Momentary Memetic Messes don't Mosey in Memory

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - If you're relying on meme power, you won't last long.

What are the games that stand the test of time? The games that are still talked about and talked fondly of even though they're pretty old? The recent GameFAQs Best. Game. Ever. 2015 contest could shed light on this question. The games that made the top, for the most part, are (really) old and have very solid game design fundamentals.

There's an exception to that, which is the September 2015 release Undertale. Which won the whole tournament, to my dismay. Its finals opponent, a former champion, didn't even try.

I voted for the last option, and was the 5th person to vote in the poll! (And was the 2nd person to vote the last option at the time.)

Yeah, I'm spiteful. I know it isn't logical and people have pointed it out to me already. So be more original in your comments in the comments section for this, okay?

Anyway, people claim that Undertale, a quirky game made by one dude, is amazing and changed their life or whatever. These people are freaks from tumblr who are very impressionable and probably have a crappy life up to that point, so it's pretty easy to change their lives. I'd give props if their lives are changed for the better, but all it seemed to have done is make them waste more time on tumblr and become "salt miners" where they voted for Undertale just to make GameFAQs and myself mad. That's not being a good person or being a change for the better.

They really like Undertale partly because of its "witty writing", and that's apparently expressed by people repeating the same few lines as memes over and over. This is a problem. 

Ludwig Von Koopa's Team Pizza Crusade

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm not done supporting Team Pizza!

We had a rather unfortunate result almost two weeks ago: Team Burgers defeated Team Pizzas in the Splatoon Splatfest, and I put my support behind Team Pizza. What ended up happening? Team Pizza had only 63% popularity vs. Team Burgers and their 37%... and Team Burgers won a whopping (no doubt from Burger King's Whopper) 56% of the time! Since the scoring system heavily weighs winning over popularity, Team Burgers won.

So did my team end up sucking? ...Yes. But we had spirit. I will fight for that slice of pizza!

It looks so scrumptious! Give me!

But... Team Burgers didn't want me eating the pizza slice. They probably wanted me to eat a burger. So, I summoned my pizza-friendly minions.

KoopaTV Judges the CNN Republican December 2015 Presidential Debate!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Let's order this by who should still be here.

Last night, we had two debates for the Republicans on CNN, again. Yeah, we already were on CNN, but there are only a few "approved" channels left after the CNBC disaster.

See the list of people that were in the debates here. Or, represented here in these graphs of talking times:

Numbers provided by CNN.

The huge differences between the amount of time the earlier-debate candidates got compared to the later-debate one is important. You might ask why anyone would want to show up to the larger debate when only I'm-going-to-keep-talking-and-ignore-the-moderator-telling-me-to-shut-up Ted Cruz got to talk more than anyone in the lower debate, but you got to consider the larger debate had three times as many viewers. 5.7 million vs. 18 million.

It was a big point of contention for candidate Rand Paul, because the media was massively reporting days before the debate that he wouldn't qualify for the prime-time debate and that he'd have to drop down to the scrub one. Some folks were even reporting that he was going to be DROPPING OUT of the race! Didn't happen, but if Rand did go to the lower debate he could probably fight for double the amount of speaking time than what he actually got last night. Could balance the one-third of the viewers?

In honour of Rand's dilemma, I'm going to organise my thoughts based on three tiers. "Stay in the debates", "Figure something out", and "Drop out already". I might be biased here, so feel free to call that out in the comments. And of course, our awards at the end.

KoopaTV's FINAL Smash Direct Live Reactions!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Taking you from start to finish in this journey by Sakurai.

Today is super-busy. There's the finals of the GameFAQs Best Game Ever tournament, where Undertale is dominating and it shouldn't. There are two Republican debates tonight, one going on right now as of publishing. (The one you care less about.)

Yet the most important (arguably?) of the events today? Masahiro Sakurai giving his final presentation ever on Super Smash Bros. For Wii U and Super Smash Bros. For 3DS. And let's not kid ourselves, it's mostly the first one.

I'm Nintendork 13 13 and the only other guy who talks is Vortexica. Kamek still exists, as the first line says. Just... in another world.

Uh, anyway.

Which character was in the 1st Worldwide spot for the fighter ballot? ...Spoilers: Not Phoenix Wright.

 

Team Naughty Ain't Evil

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - If you want hypocrisy, look elsewhere. I'm being consistent.

There is another Splatfest this Saturday in North America, making the gap between them only two weeks long as opposed to three. Are you naughty, or are you nice?

A certain element in society is drumming up a Turf War on Squidmas...

 
Are you on Team Naughty, or on Team Nice?

I thought about bucking your expectations for the heck of it, but, nah, I'll be true to myself. OF COURSE I'm on Team Naughty! I mean, come on. I don't really need to explain why, right? ...Well, I might have to.

Callie is also on Team Naughty, though it's never explained why and she didn't seem to have a choice in the matter.

Well, I can't (canonically) explain Callie's Team Naughty position. However, I can explain my own since you're due some explanation for someone out there.

"But Ludwig!" A strawman might begin, "You've been claiming for over a decade that you and Koopa Kingdom are the good guys, and Mario is evil!"

(Quarters, Semis, Finals!) Ludwig's Best. Game. Ever 2015 Votes

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Eight games to four. Four to two... Two to THE BEST GAME EVER.

The GameFAQs Best. Game. Ever contest will have its last day on Tuesday, December 15. Not counting bonus polls. Same day as the Super Smash Bros. 4 Direct, and Night 5 of the Republican Presidential Debates! So that'll be a busy day.

But before we get there, we need to go through the quarter-finals. And then the semi-finals. And since we'll be going through this quickly, might as well dedicate this one article to the rest of the contest!

You can participate and vote here. You don't need to have an account or anything.

It's three rounds in one article, so... Let's just write "FINALS" in a funky font.

See my Round 4 picks here. The quarter-finals are two a day, the semi-finals are one a day, and the finals is one. There may be bonus polls afterwards. This article will be updated Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, so be sure to check out this page then.

Who Knows Why the PlayStation 4 is Selling? Defying Conventional Thinking?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I dunno, it seems pretty conventional to me. What used to be conventional, anyway.

Remember in March 2015 when Sony's PlayStation 4 eclipsed 20 million units? Since then, it's supposedly gone up to over 30 million units sold. So the PlayStation 4 sold in little over half a year what the Wii U has taken nearly six times that amount of time to do. Surely, Sony has to have some kind of secret sauce, right? Are they ready to tell us what those ingredients are?

Apparently, they still have no clue why. It baffles 'em.

PlayStation/Sony frontman Shuhei Yoshida doesn't know what the PlayStation 4 did better than the PlayStation 3, other than making the PlayStation 4 easier to develop for than the PlayStation 3, which was notoriously super-powered and really hard to make games for. This easiness makes software much more available than the PlayStation 3, which was derided by memes 8-9 years ago for having no games. (I like to think you could still use those today, but I'm probably wrong at this point. Though, I wasn't wrong April Fools 2014, and it was still selling a ton then!)

He gives another reason. That GameSpot article says:

“Another reason why the PS4 has enjoyed such strong success, according to Yoshida, is that it's attracting people who never owned any last-generation console.” 

Personal Experience: System Transfer to New Nintendo 3DS XL

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The media are still the bad guys, but there's a truth to their stories of complexity.

I have had enough of having a broken Nintendo 3DS. I'm not even supposed to have an original Nintendo 3DS, and I set out at the start of this generation that I would start with the revision. It's just Shigeru Miyamoto's lies got in the way, and bam, I get stuck with a sexy Midnight Purple handheld with built-in design flaws and garbage-quality shoulder buttons. And the Circle Pad peels off and ends up in random places in my house instead of being on the pad.

So, as part of the Black Friday sales, you and I could save $20 on a New Nintendo 3DS XL. I know my headline was about the Wii U bundle, but basically every retailer had that $20 off. So...why not do it? Replace my broken Nintendo 3DS with a New Nintendo 3DS XL! Then I can actually play Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon instead of write articles pretending that I'm legitimately able to think it's the best game of the year.

I therefore ordered the New Nintendo 3DS XL off Amazon. I remembered that you needed a very small screwdriver to switch SD cards, which I would need to do if I wanted to transfer all my data from my Nintendo 3DS (which has a 16 GB SD card and uses about half of its memory right now) to my New Nintendo 3DS XL! And I also needed to actually buy that bigger microSD card. And I also remember that when the New Nintendo 3DS came out, there was all the media commotion that went along with this screwdriver business. And I dismissed it, saying,

Your Big Nintendo of America Announcement? Minecraft Wii U!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This makes Nintendo fans 0-2 in less than a week!

Following the disastrous speculation that Nintendo would have something major to announce at The Game Awards 2015 (and they most certainly did not), Nintendo fans quickly clung to their next speculative scrap of news. This came in the form of Nintendo's Damon Baker saying in a Nintendo World Report podcast that there would be "something happening on Monday" and that something would be "big." He didn't say YUUUUGE, though.

Would like to note that Nintendo World Report is on KoopaTV's shit-list before we continue this article.

So what happened? Cue the press release:

“Best-selling sandbox game Minecraft heads to Nintendo's Wii U console”

Or as Nintendo's Amy would put it:

“Your wishes were heard!”

I'd say the worst part is the “Hope you're ready to get creative with blocks this holiday!” line.

(Round 4) Ludwig's Best. Game. Ever 2015 Votes

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Division finals! Sixteen games left!

After this, I'm going to put Rounds 5 and 6 in its own article. Anyway, it's my picks for the Divisional Finals in the GameFAQs Best. Game. Ever contest, where GameFAQs natives and whoever gets rallied across the Internet come together and vote on the best game of all time.

You can vote here.

Best. Game. Ever. 20th Anniversary Edition ROUND 4!
It turns out the "H" in "20TH" makes for a good 4.

See my Round 3 picks here. There are still two matches a day this round, and two next round.