Nintendo Switch Ends Region Locking; President Trump Begins It

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Going from region-locked games to region-locked people.

One topic not covered in KoopaTV's 1,000+ article history — and just because I don't care about it — is the subject of region-locking. Did you watch the Nintendo Switch Presentation from three weeks ago? They had a line about region-locking no longer being a Nintendo policy starting with the Nintendo Switch, which apparently pleased some people out there.

Nintendo has been region-locking their consoles for a while now, basically meaning that Americans can't play Japanese games imported from Japan on their American systems. Why anyone would want to do this to begin with is beyond me, because I'm not into playing games in foreign languages. I guess the only people who could possibly benefit from the removal of region-locking are Europeans? I dunno, you can tell me what benefits this actually has for the Nintendo Switch.

While Nintendo is liberalising the export of games, the United States of America's new president, President Donald John Trump, is restricting the export of terrorists. More specifically, he signed Executive Order 13769, or Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States. This puts a temporary (few month) ban on nationals of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Yemen entering the United States — until the Trump administration can figure out how to best set-up their vetting processes.

So far, so good. After all, who wants people from Iran coming in? They're monsters who ban Pokémon GO and want to nuke America. Well, the problem is that the Executive Order seems to not have been written properly, and there is a lot of confusion about it.

KoopaTV is now on the GAB Social Network!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - They're either gonna love us, or ignore us. Or maybe despise us. I dunno.

KoopaTV is extending its reach across the world wide web's social media platforms. This time, we've joined up with GAB, a social media service dedicated to free speech. In fact, their “mission is to put people and free speech first.”

That makes KoopaTV quite in-line with GAB's values, so we signed up. It's an invite-only thing, but GAB approved of our application in about a week. They actually said when we signed up that it'd take a week for them to process our request, so they kept their promise. Good! That automatically makes them better than some of those OTHER social media services.

Behold! KoopaTV's GAB account is here at https://gab.ai/KoopaTV !

Screenshot of our GAB account taken this morning. We've had it for a few weeks but wanted to populate it first before advertising it.
If that article about Hideo Kojima looks interesting to you, read it here.

You can classify your post as Politics, Technology, Entertainment, and other things. Most of what we have is Entertainment, because it's literally a game controller icon. You get 300 characters per post, and after putting the url in it's about 240 — it's unlike Twitter which has a set amount of characters taken for every url (about 23). When making a new post, you can't upload an image file, but you can search Giphy to attach a .gif, which is something I haven't done because KoopaTV articles very rarely use .gifs. It'll take the first image it can find, which is the author avatar. So it's just a bunch of my face. 

Well, that's never bad.


If you want a GAB invite, KoopaTV can get you hooked up. Meanwhile, you can hook KoopaTV up with...yourself... and join KoopaTV as a social media manager! Ludwig sure doesn't want to be running all of these accounts by himself, and he sure isn't using them effectively. Have a big impact on KoopaTV's traffic with your knowledge and competence in social media.


KoopaTV has updated the Knowing When We Update article for the first time in a year and a half, so check that out for a comprehensive list of knowing when KoopaTV has a new article!

Hideo Kojima's Toxic Mono-Entertainment Philosophies

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Kojima puts the Hideo in hideous.

When legendary game designer Hideo Kojima isn't awkwardly embracing Geoff Keighley, he's in Tokyo working for himself at Kojima Productions, currently trying to develop Death Stranding, a game we know nothing about other than that it's disturbing and inappropriate, reflecting Kojima's creepy fantasies.

Kojima recently took the time to speak with BBC's Newsbeat gaming reporter Steffan Powell, who asked Hideo Kojima some questions. While Mr. Kojima refused to give any more details about Death Stranding (not that I was wondering, personally), he did provide information on the current status of his philosophy regarding the entire umbrella of the entertainment industry:

“Things such as games and music and novels and movies and all of these things will kind of mesh together into one type of entertainment. [...] The time you have to choose what media or entertainment you experience is dwindling. [...] More and more people are looking at types of media that combine elements together. [...] If we just make a game people are less likely to choose that as something to do. They would rather engage in something that combines different forms of entertainment together. That's where we need to focus our efforts, on this convergence.”

To be fair to Hideo Kojima, he's not saying he WANTS that kind of thing. That's just where he sees the entertainment industry going, and he's going to try to have a first-mover advantage into it.

That said, he probably has that futuristic vision because it confirms what he's believed for years, not because he has any hidden insights or market research that the rest of the world doesn't have. So let's talk about it.

Nostalgia and Video Games: What's Enticing About the Retro World

By BRANDON WILLIAMS - The beauty of nostalgia is knowing a game is still great 20+ years later.

IIf you’re a gamer, then you’re probably familiar with the feeling of nostalgia. Nostalgia is that strong sensation you get when you dust off your old copy of Pokémon Stadium, blow on the cartridge, and recreate your childhood team that helped you beat Gym Leader Castle, and it’s immensely satisfying for most gamers.

Nostalgia is frequently brought up in discussions of classic video games, but it doesn’t have to be delegated to a spot in history. By building upon video games of yesteryear, new productions can capture that classic feeling while still updating the content for the modern age.

Once upon a time, video games were produced with less-than-stellar graphics and considerable technical limitations. And they took the world by storm. While video games have made mountains of “improvements” from the days of Super Mario World, contemporary games could stand to benefit from some reintegration of classic trends.

Don’t believe me? Just think back to the iconic features that made retro games so addictive.

Get ARMS to EVO 2017!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...It'd be funny.

I sound like RawkHawk2010 right now, but it would be funny. ...Lemme back up a bit.

This year's Evolution Championship Series 2017, or EVO 2017, is taking place this July 14–16 in Las Vegas. It's the world's premier fighting game tournament. I've talked about it before. Multiple times. As the one dude on the staff who actually follows two eSports: Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. For the Wii U. They're both gonna be at EVO 2017! Yay.

We're gonna talk about that bottom-right box, ‘cause it's not a game called VOTE.

However, this year, EVO is holding a charity drive contest (all proceeds to Make-a-Wish International): Nine games are nominated to be the COMMUNITY CHOICE game that people will then sign up for and play competitively. The game that raises the most money gets the slot, and the deadline is February 8th.

These games all have established communities and fanbases... and then there's ARMS. 

The Nin Godzilla?!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This could be a new IP... via self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the deep depths of the Technology news of the Wall Street Journal in the business section for today (page B4, Tuesday, January 24, 2017) was a short story about Nintendo! What'd they do now? It was written by a seemingly strange man, the Wall Street Journal's Takashi Mochizuki, who is their technology reporter in Tokyo. It was headlined,

“Possible New Character Is Teased by Nintendo”

(It's an easier read than the above “Ford Invests to Promote Online Auto Loans”.)

What is it? This thing... the Nin Godzilla. Otherwise known as ニンゴジラ. (ニン is the “Nin” in Nintendo's Japanese name, and ゴジラ is “Godzilla” in Japanese.)

Source: An error message at store.nintendo.co.jp
Note that ニンゴジラ doesn't appear, so that's a fanon name.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nintendo's Japanese site's online store is allowing customers to pre-order “semicustomized versions of the Switch console”, and the dinosaur appears as “an error message saying the site is overloaded and can't take orders.” Well, at least that means there is demand for the Nintendo Switch! (Or Nintendo has healthcare.gov-esque server problems.)

So... is it a new IP or something? 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — Wii U, or Switch?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Will you SWITCH your pre-order to a SWITCH?

Contrary to the sub-title, I don't have The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild pre-ordered. The last The Legend of Zelda game I ever pre-ordered was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which has a very similar development history with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Multiple delays for multiple systems. At least the best version of that was the GameCube version, which is the one I pre-ordered. But what's the best version of Breath of the Wild?

On a feature level, the Wii U and Switch versions of Breath of the Wild are the same. On a technical level, the Nintendo Switch version is superior, according to a differences list that Nintendo provided to GameSpot. These technical differences include a higher resolution and crisper sounds on the Switch. The controllers are also obviously different, and I have no idea how the Switch's Joy-Cons compare to the Wii U GamePad since I haven't held the former. (Maybe I should ask Bowser Jr.?)

Unless you're in my situation, figuring out which to get isn't hard.

 

Donald Trump: Inauguration Day

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - “This moment is your moment. It belongs to you.”

Today is the day that has gotten the most politics-related discussion from ordinary, normally non-political people, since Election Day 2016.

Donald J. Trump, who earned KoopaTV's endorsement for president some months ago, is finally inaugurated as the President of the United States. Today. January 20, 2017. It's quite historic. We no longer have to refer to him as president-elect!

Following how we referred to (former) President Barack Hussein Obama throughout KoopaTV's existence, we will now refer to Mr. Trump as...

President Donald John Trump.

KoopaTV is truly fair & balanced, NeoGAF! Unlike you!
Source: That one NeoGAF thread that got Ludwig's account banned.

 
As is typical for inauguration days, President Donald John Trump gave an inauguration speech, embedded immediately below. It was beautiful.

If you would rather read his speech than listen to it, there's a transcript available on Donald Trump's Facebook page, here.

Vortexica did the honours of giving a solo live-reaction of Donald Trump's inauguration speech (and some time before and after), if you wanted to see that play-by-play: 

The Super Mario Odyssey Nintendo Switch Presentation Trailer

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm just saying that Super Mario Odyssey shouldn't be a surprise to you, the KoopaTV reader.

During the super-important presentation that Nintendo gave to us a week ago about the upcoming Nintendo Switch, it became apparent that the console will have two phases for 2017: Launch, featuring The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and the holiday season, featuring Super Mario Odyssey. I have some comments regarding the former, but those are gonna be for next week.

Let's formally get my thoughts down on Super Mario Odyssey. The second time we saw it was the First Look at the Nintendo Switch, back in October when we finally got to stop calling it the Nintendo NX. There was a brief moment where a 3D Mario platformer was shown, and it matches precisely with Super Mario Odyssey. The third time we saw it was the presentation last week, featuring this trailer:

 

Let's talk about that trailer.

KoopaTV's Non-Live Reactions to the Fire Emblem Direct!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Well, I missed it live. Rawk saw it already.

At 5 PM Eastern, Nintendo had a 19-minute Fire Emblem Direct that covered 4 games. Here's the embed of it, but I give my reactions (first-time viewing it, an hour and a half after 5 PM Eastern, though) for the whole thing, so read along with those.

After, Rawk (RawkHawk2010) and I (Nintendork 13 13) discuss it. My Fire Emblem Heroes (that's the name of the mobile game) votes are open to be manipulated by reader suggestions, by the way, as long as they're from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and/or Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.