A Washed Up Dictator Wants His Fair Share

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Will he get it?

Manuel Noriega: Dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989. You know, when you're a dictator, you get a lot of perks. You get used to all the power. Well, six years isn't a heckuva lot. For example, even though it seems like President Barack Hussein Obama has been in office forever, he's been around for less than that.

Well, the dude has been reduced to suing Activision for money. He's serving two basically consecutive twenty-year prison sentences for being a jerk in Panama. And for shipping tons of cocaine to America.

I feel like I've seen this photo somewhere. ...Oh, don't mind me.

I guess drugs are getting really expensive in jail that he has to hire a law firm ("Girardi & Keese") to extort a bunch of money. Let's see what his complaint is.

Subsidies and Tax Credits

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The videogame industry loves their tax breaks...

Disclaimer: What you're about to read is not going to be an ideology specific to the videogame industry, but my broader ideological perspective on the issue of the government granting subsidies and tax credits to businesses/industries.

With that out of the way, it's no secret that our beloved videogame industries receives a ton of benefits from governments. The discussion among the general populace about that started with this David Kocieniewski  New York Times article (I'm snickering) from 2011, and then with the whole Curt Schillings 38 Studios debacle. (For some reason, I haven't talked about said debacle yet on KoopaTV. I'm sure there's a reason I'm not taking such low-hanging fruit...?)

That David whatshisface article uses Electronic Arts as the go-to example of how the videogame industry hires lobbyists to negotiate for tax credits and subsidies on their bottom lines. For those who don't know, lobbying is one of the best uses of corporate money from a return-on-investment perspective.

Chrom Has Been FIRED From KoopaTV!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The Crest of Flame and the Meaning of Truth.

We have an announcement to make. First, watch this trailer if you have not already:

Now then. We would like to announce that KoopaTV staff member YoshiRider123 has been fired. YoshiRider123 is otherwise known as "Chrom" on the once-popular-but-now-dying Nintendo forum, NSider2, the fan-made sequel to Nintendo of America's official Nintendo NSider Forums. We cannot accept such a pathetic (based on the trailer) guy like that on our staff.

Look at him. Just pitiful.

So it turns out that KoopaTV and Sakurai had our trailers mixed up. You see, we've been planning to fire Chrom for a while now. Literally.

The fire from Captain Falcon's fist was our method of execution. It was either that, or Ike's new blue flames.

And Sakurai, all along, was planning to announce George Zimmerman in Super Smash Bros. 4. Something happened to that. I guess they were switched at the last minute. Some say Monolith Soft broke into Namco and did that. Others think something else. That's not the point here.

Zimmerman: A Free Man For A Year

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - But is he really free?

It has been one year since George Zimmerman could rest from the most traumatic period of his life: Being put on trial for a murder of a teenager with the entire nation watching you. With the help of his Ace Attorneys, he managed to secure the just "Not Guilty" verdict.

Although if it were up to Judge Debra Nelson, it would be a guilty verdict.

Such a thing happens every day across the United States of America. So why are we singularly obsessed over this one trial? Well, as we've written many times before ("Zimmerman" has now been name-dropped in 32 KoopaTV articles, and has been the primary subject of... [one, two, three, four, five, six being what was linked in the opening paragraph] seven articles, including this one), not every person on trial in America has a huge media frenzy on them. Not every trial polarizes America, and not every trial has such a wild cast of amusing characters. Most trials are actually pretty boring.

Not this one.

We at KoopaTV watched the trial as it was being live-streamed by various media outlets. It included hilarious moments like the following compiled by KoopaTV contributor Rawk:

Beware Mario The Goomba Groper

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - #YesAllGoombas

There's something in the air... and it feels like fear...
There's something in the night... and it seems like terror...
There's someone in your bed... and it looks like you...

(Picture a bigger bed.)

Life will be simpler now... the only thing missing...

Will be you.

Mighty Numbers For Voice-Acting

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Also, I just realized that when Mighty No. 9 asked for $900,000 originally, it was a pun.

One day, I'm going to have a bigger, general discussion article on voice-acting in videogames.

Until then, Comcept, famous for being the developers of Mighty No. 9, the Mega Man-inspired sidescroller coming out on every system in 2015 — and we happened to have discussed it here, is asking for another $100,000 in a new Kickstarter funding campaign. The stretch goal (by the way, there aren't any real goals, just stretch ones) is $100,000 for English voice-acting. That's the only goal we know of so far.

Oh, but apparently as of like two days ago that's now $200,000 for English and Japanese voice-acting. So if this isn't funded, I guess all the characters are just gonna be mute!

Replaced the image with a permanent one. Just over $9,000!

The Folly of Miiverse War

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Their goal isn't success.

Tomorrow, there will be a conflict on Miiverse. Heard of it? ...No? That might be part of the problem. When your best form of communication are trailers like these, you might have an issue:

(I don't recommend you watch that, by the way.) When you're declaring war or trying to do any sort of movement against something, you want to have a goal. You need a win condition. You need a retreat condition, and you need strategy and tactics. You need a purpose. The organizers, if you can call them that, of the Miiverse "war" do not understand these basic principles. I do. So I'll try to do some last-minute advising. Probably a bit worse of a commitment than the military advisers President Barack Hussein Obama is sending over to Iraq, but whatever. 

Speaking of Iraq, President George W. Bush didn't understand how to execute a war, either. His father also didn't, despite the spectacular glory we had in Desert Storm. So don't feel bad Miiverse guys! You're just as bad as the warmonger presidents we've had since Vietnam, who were also terrible!

Nintendo Rocking EVO 2014!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Daddy finally stopped smashing me into things and instead is playing Smash with me.

For this year's EVO 2014 tournament (that's the really big fighting game tournament every year) take a look at the sponsors list. You see a bunch of dudes. You also see Nintendo's logo. What does this mean? Well, Nintendo is sponsoring EVO 2014.

One of twenty.

"Big deal." You might say. Then consider that Nintendo has never sponsored a competitive videogame tournament they've never hosted before. You got the Video Game Championships for the Pokémon series (those just happened), and some competitive stuff in the early days when we had the Nintendo World Championships. No relation to the store. That's the competition famous for having those super-rare cartridges. That's pretty much it.

Vocal Performance of The Shell-Spangled Banner!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - By popular request.

Since people actually wanted me to sing The Shell-Spangled Banner from last week's article instead of it just staying written and never referenced again like I originally intended, I... did their request. Since we actually fulfill requests, you know. And have a whole section to the site dedicated to submitting them.

Behold:

The Shell-Spangled Banner

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Celebrating our independence.

It is about time that KoopaTV get some sort of theme song. And... today, that still won't happen. 'cause we're not going to use this in the future.

According to Iggy and Lemmy Koopa, the Koopa Kingdom pledge of allegiance is as follows:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Lands of Dinosaur World.
And to the repulsiveness for which he stands,
One Koopa underground, reprehensible,
With lizards and Goombas for all!"

But since today just happens to be July 4, we should recite the KoopaTV version of the Star-Spangled Banner, shouldn't we? Well, here we go.

The Shell-Spangled Banner itself.