KoopaTV's December 2020 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The last month of 2020 is over.

If you are reading this (or if you're that one guy who is writing this...), congratulations: you have officially survived 2020. Now you can die in 2021 instead!

...Though I don't recommend doing that, unless you don't have any other choice.

Anyway, to summarise 2020, I've composed this haiku:

Two-thousand twenty
was the introverts’ dream year.
We miss Herman Cain.

This specific newsletter is about the last month of 2020: December 2020. It would've also been Herman Cain's 75th birthday on the 13th day of the month. Instead, there was just my own birthday of indeterminate years on that date. Fortunately for my views on the month sucking, December 2020 went by pretty quickly. AND there was quality content all over the place on KoopaTV, so let's go into that.

Top Five Recommended Experiences of December 2020

I think December 2020 had great content for you to experience, but if you had to only check out five of the published pieces from the month, it should be these chronologically ordered articles:

1. What is "gaslighting"? See: Jelly-Filled Doughnuts vs. Riceballs — Gaslighting is becoming an increasingly popular term, which means that it's being misused a lot. KoopaTV explains the meaning with an example.
2. Ludwig Von Koopa's Holiday at the Moomoo Milk Bar — After a tough week (and a then-upcoming bad weekend), Ludwig decompressed at Miltank's Moomoo Milk Bar, and took some pictures.
3. KoopaTV's Murder by Numbers Game Review — What do you get when you mix an Ace Attorney-esque adventure game with Picross puzzles? Read KoopaTV's Murder by Numbers review so you can learn if that worked out or not. ...By the way, the game is still on sale on the eShop, but not for much longer...
4. Steam and GOG (Valve and CD Projekt) Are Pawns of the Chinese Communist Party  — While nearly the whole gaming industry is fine with propping up the Chinese Communist Party regime, Steam and GOG.com are particularly willing to bend the knee over to their authoritarian censorship demands, per what they did to Devotion.
5. Shigeru Miyamoto's Created Cruel Koopa-Killing World — Shigeru Miyamoto stirred some controversy in the Nintendo fanbase over comments he made in a recent interview, but KoopaTV is focusing in on comments that are otherwise extremely contradictory to the game designer's actual record, which affect the livelihoods of the Koopa race.

There's still more content than just that from the month, of course. Everything on KoopaTV is worth reading and putting time into. What else are you doing this weekend?

Anyway, the good content doesn't just come from KoopaTV's staff (and an occasional guest post), but there's also stuff from you when you participate on the site.

Best Three Comments and One Worst Comment of December 2020

I'm going to list my opinions on the best three comments (followed by the worst one comment) that KoopaTV received during the month of December 2020! These (at least the best comments) have consequences for the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program, with the commenter getting a +3 bonus per best comment. Now...

1. “Also my mother compared me to a cow. Normally women hate being compared to cows for some reason but not me. I pumped up loads of milk for Squirmy and I was likened to a cow for that. What a compliment.” — ShinyGirafarig
2. “Games are completely different. even if you watch a movie ten times, that's still just about ten hours. Games last so much longer. Well, most of them do. There's no reason not to buy AA in this day and age, the trilogy is like ten bucks regardless of what form it comes in.
   
   Slight side note, I really don't like the new 3d models from the later entries, or the new investigation system. But I just finished Professor Layton vs AA. So I think I'm warming up to it.” — Captain Stitch
3. “It is not like Undertale invented the concept of Pacifist runs in the first place. Some are self imposed by players. Some are actual achievements ("Peacemaker" in Mega Man 9.) Miyamoto could have made a canon pacifist challenge if he wanted to in his games.” — ShinyGirafarig

I'm pleased that ShinyGirafarig finds being compared to a non-giraffe species to be a suitable compliment, especially one as cute as cows. Maybe the world needs more of that kind of multi-cultural, open-minded attitude. (Don't try to follow-up and say that maybe I should be open-minded and like humans or something.)

KoopaTV is currently trying to set up an upcoming MOVIE REVIEW, but that might happen very slowly, to the point of never happening at all. Games are a much better value than movies, though, which is why KoopaTV focuses on games and not movies. That might cause trouble for my social life, because people think I'm weird for generally not watching movies. I'm just living out my values, man. And, yes, you should buy Ace Attorney, though it's slightly more than 10 dollars right now. ($12 on the 3DS and $15 on the Switch for a few more days, and then it's $30. ...Worth it at more than $30, if you ask me.)

That last comment was on the (featured above) article about Shigeru Miyamoto claiming that he's all about making scenarios where you're not just committing mass murder, and if you are, you at least get to view some consequences about it. Obviously, Miyamoto is totally wrong about this and Koopas know it (and now you know it because I wrote about it), but the comments got a bunch of Undertale comparisons. Good for ShinyGirafarig for standing up to the multiple Undertale comparisons by thinking in alternative ways!

1. “YOU GOT FUCKIN MERKED KID LOL!” — sam

I looked up what merked means, and it's apparently a worse (and harsher) variant of the word pwned? I mean, I wasn't personally involved in the Super Nintendo World Direct. My dad's castle got vandalised and one of my subjects got robbed by Shigeru Miyamoto, but my personal life was pretty stable. ...So... this is the worst comment for totally missing the point and making up pwns that didn't happen, like those “Ben Shapiro DESTROYS such-and-such” clickbait videos that I haven't actually watched for myself. I don't plan to, either. He's annoying. We can't let KoopaTV get to that level!

KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 35 RESULTS!

The KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program is KoopaTV's gamification of our website about games. As explained in that hyperlink, doing various activities with the site (including comments) will get you points, and the person with the highest points gets a PRIZE! But in the KoopaTV tradition of the holiday season, the round that goes from November to December has much greater prizes than usual. So... here are the final results:

1. Captain Stitch — 86 points — $25 Amazon gift card code
2. ShinyGirafarig — 80 points — Nintendo eShop gift card codes totaling $20
3. Lheticus Videre — 56 points — $10 Amazon gift card code
4. sam — 27 points
5. Samantha Lienhard — 23 points
6. Kody B. — 16 points
7. SylveonGirl700 — 11 points

There was some kind of scheme brewing in the comments section about how Captain Stitch would rather have the $20 eShop code and would swap the Amazon code with the second-place winner if he won. Since he did (barely) win, maybe y'all should negotiate in the comments section.

Either way, I'd appreciate if Captain Stitch provided me with private contact information so I could securely and confidentially deliver him his reward.

Raffle Drawing

Unlike the normal KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program rounds seen in the other months of the year, Round 35 continues KoopaTV's tradition of having a big prize pot in the November–December round by introducing an additional prize winnable via random number generator—another $10 Nintendo eShop card code. The numbers corresponding to each person's chances of winning are viewable at the public KoopaTV Loyalty Leaderboard spreadsheet. Everyone who has at least one point is eligible to win, and the number of points you have directly impact your chance of victory.

Round 35 had a total of 313 accumulated points from you all, so I put into the RNG to choose one number between 1 and 313...

RNG provided by randomnumbergenerator.com on the first try.

Congratulations to Lheticus Videre for having ticket #78! (He would've won with any range between 51 and 106.) He won last year's raffle, too, and the lucky number there was 84. ...It's all just the luck of the draw, folks. (And he had a 17.8% chance to win this one, which is pretty good.)

Announcing KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program Round 36!

After opening up my pocketbook (just kidding, I don't even know what a pocketbook looks like) for Round 35, Round 36 of the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program will have a much more humble prize of one $10 Nintendo eShop code. Round 36 will last until the end of February 28, 2021 (in Eastern time). It begins January 1, 2021.

Kamek is supposed to be funding the Program for, like, the whole 2021, but he hasn't given me details on what that'll look like in terms of denominations and frequencies, so I'll hold off on Kamek-funded fun until... Round 37, I guess.

Note that there is no random-based element in Round 36 of the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program. It's entirely skill-based.

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

Check out the forms and quizzes here! Parts 28 for the KoopaTV Feedback Form and Quiz aren't available yet because I was too busy taking a nap and then re-reading Zero Escape series lore due to a musical detour. This section will be edited when they're available. Parts 28 for the KoopaTV Feedback Form and Quiz are available now, with the Quiz based on KoopaTV experiences composed during November 2020 and December 2020. Check them out, have fun, and let us know what you think!

Corrections Corner; December 2020

SylveonGirl700 pointed out, in my article about the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Dark Reunion event online tourney, that I wrote a paragraph-based list of eligible participants where I wrote Wolf's name twice, as opposed to having one of those be Joker. This is particularly embarrassing because I made that list and checked it twice, much like Santa Claus allegedly did during that same day I wrote and published that article. Perhaps, as a 2021 resolution, I should make all of my lists using the HTML list function, as opposed to writing them out in a paragraph. I have my reasons for the paragraph, though. It takes up much less vertical area! (And it's unclear if that would've helped me spot the duplicate error.)

KoopaTV VS. China; December 2020

We wrote that scathing article on the gaming industry and China that was featured at the start of this newsletter (and that article fearlessly includes an image that dictator Xi “Winnie the Pooh” Jinping doesn't want you to see), and I used the KoopaTV Twitter account to attack some official Chinese accounts with KoopaTV's anti-Chinese government articles. However, despite those efforts, KoopaTV hasn't been banned by the Chinese Communist Party yet.

Does anyone know how to directly get in contact with the Chinese government and get banned? We totally deserve it.


Share KoopaTV with your friends! Why? ...It's a nice thing for you to do for your social clout. (Unless you're in China, then it'll lower your social credit score, but will probably help KoopaTV catch the negative attention the site craves.) Anyway, you can also share KoopaTV with your email inbox by subscribing to a feed of new articles. Both friend-sharing and email-subscribing have potential KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program benefits, so read the details on the dedicated page for the program to have it explained on how to take advantage of those. KoopaTV will produce its Game of THAT Year 2020 nominations sometime next week.


To know what happened last month, click here to read KoopaTV's November 2020 newsletter.
How about in the first month of 2021? The January 2021 newsletter!
For easy comparison to last year's December 2019 newsletter, click here.
Look at next year's December 2021 newsletter, too! Interesting KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program round ending!