JonTron and Yooka-Laylee: The Ends Versus The Means

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - What do we think of this moral dilemma?
[Update 3/25/2017: There's a video version of this article at the bottom.]

And on one corner, we have the forces of JonTron and the “alt-right”! And on the other corner, there is the game developer Playtonic and the radical leftist videogame board, NeoGAF!

The current controversy of the week is this: Popular YouTuber JonTron, who has three million subscribers on YouTube (it's unknown how many of them are actually active), said really dumb/questionable/noble-but-poorly-articulated things in a political debate about culture, immigration, and race, with some left-wing guy. The substance of that issue doesn't matter to this discussion, but the end result is that JonTron, who is a (bad) entertainer, tried pretending like he's some kind of political thinker and it backfired. As a result, it divided his fanbase up.

This article isn't about YouTuber drama, because no one on this site cares about that garbage. What does matter is that KoopaTV's staffers have been warning about how JonTron is bad news in the industry, with particular interest on his voice-actor role for Playtonic (made up of former Rare Ltd. developers)'s Kickstarted game, Yooka-Laylee, which releases this April 11. Here are some prescient Rawk quotes from back in June of 2016:

Is Yooka-Laylee's Message Out Of Tune?

By RAWKHAWK2010 - Too much g-string.

First of all, I'm proud of that subtitle.

Second of all, the past month or so has been the bee's tits when it comes to Yooka-Laylee news. Articles...screenshots...and just this week we got our first real trailer -- a broad showing of the game's mechanics for anyone who hasn't been following.

Overall, the game looks good. Good gameplay, good graphics, good music, good dudes, good everything. It looks gooder than Banjo-Kazooie. It looks waaaaay gooder than insipid slog Banjo-Tooie. And you better believe that it looks astronomically gooder than that hunk-of-junk Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

Conkers Don't Grow On Trees!

By RAWKHAWK2010 - ...figuratively speaking.

Y'all know what time it is? I'll tell you -- it's time to get Conk'd! Because today, for the first time in ten years, Conker T. Squirrel is getting another game. And not just a remake ala Conker: Live & Reloaded, but a canonical sequel and the third major chapter of the overarching Conker story following Conker's Pocket Tales and Conker's Bad Fur Day.

Enter Conker's Big Reunion, developed by Team Dakota via their game-creator tool Project Spark, which tells what exactly has become of Conker in the years since.

He's back. (Vrrrrm vrrrm!)

A More Constructive Banjo

By RAWKHAWK2010 - Get with the times, Banjo fans.

As I mentioned in my #IStandWithPhils article, we at KoopaTV have a healthy respect for a man by the name of Phil Spencer. Not just any man by the name of Phil Spencer (since there are at least two), but the recently-appointed new Head of Xbox who has made an earnest effort to get Rare and its IPs back on the right track. And the same Phil Spencer who, just last month, expressed his desire (or unusually-enthusiastic compliance) of seeing everyone's favorite hillbilly bear in Smash.

#IStandWithPhil

Of course, this immediately opened up the #BanjoForSmash floodgates since the Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot was announced just two days prior. And with Conker's Big Reunion having shown the world that it's never too late for a Rare character to resurface, this development been viewed by many as a dream-already-come-true, where they will at long last be reunited with the classic Banjo of their childhood.

...But wait a minute, classic Banjo? Huh?

When Kickstarters Get Kicked In The Ass (Part 4)

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It turns out that Yooka-Laylee is a mess in every way.

This was supposed to be the reliable Kickstarter project with minimal risks and excellent rewards: Take the creative talent that used to work at Rare Ltd., put them in a company of their own creation in Playtonic, and let them loose to make a spiritual sequel of Banjo-Kazooie to bring back 3D platforming!

Funded by an EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL Kickstarter, Yooka-Laylee was extremely promising. As recently as mid-2016, KoopaTV staffer and Yooka-Laylee backer (he's not writing this article because he's lazy that's a conflict-of-interest) RawkHawk2010 sung Yooka-Laylee's praises based on screenshots and videos:

“Overall, the game looks good. Good gameplay, good graphics, good music, good dudes, good everything. It looks gooder than Banjo-Kazooie. It looks waaaaay gooder than insipid slog Banjo-Tooie.”

Yooka-Laylee was supposed to be at least be good. It has now released on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on April 11, 2017 to the world. But... according to majority opinion ranging across the reviewing spectrum (critics and users alike), Yooka-Laylee doesn't reach good-status.

KoopaTV's Live Reactions to the Splatoon Direct!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Times for the Global Testfire included at the bottom.

Splatoon is personally my most anticipated game of 2015, so I'm totally pumped for the Nintendo Direct based on it!

We live-reacted to it. I'm Nintendork 13 13, RawkHawk2010 is RawkHawk2010, and Vortexica is breezinabout.

You can watch the whole Direct here while reading along with our reactions (pre-log banter ends at 10 AM):

 

Yooka-Laylee isn't Half-Bad...or is it?

By RAWKHAWK2010 - And is this seriously KoopaTV's seventh Yooka-Laylee article?

As someone who weathered the Yooka-Delaylee storm so that I could experience the game on Nintendo Switch, I'm at last prepared to provide my thoughts. Do I really want to? Well, not really. Reviews aren't really thing. It's why my Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney "review" is a gaggle of Miiverse screen captures. It's why my Paper Mario: Color Splash review hasn't happened and never will. But in this case...I suppose I must oblige:

It's me! (Six paces above "Ray and the Family Dickinson".)

And with that,

Rawk's Review of Yooka-Laylee:

KoopaTV's Electronic Arts E3 2015 Conference Live Reactions

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Started off really well. ...Then sports...

It is absolutely no secret that KoopaTV has great displeasure for Electronic Arts. Still, we're objective people, right? If they have a good conference, then we'll acknowledge it!

Who are "we"? I'm Nintendork 13 13, RawkHawk2010 is RawkHawk2010, and Vortexica is breezinabout. We're gonna give you screenshots and live-reactions to everything that EA had to show for us!

KoopaTV's Ubisoft E3 2018 Conference Live Reactions

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Polarising French guys.

We never know quite what to expect when we're watching an Ubisoft E3 conference. They're the most volatile. It's very exciting and dynamic to spectate, and we're going to go through this 92 minute journey with you.

In this log we still have me, we still have Rawk, that Mariosun90 dude who isn't even our staff is here as Ryu, and Wendy took some time from her busy beauty nap to talk as well!

As is a common theme, the KoopaTV E3 Weeks 2018 Schedule is a great page to keep track of the flurry of content.

Playtonic's Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter: Undisguised Success?!

By RAWKHAWK2010 - Mayday! Mayday! They're running out of stretch goals!

April showers bring May flowers, as the saying goes. The past month has been filled with earthquakes, riots, Tax Day, and all manners of other catastrophe, but May has arrived and it seems to be off to a pretty good start. One marked by the full reveal of Playtonic Games' Yooka-Laylee.

Meet Yooka and Laylee!
(In no way related to failed homework project "Ukulele Pinball", or at least we hope not.)

A Memorial for The Law, Which is Dead

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The rule of law is dead on Earth.

I had three ideas for this year's Memorial Day article: This, something about the Fire Emblem series, or something about Vortexica. The latter seems... inappropriate and premature, even given recent circumstances. The middle is a bit redundant given Memorial Day 2016 (see the bottom of this article for a list of our previous Memorial Day articles), and I don't even think it's dead given the hope for Fire Emblem on the Nintendo Switch.

So, we're gonna get political (and/or Ace Attorney) again and just say the whole concept of the law is dead. My basis for this claim is what we said in a KoopaTV article in July of 2016: Hillary Clinton: The Dark Age of the Law.

The entire point of that article was making the claim that the law was dead due to its inequitable application between people like Hillary Clinton, and people like... everyone else. I wrote that,

“The man who will bring us out of these dark ages and into an era of brilliant golden light [is] [...] Donald Trump.”

WELL. We've had President Donald John Trump for over four months now. Is the law still in a dark age? What of Hillary Clinton?

This reoccurring music embed, along with, you know, the title of the article, should let you know my thoughts into the matter: 

#IStandWithPhils

By RAWKHAWK2010 - A simple philosophy.

A few weeks ago, something happened called CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). Ludwig would know more about that than me, but I do know Phil Robertson was there, and Phil Robertson is an alright dude. He knows the value of Southern culture -- not the yuppie, carpetbag culture you're probably familiar with (aka indoor swimming pools, dog sled racing, and not waving at neighbors), but something with a little more heart. One that embodies things like faith, family, and grocery chains with silly names. (That first thing I could take or leave, but the third gets me more excited than fired ex-staffer YoshiRider123 at the eShop update screen.)

Duck Dynasty 3DS may be on eShop, but good ol' Southern values can't be bought!

Why I Don't Watch YouTube Personalities

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Well, I can only speak for myself... but it's for your benefit.

If ya have read select previous KoopaTV articles, you might get the impression we got something against YouTube personalities. And you'd be right.

Whether it was Rawk (RIP) with his very selective war against JonTron, or me repeatedly deeming YouTubers as “talentless” or comparing them to slaveowners (which is not a compliment given KoopaTV's slew of pro-Confederacy articles — not to mention our KoopaTV-exclusive game Capture the Confederate Flag), we got a distinct anti-YouTuber attitude here. I mean, I even went and wrote an article more-or-less agreeing with Jimmy Kimmel about how lame YouTube Gaming is. There's nothing inherent about a video-sharing platform that results in losers rising to the top, but that's apparently the case and what's happened.

So when people ask me “What YouTubers do you watch?” — and multiple people have asked me that, because it's culturally a standard thing to follow YouTubers like it is to drink coffee and/or tea — and I respond “None”, I get weird stares or emoticons. And it's not just not watching “gamers” on YouTube — I don't watch people in general.

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's March 2017 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The Nintendo Switch has only been out for a month?

It seems like the Nintendo Switch has been with us for a long time now, right? But it's only been a month.

Well, it hasn't been with me at all since I don't have one, but at least one dude on the staff does. Regardless of us being the worst Nintendo site in the world for not going into a huge amount of depth of every aspect of Nintendo's new hardware release, we're still a fantastic website if you're not actually looking for that. Here's a few examples why:

Top 3 Recommended Articles of March 2017

Here are my top three recommended articles from the previous month, in chronological order. You'll want to read these... and the other ten articles published in March, because they're all worth reading.

1. Console Launch? On a School Day? It’s More Likely Than You Think!
2. The CIA's Assassination Attempt Against Waluigi
3. JonTron and Yooka-Laylee: The Ends Versus The Means