KoopaTV's March 2016 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Just a quick update on the site.

Did you like KoopaTV this March? If you don't, that'd suck. Anyway, as usual, we had great content this month. So great, that I decided to publish this newsletter talking about how great we were a day before you'd expect it.

It was so great, I could not wait.

You were great too. Take a look at the final standings of the one-month-long Round 7 of the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program: 

1. ShinyGirafarig — 57 points
2. Samantha Lienhard — 32 points
3. Nandin Lopez — 29 points 

ShinyGirafarig is our GRAND (and only) PRIZE WINNER! You get a $10 Nintendo eShop code! Just... not right away. ...I'm still in Brazil, and those aren't widely available here. Please understand.

Okay, back to how great we are. Let's check out my top five most recommended articles from March 2016, in chronological order:

1. Interactive User Interfaces... Helping You LEARN!
2. Paper Mario: The Series' First Trailers
3. Nintendo NY's Grand Reopening
4. Smash Ain't No Joke — But Little Mac Became One
5. The Media's Misreporting of the Wii U's Production Into Next Year

The great thing about KoopaTV is that every article is worth reading. I could've given a totally different set of five articles, and you wouldn't give me a weirder look than usual.

Stay tuned to KoopaTV. Whatever happens tomorrow will surely be awesome, right? Every day is awesome on KoopaTV! (Except Saturdays and Sundays.)

...Ugh, that optimism is making me sick.


While Ludwig is only pretending to be an optimist, if you actually are one, you should share KoopaTV's awesomeness to everyone you know! Spread the greatness.


The optimism wasn't making Ludwig sick, but something else...
Ludwig finally got to escape Brazil and get the eShop code for ShinyGirafarig.
Last month's newsletter is accessible here. It was published on the first of March.
Eventually, Ludwig got better and the rest of April happened. Here is its review newsletter.
For last year's March newsletter, click here. 
For next year's March newsletter, click here.

All CAPTURE THE CONFEDERATE FLAG Voice Acting, Sound Effects, PLUS...!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...Plus the final boss music. I promised it.

It has been a great three months on the trail, promoting KoopaTV's latest videogame, Capture the Confederate Flag. It's received many accolades from people, including KoopaTV's Best PC Game 2015 and Best New Character 2015. I heard it's fun, too.

I think enough time has passed that it's safe to dump spoiler-laden content onto you.

If you're comfortable with that, then keep going with the article. (I put the click here for more break BEFORE video embeds if you're viewing this article without being directly linked to it!)

If you're not, play the game by clicking on the first hyperlink in this article.

There is nearly NINE MINUTES of content here. That's much higher than any of our other games!

SPLATFESTS! Wins, Popularity, and Region Differences

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The rights of the minority. (Featuring: Excel PivotCharts and graphs!)

There is widespread frustration among the North American Splatoon community over Splatfest. KoopaTV readers read my detailed, reasoned rationale for my team picks for each North American Splatfest (in 2015, that was rated to be the best article series on the site — and it's still continuing into 2016). However, not everyone chooses their team decisions based on principle, or based on which team they genuinely like the most. There is a growing group of players that try to “meta-game” Splatfest: Choose the team that is most likely to win. How do they decide which team will most likely win?

In North America, there appears to be a pattern where the winning team has low popularity, and a high win rate. Meaning, choose the less popular team. More astute players believe that most of Splatoon's player base in North America are children, and children are more likely to pick a certain team. Therefore, pick the other team, for children are less skilled.

Central to this is the calculation for which team wins: Currently, it is Score =  Popularity% + (Win% * 6). The Win multiplayer was originally 2, then it moved to 4. For most of Splatfest history, it has been the current 6. This basically makes the winner of Splatfest to be the team that wins the most, since Popularity is basically rendered useless. Popularity is little more than a very interesting reported statistic — and I'm glad it's reported. The more statistics we know, the better!

Of course, I'm a stats nerd.

The increasingly important role for Wins stemmed from the massive anger Team Cats had against Team Dogs in the very first Splatfest, where Team Cats had 51% wins but only 38% Popularity. The Team Cats team said that 2% difference (51–49) would be very significant and that, given the number of matches, Cats must've done better than Dogs by thousands of matches. We all expected most Splatfests would be determined by Popularity since we thought the wins would be 50% each.

It turns out that if Team Cats actually won, it would be one of the most under-performing win rates of any winning team in any region. That makes Team Dogs in the bottom five for win rate. Look at this:

Gaming on a Budget on the eShop

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - A mix of knowing the sales, and of good ol' conservatism. And finance knowledge.

I was given a really interesting request by Nandin Lopez. In effect, it's asking how to conserve your budget for the Nintendo eShop, what to get, and how to resist ruining your allotted money spend. 

He gave an example of saving money in his eShop account for the upcoming, very soon release of a localised MOTHER 3. But suddenly, you can buy Pokémon Blue on the eShop! What do you do? Spend the money you want to save for MOTHER 3? Or keep the money in your account just so you can be ready for MOTHER 3?

If you were me, you wouldn't have this problem because you would have a bank account and would use your debit card to refill your Nintendo eShop balance whenever you want or need to. I only buy Nintendo eShop card codes just to give away as KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program prizes — your last opportunity to WIN a $10 Nintendo eShop code ends in two days as of publishing, by the way.

There is a concept within finance (boring, I know) called the “time value of money”. Basically, it's the idea that a dollar is worth more in the present than in the future. There's a lot of reasons for this, such as the general inflationary trend of dollars (you will have less purchasing power as time goes on) and that the earlier you invest your money, the more times it can compound with interest (if you deposit $100 for 20 years and it grows at 2% interest every year, you get more money than if you waited 5 years, then deposited that $100 for 15 years to grow at 2% interest annually).

You're screwing yourself $14 by doing nothing for 5 years. Loser.
You too can play around — with the Future Value Calculator!

The purchasing power part may not potentially apply here, depending on your relationship to your eShop account. Why? 

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.

Pokémon GO Having You GO to museums and stuff

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Well, now you know what the GO is for. GO outside!

While we can't seem to rely on the mainstream media or alternative media sources for accurate news, let's focus on something that a videogame company itself has unveiled. What better than the new news about the smartphone-exclusive augmented reality game Pokémon GO? This comes from The Pokémon Company International. Surely they know what they're talking about.

First of all, the Pokémon that you can encounter are location-based. Water Pokémon will be near bodies of water, for example. I can only assume you'll have to screw up an airplane by putting your phone off of airplane mode in order to have even a chance to find Rayquaza or Altaria. You may have to become an astronaut to find wild Clefairy or Lunatone. I wonder if Global Warming will wipe out the wild Beartic? Better visit the North Pole quick — the Polar ice cap was supposed to melt two years ago.

Anyway, there are PokéShops “located at interesting places, such as public art installations, historical markers, and monuments, where you can collect more Poké Balls and other items.” So if you live in the middle of nowhere with nothing interesting, how will you be able to “collect” anything? (Shouldn't the proper word be “purchase” if it's a shop?)

Don't worry, the game will have in-app purchases that I'm sure will take care of all your geographically-disadvantaged needs!

The Media's Misreporting of the Wii U's Production Into Next Year

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - A destructive exercise by the media.

All over the media yesterday was this story: JAPANESE FINANCIAL PUBLISHER NIKKEI REPORTS NINTENDO TO STOP WII U PRODUCTION THIS YEAR. It spread not only through the gaming media, but also the mainstream media. No one waited for Nintendo to give a response to this rumour, or as Reuters put it,

“Nintendo could not immediately be reached for comment.” 

That's journalism-speak for “We're going to make up whatever we want, and if the Nintendo press person is on their lunch break or done with their job for the day when we phone call them, then we'll publish the story.” It's the tactic used by sleaze-balls. (If you look for its use on KoopaTV, you won't find it, because we actually have some semblance of integrity.)

Why is it sleazy? Because not all of those media outlets that reported the Nikkei report passed on Nintendo's response made hours later: 

Team Koopa's Rio Training Is Going Well!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm writing this from Brazil!

Looks like Belgium is falling apart. Fortunately, I'm in another country that begins with "b": Brazil. Specifically, Rio de Janeiro. I said before we're going to Rio, now we're there. Who is "we"? Team Koopa, representing Koopa Kingdom! We're going to win all of the awards! (Even if we don't have players participating in every sport... King Bowser tells me that we'll get the other medals somehow via other means.)

So we're here getting the lay of the land for training. There's a companion game to our training, Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for the Nintendo 3DS. I don't recommend it. I mean, it's so bad that even though I'm a playable character in it, I'm not actually going to buy it. Apparently it's really a demo for the Wii U version coming out June 24, 2016, which will mark Team Koopa's second training session when we go back to Rio de Janeiro a lot closer to the actual 2016 Olympics date in August 2016.

But let me tell you, I'm doing well here at table tennis.

I beat Luigi and then some freaky pink guy!
...It's probably infected with the Zika virus.
(Screenshot from NNID DMan-U1).

If there's one thing I'll compliment the 3DS version for, it's the "Road to Rio" story mode. Well, it's pretty bad, but there's some cool stuff besides implying King Dad is a horrible person who steals medals and works with Dr. Eggman.

Shigeru Miyamoto's Designs Promote Eating Disorders

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The design of Wii Fit is dangerous to people's health.

Eating disorders and body image perceptions are huge problems in the United States. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders gives a 2011 source that up to 30 million Americans have an eating disorder, which is probably under-reported. Very big problem.

Shigeru Miyamoto is not helping that issue. In fact, he encouraged it. Normally, game designers and eating disorders aren't a connected thing. But Shigeru Miyamoto is no ordinary game designer. He was behind Nintendo's Wii Fit, a game designed to get you and your family to weigh yourself. Every single day. Here's a quote of Miyamoto's basic philosophy regarding Wii Fit's vision:

“But I’m sure it would be fun for people to measure their weight in the living room with the whole family, take data every day and check the graphs, then maybe poke fun at Dad who’s put on a little weight, or congratulate Mom on her diet.” 

Shigeru Miyamoto wants this Wii Balance Board to ruin your life.

Miyamoto believed it would be fun to measure your weight every day on the Wii Balance Board. And hey, that does sound kind of fun if you don't think about what you're actually doing. Even Miyamoto has some self-awareness and thinks it might be extreme, but he goes ahead anyway:

“I know this may sound a bit extreme, but measuring your weight is fun, and there are ways to keep fit when thinking along those lines."

Smash Ain't No Joke — But Little Mac Became One

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - There's more to Little Mac than being a For Glory meme.

It breaks my heart that Little Mac, a character that I was more hyped for to finally join Super Smash Bros. 4 than even myself, has had a net drop in reputation since he got in.

Don't get me wrong: I still love Little Mac (...not romantically, o-of course!). But I get the feeling he's widely disrespected by most other people, especially if they know him from Super Smash Bros. 4. 

Little Mac was very polarising when Super Smash Bros. For 3DS came out. To most players (who play casually), he's overpowered. To people who know what they're doing, Little Mac was pretty bad. This became more apparent in Super Smash Bros. For Wii U when folks could play with real controllers. There's also the fact that he got nerfed early on: His forward-tilt range got reduced, as did how far Jolt Haymaker went in the air, which stunted his recovery.

Now, he's recognised as a terrible character by the majority of people. Casuals believe all Little Mac does is Jolt Haymaker off the ledge, and competitive experts put Mac as one of the worst characters in the game.

The first tier list, pre-Bayonetta & Corrin.
Little Mac is very low, though the absolutely lowest non-Jigglypuff characters got buffed in 1.1.5.

It's a shame. It shouldn't be this way. A lot of people consider Cloud to be Little Mac done right — with Little Mac fallen to the wayside. I'd argue... we shouldn't treat Little Mac this way. Here's why.