Buying Pokémon Sword/Shield? Why I Won't

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You can do what you want with your own money, of course. (Or even my money.)

In preparing to write this article, I've been reviewing KoopaTV's coverage of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. For pretty much every official announcement from The Pokémon Company International, we published something about it. As I was hoping for, I don't think it was an information overload this time around.

However, I wasn't ever really hyped over Pokémon Shield, which is the version I'd pick if I was going to buy one. When they were first revealed and named in February 2019, I said I was optimistic about what was shown in the trailer, but worried about Junichi Masuda being the producer on the game. In the June 2019 Pokémon Direct, I said I was more interested in playing the game than I was before watching that—though I wasn't giving the game much actual praise in the article tone.

What followed were a lot of individual Pokémon and feature announcements that either didn't move the needle, or actually got me looking less forward to the game. The biggest controversy among the fanbase has been about the fate of the National Dex and Pokémon from past generations being put into the game. I'm on record only caring about that in the context of what it means for spin-off games, so that wouldn't be the reason for why I wouldn't buy Pokémon Shield itself.

I'm not getting it because, if it weren't a Pokémon game, I wouldn't even consider it. Pokémon Shield hasn't presented itself as a competent Japanese RPG in terms of what we've seen. Meanwhile, I have a copy of Dragon Quest XI S now that is waiting to be played after I was so pleased with the demo. I have other, better things to play.

If GAME FREAK is going to continue to operate on an annual release schedule, we're going to get a Galarian iteration next year anyway, which'll probably add substantially more content and fix a lot of problems. I'll re-look at the situation then, and of course, KoopaTV will cover the announcement. Alternatively, they'll remake an older generation, like the Sinnoh games, which I'm worried about how they'll handle it.

I haven't been very specific in this article. I know there is a tremendous amount of negativity surrounding the game with cut Pokémon, cut moves, bad story and characters, linear pathways, whatever. I haven't myself gone into specifics because I don't want to read non-official spoilers/leaks/possible misinformation. So, I gave a chance for Junichi Masuda, GAME FREAK, and The Pokémon Company International to impress me with an interview that's supposedly directed at people who “weren't hyped enough about these games”.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Version 6.0.0 (November) Fighter Usage Stats!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - 6.1.0 might change everything, so I gotta specify.

They announced a version 6.1.0 of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to deploy shortly after this article will publish, and that might affect the balance patches for characters. It isn't completely correct to deem this the November usage stats (especially so early in the month), though these do derive from the results of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open November 2019, which had the grand prize of going to the Genesis 7 tournament in January.

While I'm not going to Genesis 7, I'm very happy with my own performance. I finally got in the top 32 within my region—a solid 31st place. My diagram in the Online Open August 2019 article isn't FAKE NEWS anymore. The ladder only being three hours instead of four helped a lot, as did the revised stage list. (I still want Fountain of Dreams or Dream Land, though.) You can read about my journey in the comments section in the article hyperlinked in the previous paragraph. A whole lot of Bowser play. I lost immediately in the bracket round to a Mario player, however. Curse that plumber.

The actual winners were King Chris (who moved to somewhere else in Canada since he won the September 2019 tournament, apparently?), Wisdom (Duck Hunt from Missouri), Annoying Orange (aka Frawg) (Bayonetta from Nevada), and John Numbers (Wii Fit Trainer from New York, and the legendary Nintendo competition protagonist).

Anyway, once again (see September 2019's here and August 2019's here) I aggregated the ladder rounds across all regions of North America for this tournament. This time, there were 6,788 registrants and 3,225 players who played at least one match, for an average 47.51% participation rate. That's significantly less than the participation rate in August and September, and if you want a marketing lesson, it's because the automated/manual reminder e-mails telling people they have 24 hours until the tournament starts never went off/were never written. This caused about an ~8% drop in participation rate (again, defined as the number of people who play out of the number of people who registered—not the raw number of people playing) because people forgot they signed up for the tournament, and splitting the regions up over two days (though a given player will only play during one day) may have also confused people about when they had to play. This time, there were 36,824 games played. Despite the drop in the %, it's a raw number improvement from September, but still not as good as August's numbers.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) Movie — New Design, Same Disrecommendation

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This doesn't fix any other issues you might've had.

Remember that Sonic the Hedgehog movie that was supposed to release in November 2019...mere days ago? Paramount Pictures wants you to forget that was ever in the works—they have put the YouTube trailer of that movie in private view mode. I thought it was a funny gimmick where I wouldn't be able to screen-capture Sonic the Hedgehog's old movie design in that article because he kept moving too quickly for the print screen button. I didn't know two days later that the movie's director would tell everyone that Sonic would get redesigned and I should've saved a copy of the old design for the record.

(Fortunately, other people stole the trailer and uploaded it on their channels without marking it as private, such as this one. I wonder if it'll get copyright claimed.)

Then that redesign got the whole movie officially delayed to February 14, 2020. That's still the official release date, as seen in this new trailer with Sonic's new design: 
 

Nintendo Investor Q&A: No Defined Remake Policy

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Plus, scary China stuff.

You might vaguely remember that I published good Nintendo financial news here a week ago, related to their quarter ending September 30, 2019. Good news is less memorable than bad news (unless Nintendo doing well upsets your feelings or your investment strategy), so I understand if you found the whole affair underwhelming. Regardless, Nintendo's president, Shuntaro Furukawa, took questions from investors and answered some of them.

The last time Nintendo held a Q&A briefing with investors was half a year ago (that's two quarters ago), where I commented:

“No matter who has been the president in the past several years, there's no new information presented in these Q&A sessions. I hope next time, the investors go back to asking silly, amusing questions, because Nintendo management sure won't say anything useful or entertaining. It's the anti-KoopaTV.”

Guess what? The questions were pretty relevant, and Nintendo management was still unhelpful.

Investors generally wanted to know about the Nintendo Switch Lite, which has sold about two million systems. What kind of people are buying it? What's driving their behaviour? Are they more or less profitable than a regular Nintendo Switch customer?

New KoopaTV Feature: Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Logs Series

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - That's right. I'm documenting my training.

I hope you read my article from Tuesday about the reformation of the Olympics team, TEAM KOOPA. We have a dual purpose: win for the glory of Koopa Kingdom, and eliminate Mario and Cappy, who will also be competing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games.

However, it's been a while since I've really done much physical activity, and almost four years since I've trained for the Olympics. That was a disaster. Not the physical act of training, but the whole session and being attacked while in a foreign hellhole land.

But I do need to still get in shape. Fortunately, Ring Fit Adventure has released at such a good time. It's perfect to get my body the way it needs to be so I may fence properly. With a sabre, not with a faux border wall.

Anyway, after failing to buy Ring Fit Adventure at a proper store, I just ordered it from the Internet (after waiting for it to stop being sold out). It came. Here's me with the box:

Well, here's me on the box... It's, uh, 3D box art of Ludwig vs. Dragaux!

Ring Fit Adventure comes with everything it says it'll come with, by the way. The game box and cartridge, the Leg Strap, and the Ring-Con.

Ring Fit Adventure's unboxed contents.
Joy-Cons and Ludwig not included.

So what's with the article title? New KoopaTV feature?

I'm going to document my progress with Ring Fit Adventure—and therefore my overall fitness training—on KoopaTV on a weekly basis. We might even call it Fitness Fridays.

Though there'll probably be circumstances where I HAVE to publish something else on that Friday.

You all in the audience can keep me accountable. In fact, maybe you all can get inspired and contribute stuff of your own. We can take your guest submissions, after all. Hopefully, Ring Fit Adventure is as intrinsically pleasing to play as I think it conceptually is, as opposed to something like Wii Fit.

I'll tell you right now that I'd love to lose ten pounds. What's my starting point? Stay tuned for the first edition of the fitness log to find out. (Just don't expect me to start fitness until after Sunday—for the very immediate future, I need to train in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.)


Ludwig theoretically is going to be doing this series until the Tokyo 2020 Olympics happen, or until he meets his fitness goals. Alternatively, it's possible that his obsession with portraying Ring Fit Adventure in a positive light is totally misplaced and he will absolutely hate the game and never want to play it again. It's also possible that writing these fitness logs will be really repetitive both to write and to read, so Ludwig will be trying to keep things as fresh as he can. Your feedback will be important! Wendy might also do this, maybe.


Here's the first fitness log for week 1!
Awkwardly enough, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics got delayed to 2021.
Ring Fit Adventure has an unlockable Extra Fitness mode after completing the main Adventure Mode. KoopaTV will tackle that in 2021.

Pokémon's Personality-Morphing Mints

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This has got to be abuse, right?

There are two ways to view this trailer of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield news:

1. Pokémon are friends and great the way they are, independent of their battling abilities
2. Pokémon are tools for battlers to attain personal glory

If you view the world the first way, this is abhorrent. If you view the world the second way, you'll be very pleased with just how easy and accessible GAME FREAK is making it to get a competitively-viable team in-game, as opposed to having to breed (and abort—if they're merely “released” how come you don't see them in the wild after?) a lot of Pokémon to get the perfect nature:

Consolation to the first way of thinking: According to the official site, the Nature doesn't change. Just the stats behind it. So when the Pikachu in the trailer smelled the Modest Mint, they still keep their Sassy Nature—but instead of Sassy's Special Defence ↑ Speed ↓ trait, Pikachu has Modest's Special Attack ↑ Attack ↓. (Sassy is competitively a horrible Nature for Pikachu, but it's one of the best personalities you can be blessed with.)
 

Ludwig Reacts to Sakurai's Terry Bogard Stream

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Late and alone.

I was never going to be able to watch Masahiro Sakurai's livestream of Terry Bogard facing the fury in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate live at 8 AM Eastern time today. Terrible timing. I got things to do then.

So I have to watch the video-on-demand, and once I get past that, I could unlock access to the rest of the Internet, which surely is discussing nothing but this livestream.

So I'm hyped to watch and react to every moment of this, not because I care about or even know who Terry Bogard is, but I have a lot of Discord notifications to check. Let's go...
 
Watch Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – Mr. Sakurai Presents “Terry Bogard” from Nintendo on www.twitch.tv

Team Koopa at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm looking to end this war.

Surely you have heard this by now, right? Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games has released today on Nintendo Switch in partnership with SEGA.

As you can tell by the title, the actual Olympics occur in 2020 (starting at the end of July) but right now it's 2019. What's happening now is our formal declaration and training period.

You should remember the same thing happened with the 2016 Olympic games at Rio de Janeiro. Team Koopa had an announcement and a training period. Except the actual training was a massive disaster and we had to evacuate Rio before the actual Olympics began. Rio, for its part, was (and probably still is) an unlivable hellhole.

Tokyo is different!

And we have tremendous reason for being there. The 2016 Closing Ceremonies that promoted the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was Cappy's formal introduction to the world. Team Koopa knew it was coming, which was why we were involving ourselves in the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics to begin with.

KoopaTV has basically wiped out Cappy's companion, the Nintendo Labo, as a dangerous threat. Now we're going to finish off Cappy itself, where Cappy started. Mario himself will be there too.

Here's who is coming to Tokyo for Team Koopa: 

September 30, 2019 Nintendo Quarterly Financial Update

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Eat glowingly positive sales numbers!

Well, I looked through Nintendo's financial statements for the quarter ending September 30, 2019. That's six months into their fiscal year, though the whole concept of fiscal years isn't terribly exciting for normal people. 

In terms of stand-out sales figures, 19.01 million people bought Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch (versus 8.44 million on the Wii U), and there are 15.71 million owners of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Splatoon 2 is only at 9.28 million, a mere 260,000 units in 3 months. That's what happens with online-based games when all the new content is done. There's 41.67 million Nintendo Switch systems sold.

The biggest thing here is that 1-2-Switch is finally off the top ten best-selling Nintendo Switch games.
(New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is at spot 8.)

Ring Fit Adventure, having released in October, doesn't appear in these results. We'll have to wait three months for that. But Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said Ring Fit Adventure is a super important title for Nintendo this year, and spent more time talking about it than, say, Pokémon.

Interesting bit about the Nintendo Switch Lite: Nintendo considers it a huge success, but after its first week being launched, the regular Nintendo Switch was outselling it week-by-week. For whatever reason, 43% of Nintendo Switch Lite purchasers already own a Nintendo Switch. Not sure how so many people could be fooled into something financially stupid, but hopefully it's for members of the family and not for themselves.

Lastly of interest, the 3DS segment sold less stuff than the mobile one. That's not because mobile is doing great—growth was almost flat year-over-year, but the 3DS just collapsed despite Nintendo sacrificing AlphaDream for it.

At least the Switch is doing fantastic.


Ludwig's favourite game on that chart is still Kirby Star Allies, which he gave a full review of as a birthday present to himself. He wishes it would suddenly sell enough to warrant Nintendo disclosing updated numbers, but that probably will never happen.


The article covering the quarter ending June 30, 2019 is over here.
By comparison, the article covering the quarter ending September 30, 2018 discussed mostly Kirby Star Allies.
Don't like Ludwig's questions? How about these ones from investors?
How about some even greater positive sales numbers after the holidays?
Next year's September 30, 2020 article has many more games and many more Switch sales to discuss.

KoopaTV's October 2019 Review Newsletter

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The October newsletter isn't one to fear!

Welcome to the latest edition of KoopaTV's newsletter! October 2019 sure feels like it went by quickly, yet it feels like I haven't written a newsletter in a while. (But I did, and you'll see it in the related articles at the bottom below the footer.)

October 2019 continued KoopaTV's string of solid months, though it was the first month in what's felt like a very long time without an Ace Attorney article during the month or an Enlightenment Movement article. Doesn't mean October was uninspired or not focused on developing KoopaTV canon. In fact, it focused plenty on that. Here's some EVIDENCE:

KoopaTV's Top Five Experiences of October 2019

Actually, there's a lot of articles that I thought were even written in October, so maybe it was longer than I thought. That actually makes limiting this to a top five fairly challenging and I had to spend a lot of time coming up with this chronologically-ordered list. Read these articles if you haven't already... and read everything from this month (and on KoopaTV in general) after that. Well, finish the rest of this newsletter first, because there's some stuff you'll be happy to see announced:

1. A Brave New World in Subnautica  — Kamek writes KoopaTV's second review of 2019, and it's about the indie open world experience Subnautica, which it turns out he's quite fond of.
2. October 15 2019 Democrat Presidential Primary Debate 4 ANALYSIS! — I usually (purposefully) avoid the politics-focused articles in the newsletters, but I think I did a pretty good job with this one in that it's issues-focused and not candidate-focused. You'll learn a lot about your choices here.
3. I'm Extremely Impressed With The Dragon Quest XI S Demo — Dragon Quest XI S is Ludwig's first Dragon Quest game, though for this article, his impressions are just based on the demo. ...Though he did buy the game after writing it! Features cows.
4. Yes In My Backyard: Dilapidated Houses in the City Trial — Ludwig tackles the issue of affordable housing while also going into a failed government programme instituted by King Dedede.
5. Luigi's Mansion 3 and Halloween 2019 — A wide-ranging article continuing this site's distaste for Halloween, plumbers, and the FAKE NEWS media, but also the taste for delicious candy.