Mighty No. 9 is a Disaster; CAPCOM Isn't Doing Better

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Plus, even more robots than those!

Automation is all over the news. With presidential candidates such as Bernie Sanders proposing a $15 an hour federal minimum wage while simultaneously lamenting how high unemployment among black youths is (I'm sure he believes these are not connected in any way), businesses in low-wage parts of the economy are expressing how they're going to put robots on their work force to replace higher-costing humans.

We're truly in the era 20XX imagined in the Mega Man series. For the most part, robots are having an adversarial relationship with many humans, and that's something that'll be a subtle theme in this article.

It's a shame that Mega Man isn't doing anything nowadays, besides being redesigned into an awful-looking abomination for a strangely-plotted cartoon show:

Ew.

Keep in mind that I enjoyed the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon. I don't think this'll be anything like that, so it probably won't be worth watching. Oh well. Better stick to KoopaTV's content. (And hey, we have an exclusive video for you at the end of this very article!)

I was just writing yesterday about how Mega Man is being treated poorly by CAPCOM, and being redesigned into that crap above definitely qualifies. So, what about everyone's favourite totally-not-Mega-Man action hero, Beck, of Mighty No. 9? Turns out he's not doing well, either, somehow worse than when we last looked at him:

Paper Mario: The Most Popular Plumber

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Fans like him more than the other forms of plumber.

I don't ever write articles complimenting Mario Mario. He's a terrible person. His brother is, too. I write negative stuff about him. Constantly. His creator, too.

That said, there's degrees of awfulness with regards to the plumber. Nintendo's child-focused site, Play Nintendo (which is still around, folks), held a poll on March 10 (“National Mario Day”), 2016 about “Which version of Mario would you want to meet on National Mario Day?”

Of Pixel Mario, Cat Mario, Baby Mario, and Paper Mario, which big-nosed diabolical jerk did fans want to meet the most?

Well, there's not much build-up to be had here since this article title spoils it. I took this screenshot on March 10, by the way. You can't see this now:

Paper Mario won by a large plurality!

The poll is currently being rerun (or maybe it's the same poll but renamed, but I could vote in it again, so...) past March 10. The results of that? Well...

Get a BB-8 Display, Donate to Charity: Watch Jareditton!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The exciting “get” part is only feasible if you're in New Mexico to pick it up, though.

I think New Mexico is getting a really bad rap in the news lately. Donald Trump just had a great rally inside a venue there (according to him), but everyone is only talking about what happened outside of it. Which was chaos, with protestors attacking Albuquerque, New Mexico police with rocks and bottles. If I were them, I'd shoot those scum. (People have been killed in self-defence, while getting away with it, for having less or nothing at all!)

Donald Trump's news reporting on the New Mexico rally.

If you only want to focus on the “thugs”, then yeah, it's a terrible place. But the big, beautiful rally inside represents the goodness in the hearts of many of the New Mexico people.

One of those is KoopaTV darling Jareditton. Jareditton is organising a charity stream on his YouTube channel, with the exact stream link here. Details can be found on this Facebook event, but we actually have details that his event page does not. Because I asked him.

We have the full story about the charity stream, but to get the critical information prior to the page break: It's 1 PM to 9 PM Mountain time this Thursday and Friday (May 26 and May 27). That's 3 PM to 11 PM Eastern. Watch it at his YouTube channel. The charity is Children's Miracle Network, and you can pick up a BB-8 display stand. It looks like this:

How Team Koopa Escaped Rio: Table of Contents

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The whole series laid out here for your enjoyment.

For the past two months, I've been releasing weekly installments of KoopaTV's original drama series, How Team Koopa Escaped Rio. It's so dramatic, so epic, so scrumptiously tantalising, that it gets the italicised treatment. I'm pretty happy with it.

So, I want to give the series the treatment it deserves by putting together this article which will function as a Table of Contents for the series. It's done now, so what'll follow should be everything. Read every linked-to article in order to get the full experience. This'll be up as a tab on the site for a while.

Promotional image for How Team Koopa Escaped Rio, a KoopaTV special series.

Just a reminder: The How Team Koopa Escaped Rio series exists in the first place because I felt I needed to let you, the readers/viewers/players of KoopaTV, why we were on hiatus for ten days after April 1st from our normal publishing schedule. It's basically an apology from the KoopaTV staff to you guys for letting you down.

And because I feel so bad (and not because of any skill-related issues), I want to take this time to announce that I will not be participating in Team Koopa's training session in Rio this June 23rd, which will be represented by the Nintendo Wii U game Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. That means I will not be, to my knowledge, in that game. The events preceding How Team Koopa Escaped Rio are encapsulated in the Nintendo 3DS game, Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. I definitely am in that game.

...Yes, the names of the games are the same. That wasn't my idea.

I'm working out with Team Koopa management (aka King Dad) about whether or not I'll actually be in the Olympics in August of 2016.

Anyway, here's the Table of Contents. There are links to all of the readings, along with short, non-exhaustive descriptions of each. They may or may not count as spoilers, especially if you read all of the descriptions for each article and then read all of the parts. Don't do that. So, here you go:

Happy World Turtle Day!

By VORTEXICA - They have holidays for everything these days, but this one actually has a point.

You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise crawling towards you. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lies on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. ...But you're not helping. Why is that?

Okay so now that we've got that tangentially turtle-related, comedically-bankrupt Blade Runner reference out of the way, happy World Turtle Day everyone!

Why Hackers Target Gamers and How to Protect Yourself

By CASSIE - Internet security for everyday people.

Until very recently, gaming was, for most people, a form of teenage entertainment. However, the rise of internet gaming platforms and MMORPGs has changed all that. I swear that I heard the Candy Crush Saga level-clearing tunes from the smartphone of a senior citizen sitting next to me on the subway this morning. It's official: People from all ages now engage in online gaming on their smartphone, tablet or PC. Games such as World of Tanks, EVE Online and Candy Crash Saga have made gaming a pastime for everyone. However, the rise of modern gaming has heightened the appeal of such platforms to cybercriminals looking for easy targets for hacking.

What makes gamers so easy a target is that, unlike other online activities, we tend to throw caution to the winds when engaged in playing our favorite games. According to the findings of professor of media psychology Frank Schwab, it is a scientific fact that computer gaming speaks to the rational cognitive and emotional systems thus influencing real life behavior and rational thought.

If you are like me, you can relate to that Yahtzee feeling of winning six games straight and beating your chest gorilla-like. Or is it just me who does that? When you are in the game, you are just in the zone; it is just as if the real world does not exist. More times than I'd like to admit, I've thrown caution to the wind and turned off anti-virus software for a better experience or gone trawling for hacks and cheats on suspicious websites.

How Team Koopa Escaped Rio — Part 6

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Alternatively: Part Final.

The time has finally come to conclude this epic series. Part 5 ended with a really scared Ludwig (y'know, me) on a Thursday night. The whole Team Koopa that isn't Dry Bones or Dry Bowser are at Rio de Janeiro International Airport, waiting to be extracted from being in a Brazilian hellhole for weeks. That's Ludwig, Roy, Wendy, Larry, King Bowser, and Bowser Jr.

The journey started as Team Koopa went to Rio de Janeiro to practise against Team Sonic and Team Mario, but Ludwig (and possibly the other members) got infected with Zika, thanks to a member of the Deadly Six from Sonic Lost World, Zazz. He's a creep.

It's a total coincidence that there's the Deadly Six, there are six Koopas stranded in Rio de Janeiro, and this ends on Part 6. (Don't try to put all those sixes together, either, or you'll get something... demonic.) With that NOT in mind, let's start this part and ultimately conclude the story:

Nintendo Going Into Movies? Awesome!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's like... Nintendo is actually listening to us.

For a year and a half now, I've been saying that Nintendo needs to do this movie thing. Sure, they've been doing short little animated films, but a full movie? That requires exponentially more time and effort, much more than what it'd take for the Star Fox Zero — The Battle Begins short.

Imagine a world where Shigeru Miyamoto is so caught up being a movie producer that he'd have no time to ever ruin a Paper Mario game or decide that F-Zero needs a gimmicky control scheme as a condition for its existence. So... in this future, Nintendo will be able to have its designers and lower-level creatives flourish, while we simultaneously get movies utilising Nintendo IP every few years.

Well, friends. This future may be upon us. It's reported that Nintendo is entering the movie-making business. For real. We're told to expect the first movie in two to three years. They're in talks with multiple movie production partners for “full-fledged filmmaking.” (That deserves an exact quote because it's great alliteration.)

You know what also deserves an exact quote?

Oceania + United States Pokémon GO Beta-Testing

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Canadians need not apply.

If you live in Australia or New Zealand and wanted to participate in the beta for Pokémon GO, you missed your chance. That's a bummer for the ~1% of people from the Oceania area who read this site (including Health), but hopefully Niantic Labs and The Pokémon Company's own marketing efforts reached you. ...Well, you might still have a chance to get in. You'll be late, but I guess they don't say you can't get in at this point with a late invitation.

But if you live in the United States? Now's your chance to sign up! Right here! 

For some marketing about what the beta, called a field test, is about, notice what the official Pokémon website has recently added at the end of its Pokémon GO page: 

“Eligible players in the United States, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand are currently being invited to participate in a field test for Pokémon GO. The Pokémon GO field test will give users the opportunity to share early feedback and help improve the Pokémon GO experience.” 

If you want to join, though, there are a lot of conditions. Obviously, you need a smartphone. But it needs to be Android or iOS-based, so sorry Windows Mobile. It needs to be a certain level of smartphone. Playability not guaranteed. Let's see...

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney — Spirit of Justice Release Date!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...Oh, and that name itself is new. Plus, eShop sales.

I have talked a couple of times about an Ace Attorney 6 that we've known to exist for some time. Well, no longer will we be referring to that as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 6, but as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney — Spirit of Justice! CAPCOM provides us this English-language trailer:

The game (at least more than half of it?) will be taking place in the mysterious Kingdom of Khura'in. Quite frankly, I'm going to avoid having to spell that out for whenever I talk about the game now, and in the future. If there's something I hate, it's a ton of weird apostrophes. Accent marks? Fine. But... What the hell is a Séance? (...Well, that's apparently an actual word, and it's used correctly. Abraham Lincoln's wife, Mary Lincoln, tried to do them.)

It's better than when I was referring to it as a “water mirror” some time ago. And that guy-who-I-thought-was-a-girl is now named Ahlbi Ur'gaid, continuing this game's evident trend of apostrophes everywhere. (I said I wouldn't respect its pronouns and I still will not. Even though Wright literally says “If the boy has no lawyer, I will defend him, and prove his innocence!”)

I'll declare this now: If your name has an apostrophe in it, you're never going to even get nominated for KoopaTV's Game of THAT Year Best New Character award. So hopefully not every new character and place has one of those.

The logo for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney — Spirit of Justice is better than the logo for Gyakuten Saiban 6.