Ubisoft Forward at E3 2021 KoopaTV's Live Reactions

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's the very first E3 Weeks 2021 conference!

As promised in KoopaTV's E3 Weeks 2021 Schedule, KoopaTV is live-reacting to the Ubisoft Forward as the opening act of E3 2021.

Myself and Heavy Lobster are the only KoopaTV folks to bother showing up for Ubisoft. We have no actual hype going in for them. Did their conference have anything to change our mindset? Find out.

[2:51 PM] Ludwig Von Koopa: THE FIRST SESSION OF E3 in just 9 minutes.
[2:52 PM] Ludwig Von Koopa: Before it starts, shout-out to the E3 Portal for being a disaster with constant "Service Not available - 503" errors and emergency maintenance.
[2:56 PM] Ludwig Von Koopa: https://www.twitch.tv/e3/
Twitch is the official spot to watch E3; it's like 10 seconds ahead of YouTube.
[3:00 PM] Ludwig Von Koopa: Ooh, it's happening.
[3:01 PM] Ludwig Von Koopa: Featuring Neelam and Youssef?
[3:01 PM] HeavyLobster: French diversity.
[3:01 PM] Ludwig Von Koopa: They have burnt-in captions so they're at least not hiding it's pre-recorded.
[3:01 PM] Ludwig Von Koopa: Does this mean there won't be a dance segment?
[3:01 PM] Ludwig Von Koopa: ...Or will there be an even bigger dance segment than usual?

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 43: Squats to Sleep

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Sort of a snoozefest... but that's the theme of the world, so that's intentional. Right?

We are continuing KoopaTV's Fitness Fridays, which are getting more and more relevant as the calendar gets closer to the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games. Last week (Week 42), I took real steps towards being prepared for the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games. This week, we should be returning to our regularly scheduled fitness training in Ring Fit Adventure—on difficulty level 30—without any whacky, debilitating physical gimmicks afflicting my body. As for the work-out itself, we'll see how gimmicky that is.

World 43: Extra Fitness Lv. 263 is based off World 20: The City of Open Eyes (started here; concluded here), which is named such because Dragaux kept everyone awake from his stadium by being noisy. It was a lesson in the importance of sleeping, which is a message that KoopaTV supports but doesn't always live out in practice.

I was one of the first ones to SPREAD that word, Snoozie!
(Well, there's thousands of years of people predating my pro-sleep message, but at least I predated YOU!)

World 43 opened up with Snoozie—the unique NPC of World 20—saying that she feels great now because she got some sleep and she agrees with me on the importance of sleeping. Meanwhile, Ring asks how much sleep I get (not as much as I'd like, partly KoopaTV's fault), claiming he gets 8 hours of sleep. ...Well, I haven't SEEN him sleep and we've been adventuring for 43 weeks now. General Store Number 39 is selling just one new item: The Guru Gear II, with a set bonus of increasing the power of green Fit Skills by 5%. It's only marginally better in stats than the Battle Machine II and its game-breaking 5% extra experience gain set bonus, so I bought the new outfit (which required two Rose Quartz stones, out of the two I have) and carried on...

No. I don't get enough sleep.
I'm kept up late at night writing KoopaTV articles while squeezing in one to two hours of Ring Fit Adventure.
On top of my daytime duties.

World 20/43 are unique in that it puts the most challenging parts of the entire world at the very beginning: The Trapezius Set Fitness Gym and Guru Andma's miniboss fight. I seek to conquer both of these on Sunday, starting with the Trapezius Set (which is supposed to train your back), consisting of...

E3 Weeks 2021 Schedule!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The fact there wasn't a 2020 version of this affects our thinking a bit.

As KoopaTV has been making you aware for the past several months, E3 Weeks 2021 is upon us. This is the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)—the biggest gaming event of every year. Except 2020 when it didn't happen.

KoopaTV has a tradition of covering the major livestreams that occur during E3 with text-and-image-based live reaction logs that actually do a decent job documenting what happens and our actual, unedited emotions during gaming company presentations. They're better than videos.

Here is this year's KoopaTV E3 Weeks 2021 logo:

I made this logo with no input from anyone else.
The plain-ness represents how I'm not actually expecting or anticipating anything.

This year is different than previous years. E3 2021 is an all-virtual event with a gamified digital portal. While the conferences will remain, there are now apparently more details contained within this portal with its simulated booths. ...As of writing this, it's still unclear how that content will play into our E3 Weeks 2021 content. You can watch the E3 streams for yourself on Twitch and many other distribution services.

So here are the conferences we'll be having some kind of content around. There are many events that will occur not on this list that you can request we watch in the comments section, but we're excluding them because they don't seem interesting or relevant. This article will be updated as E3 Weeks progresses with hyperlinks to KoopaTV's coverage. Times listed are in Eastern Time:

The dissonant "Palworld" announcement

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I don't think it's a Team Rocket simulator.

During the Indie Live Expo 2021 over the weekend—and I didn't watch it and I never will—Japanese indie developer Pocketpair announced the game Palworld—with the moniker that it's a multiplayer open-world survival crafting game (definitely a personal turn-off)—that looks like this:

The Pokémon community certainly took notice of this Palworld trailer and you might have found reactions from them, despite Pocketpair describing the game as being inspired by ARK: Survival Evolved, not Pokémon. Nonetheless, several members of the Pokémon community described Palworld as a “Team Rocket simulator”, though as someone who has quite a bit of Team Rocket knowledge, I disagree with that description—and I'll get into why. Regardless, that trailer makes me feel... a lot of contradictory things. It's purposefully dissonant, and Pocketpair wants to give people mood whiplash. That's why it's getting attention to begin with.

Rillaboom for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Moveset Concept

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Rillaboom drums up a beatdown!

In exactly one week is Nintendo's E3 2021 conference. Everyone expects that the identities of one or both of the remaining two Fighter's Pass 2 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate downloadable content characters will be revealed then.

One (unsupported) “theory” is that the Pokémon franchise is “owed” one of the DLC fighter spots (because it's big and popular and The Pokémon Company has a lot of influence over Nintendo executive decisions), and the most common-sense decision is to take a popular Pokémon from the new Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. Top contenders include Cinderace, Toxtricity, and Rillaboom. (No one wants Inteleon.) Of those three, I'd prefer Rillaboom. Unfortunately, Rillaboom detractors cite that he's just “moss Donkey Kong”, akin to:

After I got this screenshot I realised how scary the top of Moss DK's head looks like.
That's the blue Player 2 indicator, not Donkey Kong having the worst haircut of his life.

KoopaTV will therefore present a viable moveset concept for Rillaboom, taking deep inspiration from the Pokémon games in putting it together:

Intriguing Challenges in Localising The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - My reactions to Janet Hsu giving us the localisation backstory.

My most hyped product for the whole of 2021 is The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, releasing July 27. I doubt whatever will occur during E3 2021 will change that, so I'm confident this will age well.

A large part of what makes Ace Attorney such a beloved franchise is the high quality of its writing, and you can thank CAPCOM's localisation team for that. In particular, thank localisation manager Janet Hsu, who has been working on Ace Attorney since Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All. She recently had an interview with Polygon. The Polygon interviewer didn't contribute anything of interest to the discussion, but Janet sure did. Here's what I found noteworthy from the exchange—which means you should read the interview before the rest of this article for maximum effect.

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 42: Counterfeit Fitness Machine

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Counterfeit is counter to being fit.

This week is a relatively special one in KoopaTV Fitness Friday history. Yeah, the series is about having a healthy lifestyle through playing Ring Fit Adventure, and it's also about being ready for the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games because I'm competing for Team Koopa, Koopa Kingdom's delegation. Let's talk about that in some more detail than usual before the Ring Fit Adventure gameplay logging in this article.

Being ready for the Olympics isn't just having a general sense of physical fitness—Japan is ravaged by the Chinese Communist Party Virus (CCP Virus, sometimes known as COVID-19) right now, and lots of places are shut down or are at very limited capacity. The official policy of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is that participants won't face a vaccination mandate, while the actual people of Japan are livid that the games will go on this year—as opposed to being delayed/cancelled like last year. ...The actual rate of vaccination among the Japanese is quite low. The Japanese are even more vaccine-hesitant than the Americans!

Even though the IOC isn't mandating a vaccine, they're heavily encouraging it, and vaccine manufacturer Pfizer (and BioNTech) have donated their coronavirus vaccine to all the Olympic delegations, including to Koopa Kingdom. Koopa Kingdom lacks a CCP Virus vaccination program, for the obvious reason that the virus afflicts Earth and not our world. The first thought would be to say screw the vaccine. There's no evidence that the virus is transferable to Koopas (though it is transferable to non-humans such as cats and dogs), and no evidence (or trials) the vaccine works on Koopas. (Which is why Russia is making and using animal-specific vaccines now.)

Still, the last time we were training for an Olympics in 2016, Team Koopa got the Zika Virus in Rio de Janeiro. That was not an enjoyable experience. I don't know why we keep dealing with these human viruses during Olympic times. On King Bowser Koopa's orders, I took the first dose of the donated Pfizer vaccine on Sunday. The medical administrator advised that I drink a lot of water and move my affected (left) arm a lot—and drinking water and arm movement is what Ring Fit Adventure is all about, so let's start!

We ended last week's World 41 with a cliffhanger: What would happen if I finished that world wearing the Fitness Machine? You see, this week we're in World 42: Extra Fitness Lv. 257, which returns us to the Robot Kingdom (based off World 19: Getting Rusty; World 19 conclusion here), where the inhabitants are robots that communicate in Binarese, not English. The purpose of the Fitness Machine is that it allows one to understand Binarese as if it were English.

Except when we get there, the robots are speaking our common language, and not Binarese, which Ring was somehow able to figure out. So... Ring Fit Adventure is clearly assuming I'm NOT wearing the Fitness Machine when I entered World 42, which is deeply disappointing and a lack of attention to detail. Here's how the intro went down:

Nintendo's E3 2021 Presence; E3 Fan Sign-Ups Open

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Here's what you allegedly get for signing up...

In a little over a week, the 2021 edition of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) will commence. It's THE biggest event for the gaming industry of the year, and there's been significant buzz about it for the past couple of months, demonstrating that people who've been saying that “E3 is dead” or “E3 is irrelevant” are... very dumb people, likely with an agenda that doesn't align with your own.

This year, hardware ecosystem owners Microsoft and Nintendo are E3's pinnacle sponsors. Yesterday, Nintendo announced their E3 2021 plans: Nintendo will stream a Nintendo Direct on Tuesday, June 15, at 12 PM Eastern. This aligns with their long-running streak of Tuesday 12 PM E3 digital events going back to E3 2014. It'll last about 40 minutes and focus on Nintendo Switch games releasing in 2021...with some mentions of outside-2021 things too. Then Nintendo's Treehouse division will do three hours of gameplay on select games right after. In past years, Nintendo Treehouse might do four, five, six, or even more hours every day for three days, so three hours in one day is substantially less time. Quite frankly, I'm fine with that, as someone who has sat through all of those hours in the past and live-reacted to them all for content. ...Content that you can read on KoopaTV in previous years (2019 and prior... well, for KoopaTV, 2018 and prior. 2019 was unique).

Three hours might fit in six to eleven games, depending on how much time they want to dedicate to each game. That's less games shown than some of the previous years’ Nintendo Treehouse Lives. Quality isn't always better than quantity here. Like, the 2016 E3 Nintendo Treehouse Live Day 1 was boring because it was JUST The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for hours on end. I suppose Treehouse Live could do that again and use all three hours on just one game, but... I hope not.

Nintendo "Uji Ogura Plant" → "Nintendo Gallery"... Around 2023–2024

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Don't feel jealous of Japan. America already has this covered.

What do you do when you have an idle factory on a bunch of land? ...Apparently, convert it into a gallery of your company's history—or to editorially put it, a museum. That's what Nintendo just announced they'll be doing with their Uji Ogura Plant. That factory was established in 1969 in Uji City, Japan to manufacture Hanafuda cards and games (of the analogue kind, such as classic and board games like mahjong and checkers). Nintendo in the 1980s built a new Uji City plant to expand capacity, called the Uji Plant, which is still used today. The old one was renamed the Uji Ogura Plant, due to the Ogura neighbourhood of where it's located. The old one is closed.

The current Uji City plant (which apparently does service repairs according to Google Maps reviews) is also next to the historical Makishima Castle.
...That castle is just ruins.

Nintendo plans to renovate the abandoned Uji Ogura Plant to showcase their “product development history and philosophy with the public” and showcase “historical products” with “exhibits and experiences” by March 2024. They're tentatively calling it the Nintendo Gallery, not to be confused with the Game & Watch Gallery or anything. You may be thinking, aw, shucks, this is another case of Japan always getting cool things. But... fret not, America has these kinds of gaming exhibit opportunities that already exist.

KoopaTV's May 2021 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I've really been doing this for eight years, huh?

That's another month down. May 2021. Gone just like that. During that quick month KoopaTV turned eight years old, to little fanfare. Yeah, the least amount of fanfare came from KoopaTV itself, so I'm not lamenting anything.

The integer representing KoopaTV's age has really nothing to do with how our month went, by the way. There was zero impact. ...We're not complacent or anything. We're nimble and stuff. Here, check out our great content:

Top Five Recommended Experiences of May 2021

Since KoopaTV isn't a washed up website, here's the top five (listed in chronological order) experiences that demonstrate our cutting-edge greatness.

1. The Jury is in about that "Wario" Skit on Saturday Night Live... — KoopaTV went and actually reviewed the Saturday Night Live/Elon Musk Wario skit on a truth and levity basis. Somehow, we're better than their whole paid staff. Hm. If you're looking for washed up, it's SNL, not KoopaTV.
2. E3 2021 Preview Update: SQUARE ENIX, SEGA, and an Online Portal — E3 2021 starts really soon, and we updated you all in May with some information that corrected the misinformation that other media outlets put out about E3 2021.
3. Anti-Transparency in United States Taxation... and the Solution! — There is systemic concealment of how money is raised by the United States government, and this article exposes how that impacts your finances.
4. I can't use my childhood dodgeball strategy in Knockout City — This article discusses the scary privacy issues you should know about Knockout City, the gameplay of the sport portrayed (dodgeball), and how it compares with the traditional sport of dodgeball.
5. In Memoriam: Glenn Fraldarius — KoopaTV's Memorial Day 2021 article is about a true knight...who died.

Everything on KoopaTV is worth reading, you know. Even if it's not on that list, or if it's not from May 2021. Lots of oldies and goodies and classics are in our archives... many of which still hold up very well to this day.

Best Three Comments and One Worst Comment of May 2021

I really want to talk about the worst comment of the month, because that's what I think of when I think of May 2021 and your comments. ...But let's go through the positives first (in chronological order):