100x Battle In Splatoon 2 ISN'T a Battle Royale — And Other Version 4.0.0 Findings!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA  - Splatoon 2 version 4.0.0 is out. What's in it?

Early on in yesterday's controversial Nintendo Direct, they showed a Splatoon 2 trailer with no narration and no explanation of what was going on. Here is the trailer itself, embedded:

My reaction in the log was to the 100x battle bit. Knowing that awful Battle Royale games like Fortnite boast 100 players in one fight, I was afraid that Splatoon would take this awful route as some paid DLC expansion mode or something. After all, that is worth a whole new version number.

What if they're ending Splatfests and now using Shifty Stations for stupid Battle Royale modes?! NO!

Fortunately, according to the official Splatoon tumblr and the detailed patch notes, this isn't the case. The entire Splatfest system got a redesign with the new version update, which will be put to the test next week. (Stay tuned for the dedicated Splatfest article about Retro vs. Modern!) I honestly don't understand the system compared to the old Splatoon 2 Splatfest scoring system other than to see that they renamed Team Battles to Splatfest Battle Normal, and Solo Battles to Splatfest Battle Pro. There is now a new point system called Clout, and Clout is based on how much ink you accumulate. The old system was just based on if you win or not. (It might still be that, since the Splatfest ranking system (Fanboy, Fiend, Defender, Champion, King) is on a different scale than Clout.)

The 100x Battle, and there's also a 10x Battle, just multiples how much Clout you get from the match by that amount. It's still no more than 8 Inklings or Octolings at once. Less, of course, if someone disconnects, which will be as likely as before since Nintendo Switch Online won't be funding a better online connection or anything.

KoopaTV's September 13, 2018 Nintendo Direct Live Reactions!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The staff is all here. Was that effort worth it?

A really important thing to note here is that this Nintendo Direct was supposed to air last week. Since then, much of the information that is discussed in the Nintendo Direct have already been announced by Nintendo or other companies.

Our reaction log starts with conversation about Hurricane Florence. If you want to know why, read yesterday's confrontational article that is all about this Nintendo Direct and the story of its delays due to natural disasters.

The entire KoopaTV staff is present to live react to this log (myself, RawkHawk2010, Kamek, Wendy, and Witch Princess), along with our long-time friend who is in the log as Ryu. These live reaction logs provide you the staff's unfiltered, raw opinions. It's how we truly feel as it's happening. Everything after is just spin.

You can watch the Nintendo Direct alongside our reactions with the embed below. Make sure you start it once the log reaches 6 PM so it's synchronised.

Nintendo Direct Natural Disaster Hypocrisy

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The company postponed the Nintendo Direct due to a natural disaster, and has now rescheduled it to be during an even bigger natural disaster.

Due to the powerful hurricane on the East Coast of the United States of America, we have decided to delay this week’s planned Nintendo Direct. We will provide a new time and date in the near future. Thank you for understanding. 

Just kidding. 

You might remember last week where we were supposed to have a Nintendo Direct on September 6, 2018. It got delayed due to a powerful earthquake affecting the Japanese island of Hokkaido, a large but low-population area of about 5 million people. It's a remote island, far away from Nintendo's offices, subsidiaries, and business partners, with the exception of 64% of NDcube, developer of Super Mario Party. (Yet Nintendo still chooses to list them as a Tokyo company.) For American geographical context, the distance between the Hokkaido earthquake and Nintendo's headquarters in Kyoto is around the distance between Nintendo of America's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and the many earthquakes that occur in California.

If you've talked with me in public over the past week, I've been passive-aggressive towards Nintendo regarding the delay of the Nintendo Direct. If you've talked with me in private, I've been actively aggressive against Nintendo. Not because I really, really wanted to see the Direct (in fact, I have no expectations for it and I wasn't asking for a new one), but because I disliked the precedent it set.

But if Nintendo was going to set a new precedent from now on for when it cancels Nintendo Directs and other events, then okay. As long as they're consistent about it.

And, of course, at Nintendo's first opportunity, they're not consistent.

Witch Princess: Ace Attorney

By WITCH PRINCESS - Salutations! My first article! And it's about Ace Attorney! I mean, duh.

B efore KoopaTV, I had no earthly idea what Ace Attorney was. When I saw Ludwig posting about it on Miiverse (nonexistent now), I was a little curious in finding out more about the series. It wasn’t until December of 2016 that I actually went to the eShop and downloaded the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy for my 3DS…

HOLD IT! If you don't wish to be spoiled, I suggest leaving this page immediately!!

And then my world changed. I was into something new. Let me tell you my experience.

Disclaimer: Prepare for some ranting of some sorts.

If Phoenix is a rookie attorney, then I'm a rookie KoopaTV staffer. We've both gotta do our jobs well!

Welcome Witch Princess to KoopaTV Staff!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - A warm welcome.

In an ongoing effort to increase KoopaTV's diversity (ideological or otherwise) and better distribute our workload in producing amazing content on a regular basis, we've been aggressively trying to hire qualified people to join KoopaTV's staff.

I would like to announce that the Witch Princess will be joining KoopaTV's staff as a Content Writer!

Witch Princess.

This will be the second princess that KoopaTV has on staff (behind Princess Wendy O. Koopa), though in her interview, Witch Princess declined to state exactly what she is a princess of. In any case, we definitely have a monarchist bent here, though Koopa Kingdom is far and away the superior kingdom.

In her spare time, Witch Princess loves causing trouble for the Harvest Goddess and farmers. Her quest to denigrate blue-collar professions doesn't end there—she also has a hatred for pesky plumbers, too! (The research is unclear for which “collar” farmers actually fall under.) That fits great with KoopaTV's mission. Being anti-plumber, I mean. #NotAllBlueCollars

It's unclear so far if Witch Princess is actually a human or some kind of magic apparition. We didn't discriminate in the hiring interview. She also isn't an alumni of the Nintendo NSider Forums like the rest of the staff, so she has a much different background than the rest of us. We hope she does KoopaTV proud!


The Witch Princess is going to be publishing an article very soon, so look forward to that, and once again, please give her a welcome! By the way, even after this, KoopaTV would still like to expand the staff count even more, so please consider the wonderful opportunities.


In a previous form, the Witch Princess wrote this guest article.
The About page has been updated. (Political Compass update coming soon, too.)
The Contact page has also been updated.
Here is Witch Princess's first article, published the next day.
Witch Princess displays just what kind of mischief she can provide in her first short story on KoopaTV!

Mega Man 11 Nintendo Switch Demo With Block Man

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Just don't try to do real-time weapon change and the game is much better.

Remember when I was complimenting Mega Man 11 and CAPCOM a lot based on how Mega Man 11 looked back at E3 2018? Well, they brought a modified version of the demo — Block Man's stage — over to the Nintendo eShop for a pre-release demo! (The game releases in a month, after all.)

Of course I'm going to play the demo for myself. And I'll tell you what I think about it.

Let's start Mega Man 11 demo version.

 
First of all, there are four difficulty modes, three of which are available: Newcomer, Casual, Normal, and the unavailable Superhero mode. Your difficulty level affects many different things, including damage given/taken, the availability of helpful pick-ups, the regeneration speed of your Double Gears (as well as how much time you get to use them), how much weapon energy is used up per shot when you use a special weapon, the availability of checkpoints after losing your life... lots of things. Also, at least for this demo, the difficulty modes affected your life count and additional support items. (Newcomer gives you infinite lives, health support, and doesn't let you die from pits or spikes.)

Of course, if you know what you're doing, you can win no matter what. I don't know what I'm doing, though, so I tried Normal mode and got a game over. Then I tried Casual. Game over. So I played Newcomer and won... and then I discovered my problem.

KoopaTV's September 6, 2018 Nintendo Direct Live Reactions!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Big Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS news!

Due to the powerful bank shooting in Cincinnati, Ohio, we have decided to delay this day's planned KoopaTV article. We will provide a new time and date in the near future. Thank you for understanding.


Lives are more important than videogame announcements, you know!


Ludwig does away with the passive-aggressive writing and tackles the real meaning of this article head-on. (Plus, the new time and date.)
Here is the real live reaction log for the Direct that was supposed to happen here!

No Olympic Future for eSports Until Violence Is Out

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I don't like Thomas Bach.

The Olympics have a ton of events outside of... THE Olympics, at least, if you trust the International Olympic Committee (IoC) ran by Thomas Bach. We've previously described Thomas Bach as akin to JEB! Bush, someone who doesn't understand what the Olympics is about, and someone that acts like he rules the entire Earth. So when Thomas Bach speaks, we may or may not listen. But he just had some words to say about videogames, so, yeah, I guess I'll bite.

Since Asia doesn't feel represented in the Olympics enough between 2018's PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games and 2020's Tokyo Olympic Summer Games, the continent just concluded its 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia, which is one of those events recognised by the International Olympic Committee I alluded to in the opening. Thomas Bach, as president of the International Olympic Games, was there and had an interview with The Associated Press about lots of topics, including eSports at the Olympics.

The Asian Games 2018 were notable for having eSports available “as a demonstration sport,” meaning it was there for a sort of proof of concept. There were six games: Arena of Valor, Clash Royale, Hearthstone, League of Legends, Pro Evolution Soccer, and StarCraft II. (As you might expect, South Korea won StarCraft II without losing a single game.)

That's a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), a real-time strategy, a card game, another MOBA, a sports game, and then another real-time strategy.

What did Thomas Bach have to say? Well, he is not saying that eSports are not sports, but he has a problem with being “civilized” and about “Olympic values”...

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes — January 2019

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Sorry for once saying I knew what was going on about this game.

Back in April 2018, I wrote an article about Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes headlined, “We might finally understand what Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is”. Unfortunately, most of that article turned out to be wrong.

For one, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes isn't coming out in 2018, and that's become more obvious as the year has progressed. Instead, the game is releasing worldwide January 18, 2019. According to developer Suda51, the reason for the delay was to make sure that Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes's release wouldn't negatively impact the sales of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. That's the bigger game that didn't have its release date (December 7, 2018) announced until as late as Nintendo's E3 2018 — the grand event that Travis Strikes Again didn't appear at. Suda51 couldn't wisely date the release of Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes until after he knew the release date of Smash Bros. I think it's a valid enough reason for a delay.

I was right that Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is not No More Heroes 3. Suda51 is still saying No More Heroes 3 is a theoretical project he wants to work on, and Travis Strikes Again is a side-story in the same universe.

Here's 15 minutes of direct feed gameplay from PAX West. I'm almost scared to watch it:

KoopaTV's August 2018 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I wonder if school's gonna ruin things.

August has ended. Today is Labor Day in the United States, the unofficial end of the summer season. Didn't feel like summer over here. All we did was work. (Also, Koopa Kingdom is hot all year round, so the notion of seasons doesn't apply here.)

You're probably just interested in this newsletter having interesting stuff to talk about, so, sure, we have that. Check them out:

Top 5 Recommended Articles of August 2018

I don't have any complaints about our article content in August. Everything on KoopaTV is worth reading. You shouldn't have any complaints either, with a best-of line-up like this (chronologically-ordered) one:

1. Super Smash Bros. at EVO 2018: A Mysterious Destiny — What happened at EVO 2018, how people responded to it, and Ludwig's thoughts. And, yes, it's mostly about Bayonetta and Super Smash Bros. For Wii U.
2. Ashley has granted kids to Hell... What about Sakurai? — When you sit down and think about it, examining all the evidence... Ashley hasn't actually been confirmed to be an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. We wonder why...
3. Which utensil is more useful? Fork VS. Spoon Splatfest! — The August 2018 Splatfest asks which is the more useful utensil: Fork or Spoon? Ludwig has a favourite in spoon, but his own research indicates that fork is factually the better answer. What does he do?
4. Fixed One-Time Cost vs. Microtransactions/Loot Boxes vs. Subscription Fee — Shigeru Miyamoto wants the game industry to embrace a subscription fee model more than it does right now. Let's analyse the payment models.
5. Let's Hope There's No Madden Movie About The Jacksonville Shooting — KoopaTV is the site that did investigative journalism about the fate of the Madden Curse movie... and now we ask that there isn't one about the shooting at the Madden NFL tournament in Jacksonville, Florida.