The Trail-Blazing, Brave Women of Sexy Poker

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - KoopaTV supports the cast of Sexy Poker.

Today, I'm going to discuss the Gameloft game Sexy Poker, which came out on the WiiWare service in 2009. I did a Let's Play of it, as you may already know. (As you may also already know, it's all Kamek's fault.) The only characters in Sexy Poker are the women, and the only other objects of interest are their clothes and the cards that you play Poker with. (Or Blackjack.) According to my Let's Play, the anime-styled women were voiced by men. (In reality, they're actually females.)

So... what's there to talk about? The game is garbage. The music is pretty nice, but it's apparently not uploaded to YouTube. Well, we're going to talk about the women themselves and their decisions and accomplishments, because we're continuing KoopaTV's "Women's History Month" week!

Gender Identity and Toads

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Genderfluid, she/him. Get it right or I'll be triggered.

Some time ago, a ridiculous person claiming to be an authoritative developer of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Koichi Hayashida, to be exact) claimed that the Toad species is genderless and apparently sexless as well.

KoopaTV is continuing its series of articles dedicated to "Women's History Month" week. Nintendo also got in the act with this poster:

It's unclear who Toadette is referring to when she says "we".

Last time I checked, unless Gender Studies professors and tumblr. "experts" changed things, women are females. If Toadette is there to celebrate Women's History Month and every other person on these posters is unquestionably female, then it's pretty likely Toadette is also female.

That interview with Mr. Hayashida was November 17. 4 days later, his reckless act of retconning got overturned by Super Smash Bros. For Wii U. Behold:

"This lady" "her debut" "she's shown" "She loves" "she's quite" "She's also". Definitely female.

So... what about the other Toads?

George Zimmerman's taste in women: Mario fans?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm finally starting to see why everyone else in the world has something against George Zimmerman.

KoopaTV has done some investigative reporting on the woman who lied about getting a wine bottle thrown at her by George Zimmerman to get her out of a traffic ticket.

While we never found out the answer of, "Did she actually pay the ticket?" we did find something deeply, deeply disturbing. And we don't consider "She was in a relationship with George Zimmerman and lived with him" to be disturbing.

LOOK AT HER POSE WITH THAT FIRE FLOWER.

You don't see ME posing with Fire Flowers, do you? And she is obviously a fan of the Mario brothers, the same bastards who are well-known in Koopa Kingdom (and by you and the rest of the universe) as the terrorists who continually make the lives of my family miserable.

You can see from the time-stamp that this was before she became George Zimmerman's roommate, meaning this was past history with her. Meaning that he knew full well that the woman we are referring to as "Ms. BB" (to moderately respect her privacy) was a supporter of that punk plumber and his pals... and dare I say, chose her because of this.

Voice Acting of Defend Anita Sarkeesian

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And sound effects.

Besides a Let's Play video (and if you do one of those, you get a big bonus in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program), the last thing we can do to promote Defend Anita Sarkeesian is releasing all the voice-acting and sound effects for the game.

Here you go:

Gonna admit, these are really fun to listen to, even if there is substantially less voicework than Trayvon Tyson's Punch-Out!!.

Also heads (and hands) up: Because March is Women's Month or something, every article for this last full week of March 2015 is going to have some sort of focus on women. Obviously, a game about defending the life of Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist icon, is focused on a woman. So the voice-acting and sound effects from said game also counts.

Even if more than half the voice-acting in the game is just Bendilin.

There isn't much to really reflect on with Defend Anita Sarkeesian besides how amusing it is to watch people be even more confused by it than they were with our last game.

You should also anticipate KoopaTV to have a "Games" tab sometime in the future just to list the games we've made. It just needs to be worded in a way that people know they are free games developed by KoopaTV that you can play on KoopaTV. Imagine how nebulous a tab called "Games" would be in a blog about "Games"... Maybe you could get the impression that the tab would contain a list of videogames we talk about on KoopaTV? (Maybe we SHOULD have such a list?)

It's a unique problem for KoopaTV, since those other videogame commentary sites don't do this sort of game-making activity. It's a differentiating factor for sure!


What will KoopaTV's next game be? Will it even be a digital game? Stay tuned.


It wasn't digital if you count a scavenger hunt as a game.

Miyamoto: Still Clueless on F-Zero; Still Should Retire

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I had to watch obnoxious Smosh people to make this article.

I feel absolutely justified that, for our Best KoopaTV Article of 2014 award, we gave it to Are We Too Harsh On Miyamoto?. Why? Because right after we sent a message out signaling that an anti-Miyamoto article is more important to KoopaTV than, say, an anti-feminist article or something, Miyamoto and Bill Trinen go out to talk with those Smosh dudes while playing Mario Kart 8 about various topics, including the F-Zero series.

The relevant part for this article (I'll get to sort-of-interesting stuff at the very end) starts at 5:24. The Smosh dude asks if Captain Falcon, Samus, and Mr. Saturn (what a strange list) will get more games in the future.

Miyamoto answers that since other companies are making traditional, realistic racing games (see E3 2013 where it was nothing but cars), what Nintendo wants to do is counter that with a "gamey" (arcade?) racing experience. Miyamoto then follows up by saying, "maybe if we create a new type of controller interface, and we find a controller interface that's particularly suited for F-Zero, then maybe we'll do something again with it in the future."

...What? Then they made a segue to Star Fox on Wii U which will be a disaster for another article.

Metal Gear Solid: The Review

By SUPERDEKU - Read this Guest Poster's review about one helluva gem!

Metal Gear Solid is a game that's widely renowned, well-known, and loved for revolutionizing storytelling in video games and for "inventing" or pioneering the stealth genre. The game can out in 1998 for the PlayStation from publisher Konami, and is almost 20 years old, so a review nowadays is pretty common, apparently. However, one review can change it all, and I'll prove that point!

The North American boxart for the game.

Wait To Play... Ludwig likes it?!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I confess the guilty pleasure.

You wouldn't expect it and neither would I, but it's a thing: I actually like Pokémon Shuffle. Strangest thing of all, I actually have an appreciation for its wait-to-play nature. The same kind of abusive free-to-play practice I heavily criticised when Electronic Arts does it for Need For Speed: No Limits. Does my hypocrisy know no bound?

To be fair to myself, Nintendo has been asking players to take breaks for years now, breaking ground in the videogame industry by politely asking players to stop playing.

We're past the point of politeness.

But most players did not take a break, apparently represented by jumping out a window. And so, Nintendo got upset with players.

And now, you must take a break with Pokémon Shuffle or be fined for it. Enforced breaks (Pokémon Shuffle has you take 30 minute breaks for... about 6 minutes of gameplay and then 30 minute breaks for 1 minute of gameplay thereafter) prevent all sorts of videogame-induced problems. These include everything in Health & Safety Information, including vision damage, seizures, eyestrain, and motion sickness. It also stops videogame addiction. You cannot die by sitting in front of a videogame for days on end (as some people have done) if the videogame does not let you play it for even minutes on end.

Hm, imagine if Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day was rereleased now. Would it be a wait-to-play game? 

Nintendo's Official Mobile Entrance

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - With great fanfare comes great terror.

It is very important for you to be educated on the facts, so go read up on the News Release transcript of Nintendo's Nintendo Co., Ltd.-DeNA Co., Ltd. Business and Capital Alliance Announcement. If you first heard today's news from any source other than this primary source, chances are you have been deceived or lied to on some aspect of it. KoopaTV stands for the truth, so we want to get that of the way. For a summary, see the press release from DeNA.

So here is what happened, as you just read from that transcript: Nintendo and DeNA, a mobile platform solutions company, are in an alliance to deliver Nintendo IPs to mobile devices. DeNA also will help with some sort of unified membership account system set to launch by the end of 2015.

There is also this codenamed "NX" thing but there is
literally
nothing to discuss about it at this present time.

We don't know any details about that either, but it is interesting to note what devices are included there, including PC. Does that mean you can access this service (which sounds like a Club Nintendo successor) from a mobile-friendly website? ...Because big deal if that's the case. You can access KoopaTV from a Tablet, Smartphone, PC, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U! (Not that it's recommended for the first two and the fourth one.)

Removing the lid off retro nostalgia

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The hidden secrets of Ludwig's game-playing past!

Once upon a time, Ludwig was a baby. It's hard to believe. I was an only child for a brief span of time in the Royal Koopa Family, which always had a presence in videogames since this human company called Nintendo thought we were amazing and kept making games based off this family, sort of like what Activision did with the Robertson family and Duck Dynasty. Except it was a series and not a one-time thing. So the Koopas got free games, and also tried to have local game development within Koopa Kingdom. One of which was the game depicted here:

I grew up with games like this.

My (owned by Ludwig, not just the family at large) first videogame console otherwise was an NES. I only had Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet on it. Common bundle, but I didn't have anything else on it, personally. (That's why I like Nintendo's tendency to port things.) See the rest of the family's possessions for other games, one of which was Super Mario Bros. 3 which was probably your first introduction to my family. ...I don't think it was a good impression.

Speaking of first impressions, let's talk about a company called Man Crates. My first introduction to them was when a friend said she got a request from them to write about retro gaming nostalgia. They're trying to sell this Retro Gamer Man Crate, basically a container you have to open with a crowbar to get goodies like sugary snacks and two NES games. ...So eventually, they found KoopaTV and gave us the same request. Well, sure!

KoopaTV's Live Reactions to Wil Wheaton Babbling about Code Name S.T.E.A.M.

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I think we're done with this game by now.

After advising you that Code Name S.T.E.A.M. probably is not worth your time (unless you reaaaally liked the demo), Nintendo was like, we are going to hold a Twitch event featuring Wil Wheaton who voice-acted Abraham Lincoln.

So we halfheartedly watched it and reacted to it. I'm Nintendork 13 13, Rawk is Rawk, and Vortexica is that breezinabout name.

If you missed the event, you can (re)watch it here. We don't really recommend it. You're not going to want the game if you didn't want it before, and you probably won't care about this if you actually do want it.