Kirby Star Allies... Friends... Helpers?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - What are these guys called?

If you have noticed a greater concentration of Kirby-based content in the past month(s) or so on KoopaTV than in the past, it's not a coincidence. We're considering Kirby Star Allies to be the next big Nintendo Switch game we'll collectively indulge in. We're totally impressed by it, and it's poised to break my long stint of supporting the Kirby series but not actually buying its games.

I have one problem with Kirby Star Allies so far, and it's a big one: what are the partners called? Are they Allies, as the game's title suggests? Are they Friends, as the name of Kirby's Friend Heart ability suggests? Or are they Helpers, as Kirby Super Star has previously called them?

FRIENDS... in ALLIES. With the Friend Heart ability.
They proper-nouned Friends there, so... that could be it.

I'm telling you, this is really important. One of the best new modes from the remake of Kirby Super Star on the DS, Kirby Super Star Ultra, was Helper-to-Hero, and it got it so right. Note the name of the mode.

If Kirby Star Allies can't figure out what to call Kirby's partners, then they won't be able to make a name for a mode where you can play as one and go through an arena. If there's no name, there's no mode. If that mode doesn't exist, then Kirby Star Allies will be missing a huge opportunity as the game that is having partners make a grand and important return since Kirby Super Star.

From videos the Japanese site has released, they have a lot of solo adventuring where you are playing as a non-Kirby character. I hope that's a real thing and not just for demonstration. I want them to flesh this out!

I didn't want any Valentine's Day themes in this article, but...
YOU CAN PLAY AS CHUCHU! (...Or Broom Hatter with ChuChu.) YAY!

This article doesn't appear to have much substance to it, but there is a lot if you think about it. In any case, Kirby Star Aliies is sure to continue to get attention at KoopaTV as writable things about it occur. Ludwig may or may not be jealous of Kirby's ability to make friends of his enemies so easily, since Ludwig only seems to be able to keep his enemies as his enemies, and then his friends start to hate him, too.


Kirby Star Allies has now been released, and it seems like the likely answer is that they are called Friends.
Ludwig wrote a review of Kirby Star Allies here. The terminology for partners isn't clear, but that's a small issue.

What Does NVIDIA SHIELD Say About Nintendo's China Strategy, and GameCube/Wii Virtual Console?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - (Spoiler alert: nothing.)

Following Nintendo's financial results for the nine-months-into Fiscal Year Ending March 2018, they held a Q&A with their laughable investors.

There was a question about Nintendo's business possibilities in China. Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima gave a non-answer about how China is big and important but that Nintendo products “are unavailable there at the present time.” Kimishima then expressed that Nintendo would like the Chinese to experience Nintendo products the way other countries do.

That brings us to a request we got back in December 2017 to write about the interesting Nintendo-related product release in China. I think Kimishima's non-statement is just what I was waiting for to make an informed article.

Money Is More Important Than Love: Splatoon 2 Splatfest!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The pro-Love, anti-Money team relies on tired canards.

For Valentine's Day 2018 (a day that I have no intention of acknowledging on this website when it happens this week, though the other staffers may have something else in mind), Nintendo of America has decided to make the Splatoon 2 Splatfest for February 2018...

MONEY VS. LOVE! Which is more important to you?
By the way, it occurs on Saturday, February 17 2018.

If you got your Splatfest information from certain non-KoopaTV places, you may recall that for Halloween 2015, in the original Splatoon, Japan had the exact same theme — though the graphics for money and love were different, and the order was Love vs. Money instead of Money vs. Love. Guess they wanted to go out of their way to make sure Callie and Marina got Team Love, while Marie and Pearl got Team Money.

If it will affect your decision, let me tell you right now that Team Love managed to beat Team Money in that Splatfest. Money won the Popularity vote (with 53% vs. Love's 47%), but Love got more Wins with 51% to 49%.

That said, this will be North America and not Japan (they have different value systems), and the scoring system for Splatoon and Splatoon 2's Splatfests are completely different. 

If you want to see Money vs. Love in the United States among Nintendo fans, then the most relevant poll is the Wii's Everybody Votes Channel poll conducted on August 2007. Love was deemed more important by 79.1% of respondents, with Money only getting 20.9%. That was right before the Great Recession, so maybe Money got a dramatic buff in the decade since.

As for me, I've always been on Team Money. I'll tell you why, and why the Team Love guys got it wrong. 

KoopaTV's Live Reactions to the PyeongChang 2018's Opening Ceremony

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm watching for Cappy; the others for attractive exotic Olympic girls.

We cover the Olympics on Earth because of the disturbing intersection of Earth and our world that has been going on, and the Olympics are the most high-profile event the entire world takes place in. It's attracted the attention of our nemeses, Mario and Cappy, in the past. That makes watching the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Olympics a very value-added activity for KoopaTV.

Part of what is great about our reaction logs is that you get to see the immediate and oftentimes brilliant analysis from your favourite KoopaTV staff members (and all five of us appear in this log) on-the-fly with no filter, and probably in a way you would not have thought of by yourself.

The log includes our geography knowledge, the frustrating ordeal of having to watch this via NBC (versus the BBC and the CBC), geopolitical analysis between South and North Korea, the creepiness of targeted advertising, our opinion on female athletes' looks... and... well, you'll have to get through the whole thing to see if Cappy got involved. Plus, a lot of videogame references. A lot.
 

Yoshiaki Koizumi Talks Toad's Top and Mario's Love Life

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I have an issue with the questions and answers...

It looks like Nintendo decided it would be a good time for some softball interview questions with Super Mario Odyssey producer Yoskiaki Koizumi. Just for fun, I guess. Little did they seem to know that they would cause quite a stir.

Take a watch below, as Mr. Koizumi continues to be captured by Cappy as he has been in all of the other times we've seen him. Cappy just has a lock on Japan, doesn't he? Yeah, don't try to convince me that Japan is such an awesome place.

This thumbnail is especially horrifying:

Rawk's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Experience

By RAWKHAWK2010 - Ace Attorney, Versed by Mii!

Hey dudes.

After being moderately impressed by Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies but then finding myself so totally lost in Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney that I stopped during the butler chapter and would return every few months only to make it past another two lines of dialogue, my 2013/2014 foray into the franchise probably didn't last as long as Ludwig would have hoped. What happened to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy I bought on sale three years ago with the intention of starting? What happened to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice I bought over one year ago during release week that I also had the intention of starting? Well...I dunno, actually. Had I really been that turned off by that one obnoxious Layton witness who wouldn't stop playing his stupid minstrel guitar while testifying? (Because he can totally take that G-string and shove it.)

A combination of three factors finally got the ball rolling, in which I booted up the series and played through THE ENTIRE LOCALIZED THING in less than half a year. I was basically inspired by 1) the Ace Attorney anime opening and my covers of it, 2) Ludwig telling me to do something with The "Miracle" Never Happen for Trump's impending doom (in which the "Miracle" actually DID happen), and 3) Trump's dismissal of James Comey from the Federal Bureau of Investigations which got me in the mood for some legal drama.

Once things started they never really fell off, and thanks to Miiverse I'm now in possession of hoards of archived commentary (covering the original trilogy, SoJ, and parts of whatever else was Miiverse-able) that I can now subject the entire world to! (MWAHAHAHAHA!) I call it "Rawk's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Experience." We at KoopaTV think it's a good implementation of a Miiverse post archive, and shows what happens when Nintendo doesn't pull an NSider and delete everyone's shit. After all, I probably spent just as much time treading through Miiverse's gruelingly-slow UI on my non-New Nintendo 3DS as I did on my non-bannable NSider posts.

Oh yeah, and after at least half a year of me thinking Funimation canceled/forgot they were doing it, Part One of the Ace Attorney anime English dub finally landed last month. You should go watch it somewhere real fast so that you can have certain voices in your head as you read. Courtesy fragment:

So without further ado, part one of Rawk's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Experience!:

Sleep Kirby With The Best Pillow You'll Ever Own

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - All about Sleep Kirby.

While it looks like Nintendo does not want to write a press release for this result like they did the first round, it is official: Sleep Kirby has won Round 2 (the final round) of the 25th anniversary Kirby Copy Ability poll, after finishing third place in Round 1.

Weird meme people apparently managed to coalesce and make this result happen, which I see as a referendum on Eating vs. Sleeping. Kirby represented Eating in that (there's a Kirby-Jigglypuff picture, and Jigglypuff is literally wearing Sleep Kirby's hat), but if the fans prefer when he's sleeping, then perhaps Kirby should reconsider his identity.

Sleep Kirby is now playable in Kirby Battle Royale, sporting a pillow-based moveset that is supposed to evoke a pillow fight. In Kirby's normal games, this pillow didn't exist and all Sleep Kirby did was put on a sleeping cap and harmlessly sleep in place, taking a nice rest.

Kirby's newfound pillow expertise leads to a word from KoopaTV's newest sponsor:

Mario & Sonic NOT at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The North Koreans are, though, which requires an update from us.

The fact that Where Is Mario & Sonic at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games? is the second-most read KoopaTV article of all time tells me that you all really, really want to know why “Mario & Sonic at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games” does not exist.

The PyeongChang 2018 Olympics start this week, with the Opening Ceremonies this Friday, and you bet KoopaTV will live-react to it like we did for the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremonies. Unless there will be a last minute change, you should now refer to it as “Mario & Sonic NOT at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games.”

Earlier, I had accused Cappy, through Mario, of trying to start a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and East Asia, by stirring up a lot of bad blood with all of the nations by causing Dennis Rodman to act stupidly in North Korea. Since then, North Korea will be allowed to participate in the PyeongChang 2018 Olympics, and there will even be a unified Team Korea Women's Ice Hockey team. Why is North Korea allowed but not Mario (and Sonic)?

The Billy Mitchell MAME MEMO

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - No matter what the evidence says, Billy Mitchell is still my hero.

Today, a MAJOR memo that demolishes the “evidence” behind the much-debated actions of a heavily respected institution dropped:

The Billy Mitchell MAME memo, published for all to see in the Donkey Kong Forum. (Not to be confused with Donkey Kong series fan forum DK Vine.) 

For those not in the know of one of the three only good things to come out of the Video Game Awards 2013 (VGX 2013), Billy Mitchell is an amazing arcade game high scoring professional, notable for getting the first perfect score on Pac-Man. He also has records in other games as well, including Donkey Kong. There was a whole documentary of it (one of the best movies of any kind of all time, King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters), and it continued ever since.

Well, Billy Mitchell was portrayed as a villain in the documentary (see embedded video below for why he's so awesome at that role, and is an awesome person in general that I want to be like), and people have long believed that he was using controversial/rule-breaking methods for his high scores, which brings us to the memo.

KoopaTV's January 2018 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Welcome to KoopaTV in 2018. How do you like it?

We have officially ushered in 2018 here at KoopaTV. Good start, right? For those who haven't been with us since our founding years ago, KoopaTV is a wonderful place on the Internet ran by Koopa Kingdom's finest. We publish awesome gaming articles and art, and reward your participation in the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program. Yup, we are all-in on you, the reader, being a part of this special place. That'll be more clear as you check out this newsletter of what happened in January.

Oh, let us know what you think of the new text-decorations for the headers. They're supposed to make it more obvious that they all have anchor text you can append to the url to link specifically to that section, if you hover your mouse over it.

KoopaTV's Top Five Recommended Articles of January 2018

If you HAVEN'T been reading all of KoopaTV's articles as they've been published (look here for all the ways you can make sure you don't miss our articles!), then this top-five section gives you the KoopaTV staff's personal recommendations. Here they are in chronological order:

1. New Years Celebration in New Donk City — The people of New Donk City are celebrating the new year 2018, as well as Pauline's re-election. But there is Crazy Cap-related trouble afoot...
2. Saying eSports Are Sports is NOT a Liberal Conspiracy!  — A fill-in talk show host to the Rush Limbaugh radio program, Todd E. Herman, made statements connecting the eSports are sports movement to the liberal plot to take away your liberty. We counter this notion.
3. The Big Bang Theory Is TERRIBLE! (Action vs. Comedy Splatfest) — We side with Team Action in the January Splatoon 2 Splatfest, on the basis that The Big Bang Theory is associated with Team Comedy.
4. Mirror Kirby 3DS Home Theme Released! ...Oh, and Kirby Battle Royale — Kirby Battle Royale has released, but we'd rather talk in great detail about the origins of the Mirror Kirby 3DS home menu theme instead.
5. The Merits of Having Callie vs. Marie Determine Splatoon 2's Story Mode — A deep analysis into how the multiplayer Splatfest component of Splatoon directly affected the single player part of Splatoon 2, and how this was genius.

All articles on KoopaTV are worth reading, believe me. And now for a NEW section to the newsletters: