(Round 2) Ludwig's Best. Game. Ever 2015 Votes

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - From 128, we have 64. DIVISION by two!

We are lots of steps closer to figuring out what the Internet (or at least GameFAQs) will consider to be their BEST. GAME. EVER. ...Eh, we can probably take a good guess that it'll be a certain game involving a musical instrument, sages, an overly difficult submerged temple in a lake, and a stormy windmill.

That game won't be the one I'll be supporting (well, I'm voting for it this round, but still), and this is all about who I'll be voting for, not who I think will win.

I don't even remember what font I used for the rounds, so I'll just take the 2 they got. What will happen in round 3?
You can vote every match here when it's up on GameFAQs. Four matches every 24 hours. (One division a day.)

See my Round 1 picks here. Many of them didn't make it to Round 2, including some of the games I would take to win their divisions. (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney!) But hey, sometime you'll get my pure favouritism bracket. For now, we're still in reality.

Round 2 begins Saturday. Or in less than an hour after this is published. Wanted it to be timely, you know.

Head to the comments section if you want to start a conversation about any of my choices, or perhaps what YOU'D vote for! 

What Happened to Tom Clancy's The Division?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You know, the apocalypse begins on Black Friday...

Memetic inside jokes can lead to powerful reactions. It's the reason why Tom Clancy's The Division is one of my most anticipated games even though I'm never going to own it. Sadly, it doesn't look like it'll be an edutainment MMO but instead an open-world online shooting RPG, though I maintain if it was edutainment it'd be even more profitable. Division blessed us all starting in Ubisoft's E3 2013 conference. Then it continued to get mentioned in Ubisoft's E3 2014. And then it had a WORLD PREMIERE in Microsoft's E3 2015, apparently retconning the previous two years of E3. Ubisoft finally gave us release details at their 2015 conference. Given the fact that its development has unexpectedly spanned three years of E3 conferences, I think Division deserves a status update.

According to Ubisoft back then, the game is supposed to come out March 8, 2016, on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Betas are supposed to come out earlier than that in 2016, though according to The Division's website,

"Xbox One players will be able to experience the beta first during an exclusive this December. An additional beta on Xbox One, PlayStation®4 system, and PC will take place in early 2016. More details are coming soon!" 

So if you got an Xbox One, you're luckier than the rest. That's fair, I guess. Ubisoft clearly liked Microsoft more for The Division!

Also according to the FAQ,

Electronic Arts — Nickel and Diming Customers

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - They claim they don't WANT to. It just happens.

Not much to write about here: According to GameSpot, Electronic Arts through their Chief Financial Officer Mr. Blake Jorgensen, has declared,

"I do think there's a bit of consumer fatigue around feeling like they're getting nickle and dimed all the time. And a lot of mobile games don't allow you to have fun unless you've paid for it, so we're looking at new models of ways to try to alleviate some of that fatigue that's going on. Some of those might come in the form of subscription-style, but some of them might simply come in different ways to play games over time so you don't feel like you're always getting nickel and dimed."

I would like to note that GameSpot's transcript (which I faithfully quoted), which came from Jorgensen's speech at the invitation-only UBS Global Technology Conference, spelled "nickel" two different ways within the same paragraph. I can confirm it's supposed to be "nickel". Meanwhile, "Nickle" tends to be a surname.

UBS is a financial services broker-dealer, by the way. It's not a videogame thing, just a bunch of technology companies at some conference so people will invest in them. Activision Blizzard is there too, which is important to note for a snarky point I'll make shortly. Activision is represented by Amrita Ahuja, who is their Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. So don't feel bad if you've never heard of this conference or its attendees, since it's not meant for the lay-person like, say, E3 would be.

Now for substance, though this pretty much writes itself. 

Linkle's Derivative Doom

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I don't like her at all. Or what she stands for.

When Nintendo first introduced Linkle to us last week for Hyrule Warriors Legends on the 3DS, I was just having trouble figuring out what her name actually was. Lingle (Tingle + Link)? Winkle? Amazingly, my live reaction was,

"Featuring an original character that looks like Zelda."

That's right. When Bill Trinen said, "She [Linkle] looks quite familiar", I thought Linkle resembled Zelda more than Link!

If Zelda were smiling here and not looking down, you'd see a ton of similarities!

I thought Linkle was a parallel version of Zelda dressed up in a Link costume. You know, some sort of Link fangirl. And I guess that's still what she could be. The day after the Direct, I wrote:

"Linkle. Linkle... Linkle...... What a disgrace. Tecmo Koei is shaming the Zelda series with their idiotic "original characters". I think it's to the point of parody now. Maybe it was a parody to begin with, with their other "original characters" in Hyrule Warriors that end up taking a ton of attention? (And are majority female for some reason.) I don't know." 

I still don't know, but there is something I do know now, and it has to do with the reaction to Linkle's existence by professional grievers...

KoopaTV Judges CBS's Democrat Presidential Debate

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The title is a misnomer. They're not running to be your president. They're running to be your tyrant.

We don't want KoopaTV's judgments of these presidential candidates — Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley (how long does he plan to be there?) to get stale. So let me put it up front:

This will be the last Democrat 2016 presidential primary we'll be judging. Oh, I'll still watch them because of my masochist behaviours. But we could keep giving analysis on the events of Thursday's Nintendo Direct and have plenty of material without wasting articles on these D-denominated dimwits.

More importantly, this is all still a coronation of Hillary Clinton. She is the inevitable candidate that no one with an operating brain has love for. At least the other side has an on-going exciting soap opera of moving parts full of drama and intrigue. And at least some candidates on that other side are bringing up issues surrounding the videogame industry, or even directly referenced a specific game. Meanwhile all the Democrats have is a candidate who has a past of trying to ban videogame sales.

And that's a good segue to go into the tyranny they wish upon America! 

Was the November 2015 Nintendo Direct THAT Mind-Blowing?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Ludwig is the rain Cloud over your hype.

Now that it's been a full day and then some, let's look at yesterday's Nintendo Direct more objectively.

There was a LOT discussed and mentioned in yesterday's Nintendo Direct in North America and Europe. Here's a graphic showing... pretty much everything, I hope.

I worked hard on trying to get everything to fit!

 

Ludwig's Nintendo Direct November 12 2015 Live Reactions!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Just me here... but WHAAAT.

We haven't had a Reaction Log since E3 2015. Now, Nintendo is finally having a new Nintendo Direct! Join KoopaTV's staff in our live reactions to the Nintendo Direct today! ...Nevermind it's just Ludwig everyone else is an absentee. Maybe they didn't believe there really could be another one of these in a post-Iwata world. But I think they did fine without him. So here's the embedded video, and read my reactions after the page break!

KoopaTV Judges The Fox Business Network Republican Debaters

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - They're not all the candidates, so Lindsey Graham won't be winning any "cute" awards.

The last time the Republican candidates debated, it was a total waste of time if you wanted to see the candidates talk about solutions to America's problems (that may exacerbate the problems, but at least they're trying) instead of trashing crappy moderators.

Now we're in a debate on mostly economics issues with Fox Business Network, featuring Neil Cavuto as moderator. What that means is that unlike the "buncha jokahs" of CNBC, we're promised a debate on economics done right. And hey, that's mostly what we got.

We got two debates, actually. The "loser" or "undercard" one, and the main one. I'll go over my thoughts on all twelve candidates from those, WITH SUPER CONTEST AWARDS!

Myth: School Takes Up All Your Time!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's a bad excuse. The problem is actually you.

I get told sometimes in my direct-marketing campaigns, "Oh, your site looks really interestin' Mr. Koopa, but I'm too busy with [excuse here] to read it." And that excuse tends to be academics-related, probably because this site attracts mostly teenagers. People just have bad time management skills. Time management is a skill that you have to develop and practise. The good news is that that means it's obtainable, not something you need to be gifted with. People would love to be good at time management — if you're efficient with your time, you get time-savings that you can use as you choose. It's the same with money and cost-savings.

So because I want you to vaporise the notion that you just don't have the time to read KoopaTV 'cause you're so busy doing something else ("I'm in school and I have mid-terms every week until finals!" — seriously, it doesn't matter when I ask, you're always having a mid-term. Back in my day, people had one mid-term and it was in the middle of the term!) I am going to drop some time management knowledge on you. Then maybe you'll have the time to watch the debates on Fox Business Network tonight, or you can watch them on replay later.

The Effect of Fan Influence

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Does the organisation even want your influence?

Some guy named Unknown had this request for me:

"write about ringabel brave and influence of him (and the rest of your fans) on koopatv over the years"

Um... Well while I'm not going to speak to the influence of a specific fan (who apparently has an on-again off-again relationship with KoopaTV, and regularly trash-posts his and my Google+ accounts — though he's free to correct the record in the comments section), I will say that our fans are very important to us. I don't know if I can point to a specific thing, but fans have made a multitude of requested articles happen that wouldn't exist otherwise as you can see from the comments of the requested articles article.

And if you haven't seen Friday's Feedback Form Part I yet, you should. We're actively looking over your responses, and if you give something substantive to discuss we'll even engage in a conversation with you. Isn't that nice?

Unfortunately, not every company is nice. If a company won't even bother to have decent customer service, the likelihood they'll give a crap about what fans want is pretty low. Customer service reps are a company's first line of interaction between the company and the fans. They're out there in their cubicles every day being fed a wealth of information about the needs and troubles of their customers, and if the company doesn't invest in 'em, then the company is losing out on all that and doesn't give a shit.