Fighting Game Released: Yang2020 Path to Presidency

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - If you got $1,000 a month, you could fund pet projects like this easily.

In the tradition of KoopaTV publishing an interactive game project every year—back in the days when I could budget my time better in part because other staff members helped me more often—I'd like to use this article to introduce you to the just-published-on-Steam fighting game, Yang2020 Path to Presidency.

This isn't some random Flash game I found from nowhere looking for article material... presidential candidate Andrew Yang even tweeted about it! There's something fairly special about:

1. A person-based fanbase that goes through the effort to produce a videogame about their person
2. The person in question acknowledges and supports the game effort

Most other core politician supporter bases will never do something like make a videogame, either because their supporter base isn't made up of people who will do things like this (for example, politicians who mostly answer to wealthy rich donors won't see those wealthy rich donors dedicate their non-existent programming skills or time) or because that politician is, in fact, rather generic, interchangeable, and uninspiring. People tend not to devote free time towards promoting those kinds of politicians.

If You're Cheating, Does That Count As Beating?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Talking about videogames, not about spouses.

Two nights ago on the KoopaTV Requests Page (which anyone can use to get me to write about a specific topic) I was asked by ShinyGirafarig...

“Is there a wrong way to play and/or beat games? Does it matter if it is an outside cheat device, ingame cheat codes, or a feature officially added years later by the developers themselves such as the Rewind feature?” 

She was inspired by this tweet by some guy named Mike Matei, who is apparently a videogame streamer who must be enjoying a lot of publicity right now, especially since I've been aware of the tweet BEFORE the request:

Retweet if you agree: If you use the “rewind feature” that’s now standard on many NES and SNES games available on Switch, you DID NOT by any stretch of the imagination beat the god damn game.

— Mike Matei (@Mike_Matei) December 28, 2019

Mr. Matei's site has a list of games he's beaten on stream, and some of those are rather... difficult. Clearly, he takes pride in beating games.

I think I'm pretty qualified to discuss this topic, since I basically already did in this comments-section discussion with KoopaTV regular Lheticus Videre, about the new NES and SNES games available on the Switch as of December, with special emphasis on Kirby Super Star. We happen to use the same language of “beat” that Mr. Matei did, so I'll just reproduce the conversation here, as well as the video I made for the occasion:

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 7: The Christmas Tree Forest Runner

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - (Note: This has nothing to do with Christmas other than happening during the week of Christmas.)

It turns out that this week's KoopaTV Fitness Friday is very expansive. I played FIVE days worth of Ring Fit Adventure, all to finish World 6, as well as the entire World 7. (That means Week 8 will begin with World 8, resulting in parity between the week and the world numbers.)

That means this fitness log includes TWO Dragaux boss fights, plus many town requests, minigames, a miniboss, character development, and a lot more. Plus, a lot of suggestive material regarding one of the Four Masters, Allegra. Enjoy.

No More Heroes 3's Galactic Superhero Rankings? ...Should I Trust It?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - At least they talk in English.

First of all, the game is called No More Heroes 3 but the logo has it as No More Heroes III, which is inconsistent with the previous game being No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle in both logo and name. I guess after ten years, SUDA 51 to forget how to do this naming thing with his series.

If you didn't value your own life very highly, you might have seen the trailer for No More Heroes 3 at The Game Awards 2019. That's not even close to the real, full-length trailer, which Nintendo uploaded afterwards here:
 

We first saw No More Heroes 3 announced at Nintendo's E3 2019, with a similar bait-and-switch trailer. ...Though that trailer actually makes a lot more sense after watching the one embedded immediately above! It's like it's the same game with the same theme (and the same alien spaceship)! They need to involve space (at least, more than they already did in No More Heroes 2) because the story of Santa Destroy is obviously over and there's not much more else they can do without drastic escalation.

Here's my problem. A game called Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes released in January 2019. I actually bought it at launch, and it's one of the biggest Nintendo Switch mismatches since that time I (and the rest of KoopaTV) got Rocket League. Just the idea of continuing my playthrough fills me with dread, and it's given me extreme doubts about if I should continue my No More Heroes fandom. What if No More Heroes 3 is as bad as Travis Strikes Again? What if the first two No More Heroes games were actually this bad, but the Wii era's game selection obscured my tastes and I never realised it? WHAT IF I'VE BEEN LIVING A LIE?

Can I ever trust a No More Heroes game ever again?

According to the YouTube comments, the whole alien thing is explained by playing through Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, so if I don't want to miss lore, I have to go back and play through that top-down bland mess. Maybe I should just spoil the game.


Ludwig has massive doubts over the prospect of No More Heroes 3 due to how “ugh” the previous game in the franchise was, which is why he always found it unfair that his staff provided “Nintendo wins E3. Not even Ludwig can bitch about it. He got No More Heroes.” logic during the Nintendo E3 2019 reaction log that Ludwig wasn't present for. Help console the Koopaling in the comments section.


No More Heroes 3 has been delayed to after 2020, shooting for 2021. It will prioritise quality.

Battle Arena Etiquette: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - They don't teach this in school.

It may be true that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has been released for a year now, but it's Christmas! There are always new and more people buying the game.

There are three ways to get match-made online in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate—Quick Smash (Elite Smash), Battle Arenas, and Online Tourneys. The most important and enjoyable of those methods is the Battle Arena, which is the only way to play with specific people such as those on your friend list (which you can set as private rooms). You can also enter public rooms. Creators of public rooms (owners) have the powers to set the battle rules of the room, activate or deactivate voice chat through the Nintendo Switch Online app (which no one uses), and kick people.

I often make Battle Arenas and am amazed by the nonexistent or even negative level of basic etiquette displayed by players. I'll spell out the rules everyone should follow, and then get into some specific intricacies for my arenas. Following these will prevent a drop in your personal reputation and should provide a more smooth game experience:

Aviary Attorney: Definitive Edition Flies to Switch?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - More Ace Attorney-esque games coming to 2020!

Suppose you want amazing adventure-game Ace Attorney action, but you've already bought and played through the actual Ace Attorney games. (And if you haven't, check out yesterday's article telling you that they are all available for major percents off the list price, but only for a very limited time.)

Maybe you read KoopaTV's article two weeks ago about indie game Murder by Numbers, which is not only giving Ace Attorney vibes due to its style, but also because they literally have the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney composer on the staff. But that's releasing “early 2020” and that could mean anything. You want more definite information. You want it sooner.

May I interest you in Aviary Attorney from indie developer Sketchy Logic and porter Vertical Reach? If you ignore that it's been released for four years now on Steam, I'll have you know that Aviary Attorney: Definitive Edition is releasing on the Nintendo Switch... January 30, 2020. That's not long from now! 

Ace Attorney is my favourite game franchise. I also really like birds, as KoopaTV established early in our existence with this bird-themed Menorah. (Happy Chanukkah, I guess.) Naturally, Aviary Attorney interests me, but I have not played it before.

Before I give a full-throated endorsement of Aviary Attorney, because the game HAS been out, there's a number of turn-off impressions people have already made about the game:

1. That colour scheme isn't a trailer thing. The whole game is like that, though the Definitive Edition has “re-scanned, re-edited, and re-drawn art”. You might think it's stylistic and wonderful, but thinking about a multi-hour experience of looking at that seems...straining
2. The game's investigative activities are on a timer, determined by how many/which actions you take, which differs from Ace Attorney where you can explore indefinitely, for every last piece of dialogue. Being limited in my exploration like that isn't something that I like
3. It's $15 on Steam and will be $20 on the Switch, yet the game is quite short
4. While this won't apply to the Switch version, the game did release as an unfinished product, which upset buyers at the time
5. Paris sucks, and I wonder if one of the animals here was the ape that Parisian lawyer Benjamin Hunter trained

People are quick to say that Aviary Attorney is filled with charm, however, and that may be all you need to have a good experience. We'll see. Despite the above, it has overwhelmingly positive reception in user reviews.

I'm obligated to maintain the horse jokes because I'm trying to finally get Pocket Card Jockey a Wikipedia page.
More on that another time.

For years, Ludwig thought this was another name for the Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law game released back on the Wii, which he also never played. Clearly, this is actually something very different. He is interested in your experience and recommendations, and that's why the article headline has a question mark at the end.

CAPCOM Winter Sale 2019! Up to 75% Off?!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - As good an opportunity as any.

You may remember as recently as less than a month ago I was making fun of CAPCOM for their Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2019 sales. They actually redeemed themselves after the article was published... it just took several days and they weren't very transparent about it.

CAPCOM is back at it again with holiday/winter sales for 2019. Beginning TODAY and ending December 30 at 2:59 AM Eastern, you can get a variety of CAPCOM games at discounted prices on the Nintendo eShop. (As well as other systems, though those have different dates associated so consult those on your own.) This includes all the HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED Ace Attorney games at their usual discounts that you've last seen them at, including...

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (Switch): $19.99 (33.33% off)
• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (3DS): $9.99 (50% off) 
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney–Spirit of Justice (3DS): $11.99 (60% off) 
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney–Dual Destinies (3DS): $8.99 (70% off)
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (3DS): $11.99 (60% off) 

Every other CAPCOM game on the Switch or 3DS you can think of is probably on sale, too, even the recently-released (from the past two–three months) Devil May Cry 2 ($14.99, or 25% off), and Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 ($19.99 each, or 33.33% off). The 75% off includes games like Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition, and Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara on the Wii U.

By the way, since I haven't mentioned it yet: the Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection got delayed from January 21 to February 25, 2020. You can still pre-order it to get the Reploid Remix bonus, or you can likely wait a long time after release for it to be offered for free if Mega Man 11 is any indication. (Mega Man 11 is 50% off right now.) There's minigames and art added to the base collection (no pre-order required). I just pre-ordered (pre-purchased) it through the Nintendo eShop. I wanted to pre-order it through CAPCOM's store (physical shipment) but they rejected my debit card and claimed there's an error. The Nintendo eShop accepts my debit card all too well, so there you go.


Ludwig actually bought Mega Man 11 and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy during the Thanksgiving sale, making it the third time he's purchased the first three games in the Ace Attorney series. You should help inflate the Ace Attorney franchises selling numbers, too, and now until the end of the 29th is the best time to do that! You'll have fun playing the games, too.


We should note that Ōkami HD is at more of a discount now than it was for CAPCOM Winter Sale 2018. Now at 40% off from 25% off.
Missed this sale? Try three weeks later for another chance.
To make it clear, Ludwig got Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection just for the music. Here's what he thinks about it.
CAPCOM puts their games on sale in the winter of 2020, too.

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 6: Darkly Influenced Four Masters

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - HAIL LORD DRAGAUX.

We're now at the sixth KoopaTV Fitness Friday, featuring the wonderful Nintendo Switch game Ring Fit Adventure. Quite frankly, I'm at a point with the game where I'm actually really looking forward to what happens. There's definitely a story cooking up here, and it's motivating me to want to play more.

Week 6 is a very direct sequel to the fitness log for week 5, since week 5 ended with us encountering three of the four masters in World 5: Dragaux vs. The Four Masters. That leaves the beginning of this log to have us see the fourth master, Guru Andma, and fight Dragaux. Then we'll start playing World 6, and we'll see what meeting the Four Masters brought did for us.

Over my birthday (which was published about on the day of week 5's fitness log), I got a real professional super electric toothbrush, the Oral-B Pro 5000. I think that's somewhat relevant for a fitness log because Ring Fit Adventure often provides diet-related tips. So far, there's nothing yet on dental hygiene, but maybe there will be. Dentists certainly claim there will. (I have a dentist appointment coming up in a month. You may remember I wrote an article five months ago with the title, “Remind Me To Bring A Plushie To My Next Dentist Appointment”.)

December 19 2019 Democrat Presidential Primary Debate 6 ANALYSIS!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's not my preferred narrow field...

With KoopaTV's favourite Democrat candidate for president, Tulsi Gabbard, pulling a Ludwig and boycotting an event that they weren't even invited to, that leaves precious few reasons for why I'm still covering the Democrat presidential primary debates of 2019–2020. I've come up with four reasons:

1. Watching Joe Biden make incoherent statements is a guilty pleasure
2. I need to dedicate regularly-occurring article space to attacking the worst candidate of this election cycle, Fraudulent Elizabeth Warren, for the safety of the universe (including Koopa Kingdom)
3. This Twitter conversation with an Andrew Yang supporter where he believes Andrew Yang will get 10 minutes or more of attention in this debate
4. It'll provide a two-week streak of KoopaTV covering Thursday-night shit-shows, last week being The Game Awards 2019

The debate is hosted by PBS and POLITICO, and somewhere in that combination, they appear to be setting this up to be rigged:

In this debate are Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang.
At the time of this screenshot (this morning), PBS REALLY didn't want you to know that Joe Biden is 77 years old.

I'll say this: The good thing about PBS are the lack of corporate commercials, which means they're not biased by sponsors, and Bernie Sanders/Fraudulent Elizabeth Warren can not say that the pharmaceutical companies are advertising during the debate as an applause line.

ANDREW YANG GOT MORE THAN TEN MINUTES! WOOHOO!
(Well, he was still dead last, and still got little over half the talking time of the top folks, but...)

The Xbox Series X and Naming

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - How is one supposed to judge hardware?

For all of the correct statements one can make about The Game Awards being an awful ceremony that damages civilisation, there was one newsworthy event from The Game Awards 2019 (though it later had to be walked back): Microsoft's head of gaming, Phil Spencer, appeared and revealed the Xbox Series X. In our reaction log, our only things we had to say about it were, “That's a bad name” and asking, “Is ‘Xbox Series X’ supposed to be a Mega Man X reference?” Here's the useless trailer:

Previously known as Project Scarlett (and shown with similarly-scant detail at Microsoft's E3 2019), Xbox Series X isn't the name of the new console. It's the Xbox. Just that. Series X describes the build of it. There may be more of those builds with different particulars, but otherwise, Microsoft is dropping everything else and just going with Xbox. The console is a little tower (which people are unfairly bullying like they did to the GameCube) you just turn off and on and put disks into.

I'm not quite sure how this plays into Microsoft also saying a few years ago that the concept of game console generations will now be done away with.