CONGRATULATIONS Super Mario Odyssey; 9 Million Sold Units?!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Plus, other news from Nintendo's nine-months-into-the-year ending March 2018. (Fiscal year 2017–2018, Q3.)

After years of being called “beleaguered” and jerks deeming its ecosystem to be irrelevant, Nintendo is suddenly being referred to with words like “powerhouse” by the press. This is helped out by its 2017–2018 Quarter 3 (October 1 to December 31) results, released today-ish. It got Nintendo's stock to pop 7%, which makes anyone who sold it when the Nintendo Labo was announced (*cough*Rawk*cough*) look like an idiot.

So, what's in those results? Spoiler alert: Nintendo doing fantastically in the biggest shopping period of the year helped a lot.

First of all, remember when it was FAKE NEWS to declare that the Nintendo Switch outsold the Wii U in one month vs. the Wii U's first year? Well, when the comparison is the Nintendo Switch's first year (or first eight months) versus the Wii U's lifetime sales, then, yes, the Nintendo Switch has already surpassed the Wii U in hardware, as seen here:

KoopaTV Live Reactions: SOTU 2018

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - President Donald John Trump's attempt to start his work year with positive coverage?

While we are getting ready to review Nintendo's newly released earnings statement, President Donald John Trump was horrified to learn that KoopaTV, one of his biggest backers in his presidential run, gave him precisely middle-of-the-road coverage in his first year as president.

As such, he is taking over every TV station in the universe, which apparently includes us, to give an hour-long (?) address to try to get this year off to a better start. It's the State of the Union, 2018, brought to you by the White House.

Plus, to be Fair & Balanced, we react to Representative Joseph Kennedy the III's Democrat rebuttal.

Our staffers are ready to react, so let's go. It's me, Kamek, Rawk, and even Vortex!

Help Ludwig Learn How To Use His New Gaming PC (Windows 10?!)

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Don't worry, I won't suddenly become a PC master race weirdo.

I didn't tell anyone but my closest confidantes, but... my PC was failing. Big-league. I did get it as a birthday gift in 2011, which is... a really long time ago, and it showed by failing to properly play even the most basic of games. (Still managed to play and develop all of KoopaTV's own videogames just fine, including 2017's Best PC Game, Soviet Missile Run!)

In late 2017, I was getting scary hard-disk drive failures on start-up. That was fairly indicative that my hardware wasn't going to be around much longer, and Ludwig without his desktop means you won't see him around. He'll also be quite unhappy. Unfortunately, suddenly switching to the third person still won't make it so someone else would solve the problem for me, so since my favourite console manufacturer did nothing I cared about for Black Friday/Cyber Monday, I got a new PC on sale. And it's not immediately outdated, I don't think.

Say hi to Ludwig's Dell Inspiron Gaming Desktop.

Dragon Ball FighterZ Is Out... But Not On Switch (YET!)

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Since we joined the Dragon Ball FighterZ for Switch movement, the game has released, but no Switch announcement has been made.

The Dragon Ball franchise's latest production has been released on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 — Dragon Ball FighterZ. High-production anime-style animation and graphics with fast-paced combo-heavy carnage is what people think of when they watch and play Dragon Ball FighterZ, but why isn't Dragon Ball FighterZ on the Nintendo Switch, like we've been calling for?

I mean, it's on the PC, but no one should be playing fighting games on a mouse and keyboard. Bad experience. Meanwhile, the Switch lets you play this on the go. A good feature to complement what is the most critically-acclaimed Dragon Ball game. Ever.

Part of the problem is that Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 came out on the Nintendo Switch recently, and a while ago on the other systems. I don't know anything about Xenoverse 2 other than that it was unnecessary, but Bandai Namco decided to use it as a barometre for if they should bring Dragon Ball FighterZ to the Nintendo Switch. If they released FighterZ now, no one would've bought Xenoverse 2. Cannibalisation and all that.

Well... 

Miitomo's End of Life. ...What's Miitomo, Again?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I totally forgot what Miitomo was. Yup, totally mobile trash.

By May 9, 2018, Miitomo service will end. Remember Miitomo? I didn't. I still don't even know what the hell you do in Miitomo but it was Nintendo's first mobile application since their whole “let's go back on what we were saying for years and do mobile now.” reversal.

Miitomo proceeded to get 10 million users in a month, but those users weren't exactly the most engaged bunch. Afterwards, they had a Splatfest to promote it, and then Miitomo disappeared except to annoy people with its clothes and crap My Nintendo. (Otherwise, you can't actually do anything with all those Platinum Coins they dump on you.)

Anyway, Miitomo will end per the Miitomo site, which might not be around after May 9, so here is the announcement on the main Nintendo site. 

Think you know your friends?
Well, too bad, because you'll NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN.

The Merits of Having Callie vs. Marie Determine Splatoon 2's Story Mode

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm not sure how meritorious it is, but the final Splatfest certainly affected a lot about Splatoon 2. (Spoilers, duh.)

I got a request a long time ago before Splatoon 2 came out, asking me:

“Write the merits of having the final Splatfest determine Splatoon 2's story mode if it did so (have to wait until the game comes out).” 

Well, I obviously waited long after the game came out. I... had to think about this.

First, let's make sure we're all on the same page regarding the Squid Sisters and Splatoon 2. 

We write a lot about Splatfests here on KoopaTV. Splatfests are Inkopolis's cultural mega-events where all the squids and kids vote on which option they prefer when presented with two choices. Each choice is backed by one of the newscasters, be they the Squid Sisters in Splatoon (Callie and Marie) or Off the Hook in Splatoon 2 (Pearl and Marina). And when I say mega-event, I mean the whole Inkopolis Square or Inkopolis Plaza transforms into a festive situation with dancing, the night sky, and special music. All participants dedicate their activity to the Splatfest. We like them on KoopaTV because they give us things to talk about that we normally wouldn't, and then it's game-related.

For background to the request, Splatoon's final Splatfest, Callie vs. Marie, ended in Marie winning. That is a very formative event. It then wasn't until Splatoon 2's demo Splatfest that Off the Hook gave context to all of the Splatfests we've been participating in for the first Splatoon: The winner of a Splatfest becomes legally better than the loser of the Splatfest.

In-between Splatoon and Splatoon 2, Nintendo released a series of “Squid Sisters Stories” on the official Splatoon website, from Marie's perspective. It starts right after the final Splatoon Splatfest that she had just won...

Nintendo Pitch: Abort the Port Support!

By RAWKHAWK2010 - Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Sequelized ports have got to go!

Announced at the Nintendo Direct Mini (see the broken mess of a log article here) were a number of games that will be lifted from previous systems and re-released on the Nintendo Switch. Some call them "ports." Hey, I do too or the word wouldn't be in the title.

Before we get too deep into this, not all ports are bad. There are ports that use all the pre-existing architecture but still acknowledge some level of modern content standards, and then get released as something that even the veteran player can feel like they're revisiting and experiencing for the first time. A great example is Kirby Super Star Ultra. It's a port of Kirby Super Star that came out 12 years after the original's release, which is a pretty ideal time frame for this kind of thing (we'll get to that). It pressed all the nostalgia nodes a straight port would, and upon taking advantage of its own nostalgic framework, gave the player new content they didn't even know they wanted. HAL Laboratory was seizing an opportunity. (P.S. I know what y'all are all thinking: "Kirby Super Star Ultra is a remake, not a port!" And my response is that Ultra is 90% "port", 10% "make", and is brewed to be greater than the sum of its parts. If that's a "remake", then why is EVERY port not a remake?)

Unlike Smash and Mario Kart as of late, Ultra focused on what the player could do with its characters rather than just mindlessly add them.
This resulted in new modes that weren't complete garbage. Isn't that right, Best Time Bonkers™? (Credit: Ludwig)

President Donald Trump's First Year Reflection

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It was mixed, as real life tends to be. But how mixed? Find out.

After an entire year of waiting, it is finally time to acknowledge that President Donald John Trump is 1/4 (or 1/8) through his presidency! Yes, he has completed an actual milestone. (It's a MEANINGFUL anniversary.)

Remember when everyone thought President Donald John Trump's first 100 days was the most important thing ever and it would determine everything that would follow for the other thousand-plus days of his presidency? Yeah, that was a stupid time period, and all of the obsession over that (both from the media, as well as the president himself) was silly. And I'm not just saying that looking back, but I thought it was always dumb. It's the ultimate enslavement to base-10 and stupid anniversaries.

It would be hard to guess how we would generally come around to the President if you take a look back at how we talked about him during the primary season. We (or I was, at least) were quite vicious to the guy, regularly insulting him and distancing ourselves from him. So, what do we think of him NOW?

President Trump Fair & Balanced Mini-Contest 2017–2018

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Were we fair & balanced towards President Donald John Trump in his first year? Mini-Contest!

This Monday we will publish KoopaTV's article reflecting on the one-year anniversary since President Donald John Trump's inauguration. A videogame site is going to dedicate space to this because we're one of the few gaming publications to remember what candidate Trump's opposition tried to do to the industry and hold her accountable for it, and so we endorsed candidate Trump for president. Since KoopaTV played a part in 2016 to get him elected, we made it a policy to not shy away from giving coverage to the after-effects of what we were directly responsible for. Call it social responsibility.

KoopaTV's values include truth, levity, and fair & balanced writing. So it's an interesting question: Did we live up to those values when covering President Donald John Trump's first year in office? We want YOU to guess!

The American mainstream media (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have a 9–91% positive-negative coverage split in their coverage of President Donald John Trump. If we are less lopsided (from either direction), then we would at least be less biased than the media, but that is a very low bar. 

YOU can guess KoopaTV's positive–negative coverage split for a PRIZE!

The Mini-Contest

On Monday's article we are going to list all of the articles about President Donald John Trump that we wrote in his first year as president. We are going to mark them as positive or negative (or neutral) coverage. To make this interesting, if you can be the KoopaTV reader closest to guessing the actual positive–negative coverage split, you are going to win TEN points in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program! (It's currently in Round 18, with the prize being a $10 Nintendo eShop card. 10 points can go a long way.)

Rules

Please comment here or e-mail KoopaTV at submissions(at)koopatv(dot)org with your guess, submitted in positive–negative format (for example, “90–10” would be 90% positive coverage and 10% negative). Your last submitted guess before the article is published on Monday will be your entry. Any guess made after your first and before the article is published on Monday will overwrite it.

KoopaTV will publish all guesses we get and who made them. KoopaTV won't publish your e-mail address, just your given screen name. KoopaTV won't use your e-mail address for any purpose other than to administrate the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program, unless you specify that you would like to be part of our e-mail subscription.

Entries submitted via any other means will not be accepted.

The range of articles is from Donald Trump: Inauguration Day (January 20, 2017) to Is Sierra Leone A Shithole? The Great People There! (January 15, 2018).

It is the KoopaTV staff's discretion for whether or not an article is positive or negative towards President Donald John Trump, as well as the staff's discretion for whether or not an article qualifies as being about President Donald John Trump. Each article will be weighed equally.

If contestants are tied in closeness or the exact answer, then the contestant who submitted the guess first will get the points.

If an article is marked as neutral coverage, that does not affect the positive–negative split mathematics.


KoopaTV's staff hasn't actually done the tally as of when this is published, so the hosts have no idea what the correct answer is, either! Don't get used to KoopaTV publishing content on weekends.


The weekend is over, and here are the results!

Mirror Kirby 3DS Home Theme Released! ...Oh, and Kirby Battle Royale

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I don't know if the theme is the best thing to come of this game, but it probably is. (Plus, a special programming note for this weekend.)

We have come a long way from Nintendo's September 2017 Nintendo Direct which debuted Kirby Battle Royale. We all seemed to instantly want the game. Then, we actually learned what was in the game... which isn't much. We thought it would be the closest thing to a Kirby fighting game with online multiplayer, and it's really just a party game with one mode being the fighting part.

Some time ago, they released a free demo of Kirby Battle Royale on the 3DS eShop which features “demo tickets”, or treating the demo as a wait-to-play game. You can play three modes with it, and in your choice of free-for-alls or teams: Battle Arena, Apple Scramble, and Crazy Theater. Battle Arena is the fighting mode and it's quite shallow. Apple Scramble features you trying to attack Whispy Woods to get apples to fall down, and then you throw the apples down a trap door. Get more apples than your opponents. And Crazy Theater asks you to do things like stand on a panel on the ground that answers a prompt, or avoidance tasks, or whatever, and do that successfully enough times to win.

Basically, the game lacks depth, but it features a dozen or whatever copy abilities. (You can play as Sword, Cutter, and Beetle.) 

It's Beetle Kirby! (You can change the colour of your Kirby. This is blue.)