE threat! — Here's a unique game idea that we're not supportive of. Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is an insidious plot, in the tradition of the Labo, to collect intelligence on the interiors of your Earth homes for a later world domination plot. Koopa Kingdom wants to stop it, obviously.
3. The Wagadu Chronicles: Afrofantasy MMO on Kickstarter — I'm not normally the kind to promote Kickstarter projects—and I didn't say go invest in this—but I do find The Wagadu Chronicles to be an extremely interesting project because of how it challenges our fantasy expectations and biases.
4. What Makes One Super? The Predators and the Mario Bros. — There has been confusion on the definitions of predators and superpredators, but in dealing with the (Super) Mario Bros., we know first-claw the differences.
5. An Analysis of Michael "Colin Blue Moon" Bloomberg's Presidential Failure — KoopaTV analyses the failed 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg by comparing him to his Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising counterpart, Colin of Blue Moon. Colin is top tier, while Bloomberg was a disaster. What did they do so differently?

There are a lot of KoopaTV experiences not included in that top five that are very important, like the ones covering the state of the 2020 presidential election on its own terms (and not on game design ones), as well as personal staff life updates, and even things that are actually plot threads for later. I suggest you catch up on everything published in October 2020 yourself. Now, moving on...

Best Three Comments and One Worst Comment of October 2020

The content didn't just come from KoopaTV's staff, but also from... you! We had lots of comments on the KoopaTV comments section during October 2020. Many of them were good or okay. A few of them were bad. Here are the best three (chronologically) and then the worst one:

1. “As the results from 2016 and 2018 show, the team that wins the popular vote is not always the team that wins in the end. I'm predicting another sweet victory for Team Treat and Team Trump.” — Kody B.
2. “btw that first graphic is the worst designed thing i have ever seen holy moly that mad emy eyes bleed you need a graphic design department i think my 12 year old cousin could have made something more appealing than that u have text over the pictures of the candidates and the colours are disgusting please work on this in the future” — sam
3. “I am extremely blessed to live in a country that is not attacked by superpredators. I will never knows how it feels like to live in a kingdom whose peaceful denizens are constantly under attack by a second-rate plumber. Hopefully one day King Bowser will take care of this menace for good.” — Kody B.

Good job to Kody B. for getting the Splatfest result correct. ...Though we'll find out if he's right on the rest of that comment. I also like that he's counting his blessings.

Also, sam is right and the awful picture on the KoopaTV presidential endorsement article is why I couldn't endorse my own endorsement article in the top five articles section above. (That, and the fact there was a lot of heavy competition!) That's an instance of “a KoopaTV article needs a picture in it or else it's a wall of text and hard to share on social media, but Ludwig has poor aesthetic instincts, so something bad happens.” I probably shouldn't have put an American flag as the background, because it was looking relatively a lot better before I did that. Here's some evidence:

(This itself is also “a KoopaTV article needs a picture in it” but I'm pretty sure this is better than the version that actually got used in the other article.)

This is probably a controversial pick for the worst comment (and also from the endorsement article), but I knew when I saw it that I had to choose it:

1. “Um. I'm not going to put an actual fascist in the WH. Trump's aptitude for tyranny makes your "King Dad" or w/e look like A) a teddy bear and B) downright thoughtful. Trump isn't hardly a human being at this point. He's been subsumed by the desire for power. And people like that MUST NOT be allowed to succeed wherever possible.” — Lheticus Videre

There is so much wrong here. Now, to be clear, this isn't the worst comment simply because I disagree with it. You're not supposed to agree with everything written on KoopaTV. But we can have interesting, thoughtful discussions about our disagreements. Yet there's no thoughtfulness in this comment (despite the commentary on thoughtfulness within the comment itself).

I write this whole policy-based endorsement article on whom Americans ought to vote for (both in Koopa Kingdom's best interest and in your best interest), and it gets dismissed by basic, generic lines of thinking of “well I shouldn't vote for anyone who is looking for power” (which, by definition, describes everyone running for president), as well as whatever an “actual fascist” is supposed to be. Also, as far as a site ran by Koopas is concerned, being far from a human certainly isn't a bad thing. (Obviously, not all non-humans are good, and folks like Cappy are great examples of that, but there are plenty of bad humans.)

There's no policy-based anything in the comment. No substance. Just a hit-and-run smear. The KoopaTV comments section ought to be better than that.

Corrections Corner; October 2020

There were no on-site corrections on KoopaTV made in October 2020. No regrets!

KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 34 Results!

The winner of the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 34, which I've been plugging in many articles over September and October, gets a one-year seat in the KoopaTV Nintendo Switch Online Family Group. And here it is...

1. Kody B. — 55 points
2. Lheticus Videre — 46 points
3. sam — 43 points
4. Samantha Lienhard — 19 points
5. ShinyGirafarig — 9 points
6. Opie Teller — 5 points

This isn't a stat I'm actually tracking, but in my memory, this is the biggest (or one of the biggest) comebacks in KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program history. If you compare this to the mid-round leaderboard from the previous newsletter, Kody B. was sitting at 7 points and it looked like a two-person race between Lheticus Videre and sam. Then some tortoise-and-the-hare stuff happened, and here we are today.

Incidentally, Kody B. has won the previous two years worth of “be on KoopaTV's Nintendo Switch Online subscription for a year” rounds, so this makes a three-peat. He definitely has incentive to retain his incumbency!

By the way, this validates me whenever I say that big point comebacks and swings are possible in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program. Perhaps you'd like to do some of those for yourself...

Announcing the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 35!

This is the big HOLIDAY SEASON (November to the end of December) round for the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program! In holiday time tradition, we'll be offering a multitude of prizes, not just winner-takes-all:

1. $25 Amazon gift code
2. $20 worth of Nintendo eShop gift card codes
3. $10 Amazon gift code

PLUS, a random drawing for an additional $10 Nintendo eShop gift card code that anyone can win. The KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program is normally 100% based on skill without any luck involved, but some people aren't confident in their skills, so the random drawing is a good chance for them. (Though your luck improves the more points you have. Full details on the dedicated KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program page.

KoopaTV VS. China; October 2020

No censorship of KoopaTV has been detected out of China, despite all of the anti-Chinese Communist Party rhetoric on KoopaTV throughout 2020 (but not really in October 2020 specifically).

People talk a lot about how competent the Chinese government and authorities are in restricting people's freedoms and being all authoritarian, but they can't be that competent if they're letting their citizens access KoopaTV.

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

Filling out the KoopaTV forms at the last minute was crucial for Kody B.'s comeback success in Round 34 of the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program. Inspired by that, we've created a new KoopaTV Quiz and Feedback Form accessible here. They're fun, though Part XXVII (that's 27) also is lower stakes and shorter than Part XXVI.


Some anxious nightmares will be over very soon over this month (...or just beginning), so there's that to look forward to. Perhaps of more importance, there's still lots of great KoopaTV content ahead! By the way, did you know that KoopaTV's staff appreciates it when you share KoopaTV articles with other people? It's true. There's even specific incentives in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program around that, which you should look into.


Click here for last month's September 2020 newsletter!
Click here for next month's November 2020 newsletter!
Click here for last year's October 2019 newsletter. This one featured a non-scary, low-stakes October.
KoopaTV's October 2021 is over here! Click to read it!