Eric Swalwell's #Fartgate Spirit Battle

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Don't do this to your family on Thanksgiving.

In honour of the very American holiday of Thanksgiving, established around a century and a half ago, KoopaTV has decided to dedicate today's article to a very American fellow: California Congressman (and very failed Democrat presidential candidate, being the first to drop out) Eric Swalwell!

Of course, at KoopaTV, we're not going to bore you with some puff piece about a politician. ...Though there are some puffs involved, of another sort.

Warning: This article contains cursed imagery and fart jokes. In fact, there already just was one.

Spirit Details

Name

Eric Swalwell

Series

California Democrat Party (real life)

Class

Novice

Spirit Type, Ability

Support

Down Special ↑

Galarian Starter Evolutions Officially Revealed

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Nice to know who they are, eventually. My thoughts.

Let's suspend our knowledge for a bit that we all know Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield are already released. We can even forget that I said I'm not getting it.

The Pokémon Company International just revealed, as of this morning, the first and second stage evolutions to the Galarian starter Pokémon we first met back when Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield were introduced back in February. You remember Grookey, Scorbunny, and Sobble, right?

Meet their evolutions (and some less interesting details about Snorlax forgetting to play Ring Fit Adventure): 

I'll go through each evolutionary line separately and give my thoughts, but I'm telling you upfront: I'm still a Grookey supporter, and I didn't need to see these to have that affect my opinion.

Why Would You Join the Pocket Camp Club?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Some folks still play this, for some reason. Perhaps not for much longer!

Full, upfront disclosure: My experience with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is about as limited as watching the Animal Crossing Mobile Direct two years ago with the rest of the KoopaTV staff, and watching someone play the game for a few minutes during Thanksgiving 2017. The key verb there was “watching.” I never played it. Still, I think I'm qualified to commentate on this news, because with any announcement from Nintendo there's both an audience of existing consumers, as well as non-players who might just become interested based on the information. And I do have non-mobile Animal Crossing experience so I have a reference point.

Right after making some very controversial changes to the Gulliver's Ship feature that greatly distorted the established resources→reward ratio (as well as making it more difficult to rid oneself of duplicate inventory), Nintendo announced two new $3 or $8 per month subscription services for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, collectively called the “Pocket Camp Club.”

(The new update also made Gulliver's Ship better.)

There are two membership options. The Happy Helper Plan, and the Cookie & Depot Plan. I'm not sure if you can subscribe to both, though let's briefly discuss why you'd subscribe to either optional plan.

Sad Excuses for Black Friday Sales, 2019

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - There's likely going to be many more examples.

I would like to tell you a tale of three companies’ bad Black Friday outings. You might not view them as objectively bad in a holistic sense, but we're KoopaTV, and we can spin the story how we want.

First example is the important one, as far as KoopaTV is concerned. CAPCOM is having a Black Friday sale on select games... and what they don't tell you in their headline, is select games on select consoles.

I suppose I should share CAPCOM's caveat:

“By the way, this is a growing list! Keep an eye on it as we’ll be adding more deals as they’re made available.”

But for now, they have Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy at 33% off ($20.09 from $29.99)... but only on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. That's an inferior discount than August's CAPCOM Publisher Sale 2019. Most of the other sales are titles on Xbox One that I didn't know were even ported there, like Ōkami HD.

There's a certain console missing there that this site tends to focus on. But it's a growing list.

Update 11/26/2019: They added Steam games to the list, including Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy for only $19.79, or 34% off. That's better than August.

Update 11/28/2019: While CAPCOM is not acknowledging this, the Ace Attorney games are on sale on Switch and 3DS right now until December 4.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy is 33.33% off or 60% off depending on system.
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is 50% off.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice is 60% off.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies is 70% off.

But I don't think Best Buy's Black Friday sale will be a growing list. They went and paid for #BestBuyBlackFriday to be a trending tweet, starting yesterday morning. (Sunday.) What's on offer?

Normally-priced (MSRP) Nintendo Switch Lite, for $199.99!
(There's hundreds of other items, too, but how is this justifiable?)

Ever since I announced to the world that I'm a trillionaire, a lot of people have come to me asking me to buy them things. Knowing that I'm very... frugal (some say stingy), they justify their requests with “well it'll be on sale on Black Friday.” Except some of those same people are asking for Nintendo Switch (Lite) systems.

Silly. Nintendo doesn't put those on sale. They just put their old (read: discontinued) Nintendo Switch systems as a Black Friday deal by having it at full price ($300) but it includes a full game download code of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. And hey, that's the best-selling game on the Switch, so I guess that's arguably enticing. Still not really much of a deal...


You can probably take it as a bad sign that Ludwig is writing a filler article about Black Friday on a Monday, but you can and also should blame these companies for starting their sales a week early. Meanwhile, KoopaTV has begun its latest giveaway contest process since November 1. You should participate.


CAPCOM is putting their games back on sale less than a month later.
Nintendo eShop has Black Friday/Cyber Deals in 2020, too.

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 2 | World 3: A Shining Jewel from the Heavens

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Our first town... and smoothies.

Yup, it's another edition of KoopaTV's Fitness Log Friday!

I played quite a bit of Ring Fit Adventure this week, and for the second edition of my fitness log, I wanted to go into greater detail about the gameplay experience of Ring Fit Adventure. If I focus on that, I might like the game as a game more and less as an exercise tool. That means I was writing contributions to this article while I was playing the game each day.

Let me know what you think of my thinking on this, and enjoy. This means that I might be spoiling the game's events a bit, though. It's fairly linear so far, so my experience may be like yours if you play the game:

November 20 2019 Democrat Presidential Primary Debate 5 ANALYSIS!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This is a filler debate. Though maybe they're all going to be like that.

I will try to make this analysis fairly quick, since the debate itself was only a little over two hours long last night, with ten candidates. (Compared to three hours and twelve candidates in October 2019's.)

From left to right, we had Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, and Tom Steyer. Names don't ring a bell? Check out KoopaTV's 2020 presidential debate index, which has summaries of what's going on so far. The debate was moderated by MSNBC (a more overtly liberal division of NBC) and the Washington Post.

(MS)NBC is continuing their fascination with giving Cory Booker more time than he deserves.
As well as giving Andrew Yang no time to talk.

Let me state above the fold: MSNBC has a long and continuing history of trying to black out Andrew Yang's candidacy. Naturally, this extends to how they conduct their debate.

Crashing Market Crashers By Becoming a TRILLIONAIRE!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ♪ If I were a rich man... Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum... ♪

All I still use my 3DS for is accumulating Gem Apples in Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, using it as a portable music player brought to me by Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon, sometimes playing Pocket Card Jockey, and accumulating Play Coins so I can hire more (superficially diverse) feline stock analysts for Market Crashers, which is a minor game at the Nintendo 3DS's StreetPass Mii Plaza. It's based around different publicly-traded companies offering their stocks on the market, and buying low and selling high in an action game format. Predictive button-mashing, with the help of the analysts.

I like the game because I like hoarding money. I've been playing it every day for years.

In fact, I have so much money, I just became a trillionaire today. Count the commas. (They'd be decimal points in Europe, which I never liked.) This coincides with the United States stock market indices reaching record highs in the past few days.

 ♪ All day long, I'd biddy biddy bum, if I were a wealthy man. ♫

The developers at Good-Feel never intended people to play the game for so long after the first ten billion, where you got a 24-karat gold statue of your Mii. But they did incentivise it a bit at the results screen with big bags of money that eventually become gold-coloured when you're in the hundreds of billions. So what happens when you're at a trillion?

Well, the money stack stops moving. There are no more accumulated bills in the money pile. Once you're at a trillion, the game stops showing any graphical representation of that and refuses to make the giant money bags symmetrical. Sure, the money counter (presented as a variable numeric text) keeps going up. But there's no satisfaction from there visually being no more cash to go around.

Where is it going? Perhaps we'll find out in tonight's presidential debate. The Democrats attack the wealth of millionaires. The Democrats attack the wealth of billionaires.

Will the Democrats start updating their rhetoric to confiscate the wealth of the trillionaire class as well? ...Or will they overlook the trillionaires and I'll be immune?

Which scenario would YOU rather have: The government take my money and waste it, or me continue to offer KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program prizes funded from my own figurative pocket? ‘cause KoopaTV doesn't make any revenue, but we still have costs. This site exists purely to do good for society, no matter the price. That's better than what the United States government does.

(Seriously, have you looked at the prizes for the current round, round 29? Only a trillionaire could afford to give away that much stuff for FREE.) 


Ludwig will be watching the Democrat presidential debate tonight. Stay tuned for his analysis tomorrow (Thursday), and he'll be sure to mention any concerns about trillionaires. Ludwig supposes an irresponsible billionaire, millionaire, or even a thousandaire could afford to give out the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program prizes, but you got to have a trillion in the bank to truly be well off enough to give away that money. You are free to comment in the comments section if you think negatively about Ludwig writing an article essentially to brag about money. He doesn't think he'll keep playing Market Crashers.


Ludwig watched the debate, and notes all mention of trillions in his analysis.

Why Pokémon National Dexers Failed But Sonic's Movie Got Redesigned

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The right circumstances to affect change.

I just received this request from ShinyGirafarig, one of KoopaTV's long-time readers, which I'll transcribe here since our requests page is so popular that it no longer anchors to specific comments correctly:

“Is there a right way to ask for things from major companies?

Is there a respectable way for the target audience to ask for changes such as to make Sonic the Hedgehog more accurate in the movie? To add back all the Pokémon in a future game? Some other request? I keep seeing memes jokingly saying that "bullying worked" for why Sonic was fixed.

While there is always "vote with your wallet" sometimes bad products get sold because people did not know they would like a product after buying them and companies would get the wrong message. Or being able to actually boycott a product. A company can easily think they no longer like product when in reality the fandom does not like the direction it headed.” 

Some four years ago, I wrote an article—also driven by a KoopaTV fan request—called “The Effect of Fan Influence”. That article largely covers ShinyGirafarig's request, but rather than tell her I already wrote about it, I'm going to take my article's points as a framework, and expand on it using the two examples she brought up regarding how the Sonic the Hedgehog movie now has a redesigned Sonic the Hedgehog after fans demanded it to the movie's director, yet the National Dex concerns fans brought up with Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield were ultimately ignored for the final release.

Catastrophic: YouTube Culls Comments For COPPA

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Rated E for everyone? Off with your head!

At the beginning of September, Google-owned YouTube got wrecked by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with a record-breaking $170 million settlement for boisterously violating the Child's Online Privacy Protection Act, henceforth known as COPPA. This act serves to prevent online properties—like YouTube—from knowingly collecting private information from kids, defined as those under 13 years old. That ended up being what YouTube was doing, collecting information on anyone (including kids) who viewed videos, and knowingly, too. Check out that press release for some quotes catching Google red-handed, including them telling toy makers Mattel and/or Hasbro, “YouTube is today's leader in reaching children age 6–11 against top TV channels.”

No one really paid any attention to this until last week, when YouTube sent an e-mail to every channel owner telling us that there is mandatory, important action we, YouTube channel owners, need to take, in one of three methods:

1. Automatically mark our channel (and every video inside) as not-for-kids. YouTube will continue to collect all viewers’ information who watch these videos
2. Automatically mark our channel (and every video inside) as for-kids. YouTube won't collect viewers’ private information on these videos
3. Mark each and every video individually as either for-kids or not-for-kids

If you mark this incorrectly and the FTC feels like prosecuting you, you can be fined up to $42,350 per violation—that's per video. (You probably wouldn't get fined over $170 million, though, if you happen to have 4,015 YouTube videos or more.)

There's no safe, easy answer, as demonstrated in this 2x2 matrix I made:

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 1

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's the first week of me playing Ring Fit Adventure!

Welcome to the first of KoopaTV's fitness log series, as announced last week. I never figured out what a non-ironic fitness/workout/weekly I'm-going-to-lose-weight blog actually looks like, so I don't have anything to parody as a model. Given that, I'm just going to experiment with formatting and content. If you have any recommendations or things you'd like to see, let me know in the comments section. Normally, I'd write this sort of thing at the end of an article, but I feel like being upfront because it's easier to write this than the actual content. Not sure what I was thinking to be honest.

Week 1 Impressions of Ring Fit Adventure

Ring Fit Adventure pwned me on Day 1, and that was just doing all the settings. I had to select options such as that I don't do any exercise for someone of my age group, and that I live outside of Canada. I told the game my weight and age, and I guess I'll tell you the former number as well.

I'm 140 pounds as of Sunday night (November 10).
A lot of that weight is my shell and I can't do anything about that. But I'd love to get back to 130.

Playing Ring Fit Adventure, and this is a bad mindset I have right now that I'm hoping I'll lose later, feels like “I'm going to exercise and have fun with it.” instead of “I'm going to have fun and get exercise out of it.” I want to think of it as a game first. But I'm not. I also really, really want to play other games now, and I haven't played anything else on my Switch all week.