A New Mario Movie by the Makers of MINIONS?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Also known as Illumination Entertainment.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which cites an anonymous source because people aren't supposed to know about this, Nintendo and Universal are “close to an agreement” on Nintendo licensing the Super Mario Bros. IP to the guys who made Minions, Illumination Entertainment. This would follow Nintendo's licensing agreement for those Universal theme parks.

Now, keep in mind that two and three-quarters years ago, the Wall Street Journal also reported that Nintendo had agreed to have a live-action The Legend of Zelda series on Netflix. We never heard about that ever again.

Left: Front page of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Business & Finance section. (Story below-the-fold.)
Right: Second page, continuation of the front-page story. (Still below-the-fold.) Features Cappy.

That said, this makes sense with what was earlier reported a year ago about Nintendo being interested in going back to movies. “Full-fledged filmmaking” was the choice quote. Everything in that article has pretty much come true, according to this Wall Street Journal report, down to Creative Fellow Shigeru Miyamoto being name-dropped as someone who is working very closely with the negotiations and will be working closely as a movie producer.

Excellent. 

One note: Just because the studio doing the movie is behind those rotten Minions, doesn't mean that every movie they will ever produce will be like that. Movie studios can be versatile. But, if they are going to be in that style, at least hopefully that crap stays in the theatre and not in the games. ...But if Illumination IS a crappy studio (why would Nintendo sign to work with them, then?), then Shigeru Miyamoto will have to micro-manage them even closer than he would a competent group. That means other people will do the actual gaming stuff, and that means more Super Mario Odyssey and less Paper Mario: Sticker Star.


Ludwig could have made this article substantially longer, but he doesn't want to inflate this article with filler content like the Wall Street Journal's authors did with their article. That article is mostly about how Hollywood has been trying to get videogame intellectual property deals and how those are a hot thing for them, even though Hollywood films based on games tend to suck.


Hollywood doesn't understand gaming in general, which is how Pixels was made.
This story was officially confirmed by Nintendo.

CAPCOM Executives Know Ace Attorney Exists?! Coming To Nintendo Switch?!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Ace Attorney sees the C-Suite and says, “See? Sweet!”

Let's get right to it. The legendary Ace Attorney series from CAPCOM — no stranger to publicity on this site — will be making its way to the Nintendo Switch within a year or so from now. How do I know? A CAPCOM executive said so in Japanese, and people say it translates to this outcome. Not just any CAPCOM executive, however, but Haruhito Tsujimoto, the President and Chief Operating Officer of CAPCOM. (He's also the son of the founder and CEO.) Chief Operating Officers are high-up there in the chain of command. They're basically the second-in-command in terms of the stuff we care about. They tend to be very high-level and not deep in details.

The high level for CAPCOM is to release Monster Hunter often, and in as many places as possible. So they are making this Monster Hunter: World game and they showed it at Sony's E3 2017. Then we thought it would appear at Nintendo's E3 2017, but instead it was Mario and Cappy capturing a T-Rex. Through all of this, CAPCOM hasn't really done much for the Nintendo Switch, sticking to the Nintendo 3DS, like with Monster Hunter Stories recently and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney next week.

That looks to change, and in the most astounding confirmation. I mean, think about it. 

Mirror Is The Most Popular Kirby Copy Ability? Round 2!?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Are my tastes in Kirby's copy abilities more mainstream than I anticipated...?

Exactly two months ago, we told you about the Kirby Battle Royale: Kirby Copy Ability poll that was hosted by Nintendo. It lasted for a few weeks, I voted every day for Mirror, and that's all we heard. Yippee, 25th anniversary.

Now we know the results... and Mirror won! Mirror will now be added to Kirby Battle Royale as a copy ability, and there is a really underwhelming wallpaper you can download to your computer or smartphone.

This is kind of lame. It's my current wallpaper, though, because I was using my previous one (Pokémon 20th anniversary Mythical Pokémon) for way too long.

Here are the top ten abilities per the poll:

1. Mirror
2. Yo-Yo
3. Sleep
4. UFO
5. Plasma 

And then in an unknown order there are the Wing, Cook, Missile, Sword, and Suplex abilities for spots 6 to 10.

But wait... there's MORE! There's a ROUND 2! A FINAL VOTE!

Sci-Fi Vs. Fantasy: Genre Preference Splatfest!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I support the fantastic option.

Check Splatoon 2's Inkopolis Square right now — a new Splatfest has opened for voting! Yeah, Nintendo doesn't want you to abandon Splatoon 2 just because a new must-have game got released a few weeks ago. Depending on how you vote for this Splatfest, you can support said game!

What is it? On one side, we got Team Science Fiction lead by Pearl! And on the other side, there is Team Fantasy lead by Marina! 

The battle of the genres: Science Fiction versus Fantasy!

Let me tell you straight-away: I'm supporting Team Fantasy in this article and for the Splatfest. I don't trust something that is written as “Science Fiction” but is abbreviated as “sci-fi”. Where the hell did that hyphen come from?

I also see this Splatfest as a rematch between Art vs. Science, which is the Splatoon Splatfest where I supported Team Art. I'm not saying that science and science-fiction; or art and fantasy are exactly the same, but I'm pretty sure that you should get, like, at least 90% of the same people on each team. It's basically, “Okay, Art is legally considered to be better than Science. So, what kind of art would Team Art and Team Science make?”

Don't Tread On Me? Don't #MeToo Treddon!

By RAWKHAWK2010 - Let's examine abuse properly.

Some have expressed concern with the #MeToo campaign and how it ignores due process. Did the sexual harassment really happen? Did the victim really not express consent to it? Did Paper Mario really need a story? Usually no one really knows.

That said, here's an easily-understood example of what's definitely harassment vs. what's definitely not:

5 Commentaries to 5 Nintendo's Six-Month Financial Results (Term Ending March 2018) Briefing Questions

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I could talk about all fourteen, but I do intend to sleep tonight.

It is that very delightful time of year again: Nintendo is halfway through their fiscal year, and Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima fielded questions from the always unintentionally-hilarious investors and analysts. I'll give my analysis on FIVE of the most interesting of the fourteen questions.

There are some points I need to make based on the other bits of investor relations information, so we can all be on the same page as the funny investors. First, Nintendo announced that they are revising their forecast of planning to sell 10 million Nintendo Switch units from April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018 to... 14 million Nintendo Switch units! That means they will plan to have sold almost 17 million Nintendo Switch consoles by the end of March 2018, which will surpass the lifetime sales of the Wii U.

Second, ARMS is the worst-selling first-party Nintendo title on the Nintendo Switch, at 1.35 million units. This trails 1-2 Switch, which has 1.37 million units... which seriously trails Splatoon 2 at 3.61 million units. Third, there are no longer more copies of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sold (4.70 million units) than there are Nintendo Switch hardware sold (7.63 million units).

Then there was Tatsumi Kimishima's financial briefing/presentation. Lots of topics there, including big emphasis on mobile. However, the most interesting part for me was this pair of charts:

I want to know a regional breakdown for the Docked vs. Undocked chart, and I want to know what's up with that 3% N/A gender breakdown in the Usage by Household chart.
I'm one of those 20% of people who only play Docked.

With all of that background in mind, let's go into the investor questions! Spoiler alert: The investors didn't ask or care about Miiverse, the Wii U (which was considered That Which Must Not Be Named), or even the 3DS. It was all Nintendo Switch and mobile trash for them. That should put things into perspective and should give rationale for why Nintendo shut down Miiverse.

Nintendo requests that I hyperlink to the Q&A document they have, which sounds like a good idea even if they didn't ask. 

Miiverse Has Now Been Discontinued — Stories From NNID PrinceOfKoopas

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Looking for NNID PrinceOfKoopas? He writes here.

After months of apocalyptic atmosphere, Nintendo's second major attempt at an online forum has been discontinued. No more Miiverse.

I spent my past weekend taking screenshots of the many times we have embedded a Miiverse post on KoopaTV, and then replacing the embed with that image, to make sure KoopaTV's own functionality isn't irreparably damaged. Through those very manual efforts I once again became quite cognizant of the role that Miiverse has played on KoopaTV, having co-existed alongside KoopaTV throughout our own lifespan. Now we will out-survive Nintendo's social service.

It's not just content and posts that we've used on many KoopaTV articles, including as recently as Monday's. It's also not just having a handle on how real Nintendo fans feel about what's going on — the community pulse. But, quite frankly, a lot of KoopaTV's best readers came from Miiverse and were smart enough to get from there to here. Let's hope any Mii who wants more of me can figure out to come here. And there should be a lot of people, because I'm pretty damn popular on Miiverse for someone who can't draw and doesn't shit-post. I'll get to my own Miiverse stuff at the end, but you're probably more interested about how this affects you.

KoopaTV's Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Direct Non-Live Reactions

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Can we really feel Xenoblade Chronicles 2, or are we submersed in apathy?

Today at 9 AM Eastern Nintendo showcased a ~17-minute Nintendo Direct exclusively on Xenoblade Chronicles 2. No one was able to attend the live viewing of it, but fortunately for us (and you, so you can follow along), video-on-demand exists. Rawk, Vortexica, and myself all non-live reacted to this Direct!

Daylight Savings Time Withdraws. Abolish It Permanently, President Trump!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - We're interrupting our regular anti-DST cadence to bring this special interview.

Since 2015, KoopaTV has written an article every March bashing Daylight Savings Time, accompanied by a request for it to be abolished. For this year's (2017) article, we wrote directly to President Donald John Trump calling for him to abolish Daylight Savings Time in the name of Making America Great Again.

He never replied. It's been almost eight months now.

Why do I expect a reply? Well, aside from the fact that I AM a foreign almost-head of state (and President Donald John Trump is responsive to us types of people), we got a response from former President Barack Hussein Obama back when we sent him a letter. It took him a little over two months to reply back, and we considered that a long time.

I said that I would publish President Donald John Trump's response to our first letter, but since it doesn't exist and now Daylight Savings Time is taking a respite (until March 2018, if nothing changes), we figured that perhaps President Donald John Trump's extreme-vetting and work on THE WALL that cut KoopaTV's article production by 40% back between February and the end of April perhaps got our first letter lost in the mail. Now that we are well back into our one-article-per-weekday flow of things because America's legal system keeps staying his immigration orders, I sent him a new letter. Read it below.

New Donk, New Donk: A KoopaTV Adventures Special

By VORTEXICA - Also, Vortexica explains why he's not dead.

Hey! It's me, Vortexica! Long time no see!



No, I am not dead (as seen by the above). There's been much speculation and rumour about my whereabouts over the past year. Now I can finally tell all...