Boycott the Hamburger Button on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Those monsters...!

There are various ways I can write about the news surrounding the PlayStation 5 controller reveal. I could try to claim it's ugly with its two-toned colour scheme, but it's nearly a guarantee that Sony will release other colour schemes through its lifetime, or even at launch. I could try to claim it's uncomfortable for whatever reason, but I really can't claim much about how it feels without actually holding one and using it during a game.

What can I write that won't be easily shot down by common sense or a “you need to wait and see” approach? How about a criticism of a key design decision that will be unlikely to change unless there is a large uprising against it?

The PlayStation 5's DualSense controller is continuing the Xbox One's travesty of being a dedicated game controller with a hamburger button.

Left: Xbox Series X controller, revealed in March 2020.
Right: PlayStation 5 DualSense controller, revealed in April 2020.

An Industry Solution: ESRB To Provide Loot Box Warning

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Let's hope people read it.

Once upon a time, the gaming media made a huge deal about Republican Senator Josh Hawley's proposed legislation for the United States government to federally regulate loot box mechanics in videogames. What they haven't told you since is that the bill has gone absolutely nowhere and has died in committee. It's forgotten about by both the media and by Congress. Senator Hawley, along with his two Democrat co-sponsors Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal, have since gone on to focus on many other things, most of which are also similarly doomed.

And yet loot boxes haven't gone away as a hot topic among the gaming industry. That's why the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has just introduced a new rating disclosure: In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items).

I suggested back last year that the ESRB included that in-game purchases are in games to arm parents with information. This is an expansion of that. There's “In-Game Purchases” for normal DLC (including things like expansion passes where you don't know what you're actually getting at the time of purchase), and now “In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items)”, which features loot boxes and also encompasses things similar to loot boxes.

The ESRB cites unspecified research saying that parents wish to know that a game has In-Game Purchases and they don't care if they're random or casino-like. I assume that, to them, it doesn't matter why a kid is stealing their credit card to buy some in-game item, just that they are stealing their credit card. The ESRB states that this new descriptor is a factor of gamer demand (and not necessarily parents). The ESRB went with it on a “more, specific information is good” basis.

Here are the ESRB's exact descriptions: 

Gaming is the Entertainment of Choice During Coronavirus

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Best form of entertainment or what?

According to the New York Times (which is normally an untrustworthy FAKE NEWS outlet, but they're citing data from Earnest Research), there are many changes rippling throughout the United States economy due to social distancing and the coronavirus. That's obvious, but it's fun to put some data to it and see the specifics of that and what it means for videogames:

On their all-industries chart, gaming is just under Online Grocers as earning the biggest “more spending” percentage.

I'd say that the trends already favoured gaming growth pre-pandemic, with gaming rising to surpass the other forms of media & entertainment in a much faster time already. Videogames are ideal, though regrettably that's due to digital distribution unless you already have the games purchased before the pandemic. The data also suggests all brick-and-mortar retailers have massive declines, including electronics stores like Best Buy. I mean, I haven't gone there in a while. I don't know if they're even still open. (...Looking at their website... they're not.) The shipping industry is down as well, but maybe that makes sense, and maybe I'll write about that next week.

The fitness industry is down dramatically. Ring Fit Adventure isn't included in that, but it's also sold out everywhere and has been for quite some time now. In fact, the Nintendo Switch in general is sold out. (Screw the Lite.) You can buy games digitally all you want, but everything that requires a physical presence (hardware, peripheral-based games) seem to be facing severe shortages.

Lastly, the cruise industry is almost 90% down from 2019. I wonder why. The KoopaTV Loyalty Cruiser will majestically set sail—somewhere, even if the United States government will try to stop us—in a month, and all of the people who aren't doing the cruising scene are gonna be SO jealous of your great opportunity.

If you are still looking to clinch your ticket, just win the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program for the round ending at the end of April 2020. Not that hard. You're a gamer, getting all of this additional time and opportunity to hone your gaming skills. You can easily game the system and win.


Kamek promised a month ago that “[c]oming up soon, KoopaTV's staff members are collaborating on a special article on what you can do during your voluntary or government-mandated social distancing!” There hasn't been any such behind-the-scenes collaboration so far, but based on these stats, they'll probably involve a lot of videogames, and perhaps some music/video streaming. ...If that special article even ever happens.


Ludwig writes more about the implications of the shipping industry being down over here.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy—A Year Old, Achievement Playrates, and 50% off on Xbox One

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's a trilogy... play all of the games.

I don't like to call attention to anniversaries since they lend themselves to pointless filler articles. That written, CAPCOM decided to honour the April 9, 2019 one-year anniversary of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy by putting it at 50% off on... just the Xbox One. The sale, deemed the “CAPCOM Spring Savings”, ends in mere hours, but if you miss it, it's worth buying at full price. It's three games (that were originally MSRP'd at $30 each) in one $30 compilation (temporarily $15). Trilogy. Three games.

I'm putting emphasis on that part because, thanks to game achievements being used as a data collection tool on the Xbox One, we can see how many people have gone through each part of the game. Note all of these statistics only represent Xbox One owners of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy. Also note that people can start Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Justice For All and/or Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations in any order, but the episodes within those have to be done sequentially:

1. 85.37% of people who own Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy have started playing it. I assume the rest have bought it (perhaps on sale) and never touched it. Touch it!
2. 78.95% of gamers have cleared Episode 1 (The First Turnabout) of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. This only takes about half an hour of game time to do.
3. 25.23% of gamers have cleared Episode 5 (Rise from the Ashes) of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which is the final episode. 
4. 25.84% of gamers have cleared Episode 1 (The Lost Turnabout) of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All. It's also pretty quick.
5. 14.68% of gamers have cleared Episode 4 (Farewell, My Turnabout) of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All. It's considered the best case in the trilogy...by several opinions. It's the last episode of that game.
6. 15.11% of gamers have cleared Episode 1 (Turnabout Memories) of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations. It's lengthier—and better—than the other games’ Episode 1s.
7. 9.58% of gamers have cleared Episode 5 (Bridge to the Turnabout) of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations. This is the last episode of the whole trilogy.
8. 9.05% of gamers have cleared every episode contained in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy.

I guarantee the 89.95% of gamers who haven't unlocked this will enjoy themselves if they do unlock it.
(And cry when it's all over.)

Come on, you're in quarantine now. What else are you doing? Play through the games. You already bought them. (And if you haven't, buy them now. On any platform, quite frankly.)

There's a larger discussion about how many gamers actually ever finish the games they're playing (and across other games, it is a small percentage) and the implications on that for game design and discussing spoilers in fan communities. I won't have that discussion here, since I just wanted to advertise the sale.


Maybe it would be interesting to come back in a year and see if these stats have budged at all. It might also be interesting to see how much they vary across the different platforms (with the hypothesis that the Switch version would have the best play rates), but not all platforms supply this kind of data.


The most recent time Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy was 50% off was on the Switch, in March. It's never been that low on Xbox One before.
Sometimes CAPCOM also puts their other games on sale on the Switch, too, including other Ace Attorney games. Also in March 2020.
The Switch also gets a whole CAPCOM Spring Sale a week after this.

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 22: Personal Weakness

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's always risky to admit my weaknesses to the Internet, but Ring Fit Adventure is on-the-snout...

This may be the second-to-last edition of the KoopaTV Fitness Log series—KoopaTV Fitness Fridays. At least, for a while. But maybe not. I'm supposed to be playing Ring Fit Adventure every week and telling you all about it as a source of motivation and evidence that I'm taking my physical fitness seriously. Some folks take it as a walkthrough of Adventure Mode, which is... fine, I suppose.

I'm going through this on difficulty level 30, which has a big impact on the time it takes to go through these worlds. Last week, for Fitness Log Week 21, I completed World 21 and made progress for the initial stages of World 22: Land of Hades, where I'm continuing after completing the training sections managed by Allegra (who has troubles with jealousy) and Armando (who has troubles with getting a girlfriend). Next, I have two paths, which are surely controlled by the remaining two of the Four Masters: Abdonis and Guru Andma.

This is the game's way of telling us what happened in Week 21.
(Note that “get a girlfriend” is given the significant text colour.)

The upper path's story level is Six-Peak Temple, featuring Abdonis. (It's a pun off, you know, six-pack.) He laments that the only things he can trust are his abdominals. Even his mother abandoned him. (He abandoned her, technically, but whatever.) He's tasking me to get to the goal with select Yellow Fit Skills, which are the best Fit Skills in this game, so I'm not worried. At my disposal are Leg Scissors Lv.2 (three-range), Overhead Lunge Twist Lv.2 (one-range), Seated Ring Raise Lv.2 (one-range), Leg Raise Lv.2 (one-range), and Pendulum Bend Lv.2 (three-range). These exclude the five-range Abs Fit Skills I love and adore, but they also exclude gross stuff like Planks, so, oh well. 

None of the available Fit Skills are inherently awful exercises I want to avoid, it's just... It takes almost three and a half minutes of in-game exercise time to do 48 repetitions of Overhead Lunge Twist, and that only does half a health bar of a Dark Stepper enemy. By comparison, 60 repetitions of the Seated Ring Raise has slightly less power, but only takes a minute to go through.

Also a factor in long, forced-fights? Six-Peak Temple has a monster group with four monsters, but I can only hit three at a time, at most. Ha... Hm. At least my limited hits can be very impactful, especially with smoothie-boosting.

Watch Fugitive Wendy O. Koopa's Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX Stream

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Arguably deserved for killing her Geodude. (And unaffiliated Tauros.)

Tonight Wendy O. Koopa returned to her streaming fun, with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX. It's a game we all endorse at KoopaTV, especially if you haven't played the original Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team or Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team. (Though she has played the original.)

Tonight she climbed through Great Canyon, fled through Lapis Cave, and attempted to climb Mt. Blaze, as an Eevee named Chika with a Chikorita at her side. ...Strange naming, but...

The channel is intended for mature audiences 'cause she swears a lot. It's fine. I watched through it and chatted!

Watch So I'm just going to blow up. :)))) from Capt_Murasa on www.twitch.tv

Good call back to the Alberta fires that Koopa Kingdom was responsible for.

Wendy notes that Chikorita's tickles would be far more effective if she used her leaf and not her... head?

Ludwig by-lined this because he wrote this little write-up while Wendy is playing, but obviously the content is Wendy's work! As of publishing this, she's struggling to even reach Moltres. Will she be able to beat it? She thinks she's “so screwed. So screwed!” ...And if she manages to beat Moltres... can she beat Articuno, too?

ARMS North American Online Open April 2020 Recap

By HEAVY LOBSTER - I entered the largest competitive ARMS tournament in history. How did I do?

Recently, Nintendo has been working to bring their 2017 fighting game IP, ARMS, back into the limelight. An ARMS character has been announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Nintendo’s offered a free trial of ARMS for everyone with Nintendo Switch Online, and during said trial period they held a North American ARMS Online Open. This helped attract the largest turnout for any ARMS event in the game’s history with 880 entrants. I was one of them. For this tournament, the build I largely relied on was Ninjara with Slapamander/Hydra/Roaster, a loadout favoring faster fire-element ARMS to match Ninjara’s speed and elusiveness. Hydra is there to serve as a fast, light poking tool and anti-aerial; Slapamander is there as a fast curved arm effective at going around larger ARMS and catching side dashes; and Roaster is there as a fast and versatile glove for situations where an ARM with more weight/better horizontal tracking is preferred over Hydra.

Like many fighting games, ARMS has a best-of-3 round format, and on top of that this tournament, like most others, has a best-of-3 games format, at least up until top 8. Unfortunately, the tournament was also single-elimination until top 8, with completely random seeding. This might have been a necessary compromise given the size of the tourney, but it could still be rough on anyone who got paired with a top player in their first match. The stagelist was a bit liberal compared to what the competitive community normally uses, but it still at least got rid of Snake Park/[NAME REDACTED]/Cinema Deux, which are generally considered the worst offenders for competitive purposes. The stages were randomly selected, another compromise to avoid taking extra time with stage striking, but it added another element of luck into the mix.

My first three matches were fairly straightforward, with two Mechanicas and a Helix, and in general I dealt with them without much trouble, considering fire ARMS cut right through Mechanica’s armor and Hydra/Slapamander is pretty effective at forcing Helix out of tower mode and punishing his jumps. Match 4 was when the difficulty started picking up.

Super Mario's LEGO Debut: Teaching Kids to Murder

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I remember when LEGO used to instill family-friendly values, like pizza beats jail cells.

I thought of several different angles this article could take. One is complaining that LEGO sets are more expensive and technologically complicated than they used to be, but on the cost front, that's debunked with statistics. As for the technology, from what I can tell, this may be the most technologically advanced LEGO set ever, combining the LCD screens from the LEGO alarm clocks and the colour sensors from the LEGO MINDSTORMS STEM-education series. Meet the collaboration between Nintendo and LEGO, big enough for a press release, with the product releasing August 1, 2020:
 

For $60, you can purchase the starter set, and then for an additional $30 and/or another $100, you can get the Piranha Plant Power Slide Expansion Set and the Bowser's Castle Boss Battle Expansion Set, respectively. There are plans for additional future expansions, such as the Monty Mole & Super Mushroom Expansion Set.

Here's the angle I am going to take in this article: It's blatantly encouraging evil activity. Like, what's going on here:

Punch-Out!!'s Unfair Music Treatment vs. What ARMS Will Get in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The whole Punch-Out!! series got robbed. What will ARMS do?

You may remember my live reaction to the announcement that the next new DLC character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will be from ARMS. It was somewhere along the lines of “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”. I also dislike the concept of yet another long-range-based fighter.

But there might be one positive to ARMS representation. There will likely be an ARMS-based stage with a lot of ARMS-based music. Much of the music from the ARMS soundtrack is around different character-based remixes to the main ARMS theme, which is a fine one. Nintendo's composers who worked on ARMS, Yasuaki Iwata and Atsuko Asahi, did a good job.

This is similar to how Next Level Games and their composers (Darren Radtke, Chad York, and Mike Peacock) approached Punch-Out!! Wii. As I wrote in my Punch-Out!! Wii review: “Sakurai should take notes. This is how you remix the same main theme over a dozen times in your game without backlash.” (That's referencing Super Smash Bros. Brawl.) Every opponent in the game (over 12) has their own variation, and they're pretty awesome.

But what happened with the music from Punch-Out!! as it relates to the Super Smash Bros. games? Well, here's all the music in the Boxing Ring stage in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate:

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 21: The Gunsho Temple Loophole

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Inside Hades is a tribute to the Second Amendment?

I originally declared that KoopaTV's Fitness Friday series exists as my training for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Then they got delayed to 2021. At this point, I'm almost done with Ring Fit Adventure's Adventure Mode, and I've already spent several months so far, so I might as well see it to the end. This article continues off last week (week 20).

I already exhausted myself (mostly my arms) playing Ring Fit Adventure on Sunday night before even starting Adventure Mode, because I was testing out the new Rhythm Game feature for Monday's article. None of the time spent on that is recorded in the Adventure Mode timer and there is no Rhythm Gym or anything in the Adventure Mode. There is, however, the Fitness Gym (which does have a main menu equivalent), and that's where I'm tortuously starting this fitness log. Specifically, on difficulty level 30 in World 21: Between Land. It's the Core Set, and the reward is one measly Diamond:

1. Bow Pull (x40)—This is the worst damn Fit Skill you can start with, especially since I just did a lot of pushing and pulling with my arms over the Rhythm Game mode. You're supposed to pretend the Ring-Con is like a bow and pull it like you would a bow (because everyone playing Ring Fit Adventure has archery experience?), but if you're unethical, the game is only measuring that the Ring-Con is being pulled. How you pull it is up to you.
2. Overhead Lunge Twist (x40)—At least this one is much easier. Hold the Ring-Con above you, and twist your upper body left or right, making sure to rotate the Ring-Con with you.
3. Pendulum Bend (x30)—Bend down and move the Ring-Con like a swinging pendulum, except it floats at the left-most/right-most points for longer than an actual pendulum would. You won't be looking at the screen for this. If you're a bad person, you can just stand (or even sit) and just revolve the Ring-Con. But they're not hard to do correctly...
4. Seated Ring Raise (x60)—Sit down and raise the Ring-Con above your head and then lower it down in front of you. Repeat.
5. Plank (x30)—Damn right I'm going to cheat on this. You can trick the game by starting in the Plank position. Then stand up. Bend your knee to complete a rep. It'll HOLD while your leg is straight.
6. Warrior III Pose (x28)—Warrior III is too good to cheat, and there's no point since all Yoga poses are overly-generous in scoring anyway. Stand on one leg and make a T-pose by bending forward while extending your held-up leg back.

My reward for being an unethical cheater (and I realise that's a turn-off for anyone casually coming across this article) is an overworld chest containing Warrior III Pose Lv.3, which is a great Fit Skill (along with being generous to perform correctly).

By the way, before I keep going, note that this article obviously has story spoilers.