(Don't join the) NintendoVS Challenge Cup May 2022!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Too bad there's not much interesting stuff to add here.

Today, for everyone like me who isn't into Nintendo Switch Sports, Nintendo of America announced the NintendoVS Challenge Cup May 2022, which they are positioning as a “tournament” even though it shouldn't be defined as that.

I already wrote an article back in February about why you shouldn't join the NintendoVS Challenge Cup February 2022... and I could really just copy-paste that whole article for this time but change February to May. That is, after all, what Nintendo did with their own ruleset, which is exactly the same despite poor player reception.

They DID change the colour scheme on the logo from red and black to dark blue and light blue, though.

Here's a summary of what you'll get into if you decide to join. The NintendoVS Challenge Cup is an entirely in-game affair, accessed by going into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's Online section to the notice on the top right and registering to the Challenge Cup while agreeing to terms. For the three hours on May 7, 2022, you will participate in a Quick Play-esque scenario where you can choose your character and get match-made with someone with a similar Tourney Score as you. You start with 15,000 Tourney Score. If you win, it goes up by an arbitrary amount. If you lose, it goes down by an arbitrary amount. Then you can go back to the Character Selection Screen and pick a different character, or keep using that character. Your Tourney Score is per user, not per character, so it's the same Score even if you change characters. You won't get to immediately rematch the person you just fought, though you may be match-made against them again later. There is no way of knowing how your Tourney Score compares to others’ during the event, so you won't know if you're in the Top 8 scores necessary to win a prize. (You needed over 29,000 for February's. The winners include competitive, professional players, several of which streamed their runs for content.)

The actual matches are two-stock five-minute matches with Final Smash metre and certain items turned on. In practice, this means that it's really a one-stock game with the Final Smash deleting the second stock (even though metre-induced Final Smashes are weaker than Smash Ball-induced Final Smashes, some Final Smashes are so powerful that it doesn't really matter and they can KO extremely early—so the metagame would be a bit different than the Fighter Usage Stats I just published earlier this week because that wasn't based on Final Smashes being in play), and that one stock is heavily influenced by the unpredictable appearance of items. Since competitive players tend to be the ones who win the prizes from these anyway, it's not totally RNG-based from a macro-level, but on an individual micro match-to-match level, RNG is a large factor. That can be very frustrating, especially because it's in our nature to remember the more unfortunate incidents where you might lose due to circumstances beyond your control than remembering epic wins. Actually remembering what happens is hard, because saving Replays is disabled during this event.

Prizes include a backpack, a trophy, a jacket, a carrying case, and My Nintendo Gold Points ($100, $75, or $50 depending on your placing). Same as before. Whatever.


If you wanted actual competitive rules from a Nintendo-sponsored tournament, you should've joined the NintendoVS North American Open April 2022. Ludwig took his own advice and didn't join the February Challenge Cup. If he's a wise Koopaling, he won't join the May 2022 Challenge Cup either and will be doing something better with his time than being frustrated.


The Challenge Cup returns with the NintendoVS Challenge Cup June 2023, now with stage hazards on.

Don't Fall for Yuji Naka Trying to Redeem Himself or BALAN WONDERWORLD

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Don't fall for it.

Earlier today Yuji Naka went on a rant on Twitter, providing a tell-some story to the world now that his trial (as in, through a court) with SQUARE ENIX is over (...and apparently he had one of those) and he can talk freely about it and the troubled development of BALAN WONDERWORLD, which is an infamously awful 3D platformer that released last year. There is a presumably competently English-translated version here, since using machine translations on Yuji Naka's Japanese text comes out to incoherent gibberish.

Basically, Yuji Naka was removed as the director of BALAN WONDERWORLD half a year before its release, so he filed a lawsuit. This removal was done by Square Enix's “producer, head of marketing, head of sound, managing director, and [Human Resources].” Essentially, no one wanted Yuji Naka around. He cited two reasons: Number one, something about the game's soundtrack. I'm not entirely sure what he's talking about when he mentions the YouTuber and an arranged soundtrack, but Yuji Naka wanted the game's original soundtrack released. And SQUARE ENIX hasn't done so—although they haven't taken down unofficial uploads of the soundtrack on YouTube despite those being around pretty much since the game's release, like this uncredited “homage” of a theme from Ghostbusters. I guess, to be fair, it does sound pretty nice. (But if this is an issue, I can see why the game's sound head would want him out.)

Number two, Yuji Naka was jeopardising Square Enix's relationship with developer Arzest by complaining about Arzest submitting builds of BALAN WONDERWORLD to Square Enix that were buggy and awful. Arzest founder and Yuji Naka's best buddy from the Sonic the Hedgehog days, Naoto Ohshima, apparently complained to BALAN WONDERWORLD's producer, a Square Enix man by the name of Noriyoshi Fujimoto. Quite frankly, I don't know why anyone would value their relationship with Arzest or how Arzest is even still in business when every game they've worked on has ranged from aggressively bad to mediocre. That's an important point I'll get to a little later.

Yes, Maya Fey Did Say Phoenix Wright is an Attention Whore

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's real news. ...Plus, some actual real news. (And a sale.)

Some people on Twitter—and this isn't the first time—were wondering if this quote where Maya Fey uses the term “attention whore” is real.

help why do i not remember this is this real pic.twitter.com/XHAsAPbK68

— moon ⵣ @ back on the comm. grind (@goldenastrum) April 15, 2022

And, yes, Maya Fey did say something to this effect on October 13, 2018. KoopaTV didn't cover that trial because... I mean, it wasn't an important one and it was a very local story featuring an up-and-coming treasure-stealing thief named Mask☆DeMasque. But here's... some evidence—in two different angles to demonstrate its credibility and lack of being falsified (like Phoenix Wright would later be known for half a year later)—of Maya Fey saying this:

No one's gonna be able to fake the same text in TWO transparency filters.

KoopaTV looked into the Court Record and also found this VIDEO evidence of Maya Fey saying attention whore out loud. It also has the context.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate April 2022 Fighter Usage Stats!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - For North America.

Did you join the NintendoVS North American Open April 2022? This Nintendo of America officially sponsored competitive Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament was free-to-enter and exclusively online for residents in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. ...And Koopa Kingdom sneaked in there. Or at least I did. I got 13th place in my region. My personal best is 9th; I think my bracket was set up that I had very winnable matches with people around my skill but I blew it.

If you're interested in watching the finals stream, you can do so at the following embedded video. Congratulations to Vendetta (Ken, Region 6), Vargoose (RO.B., Region 8), MegahogX (Mega Man, Region 5), Joshathan (R.O.B., Region 7), Many (Alex, Region 4), Pokelam (Ike, Region 1), Shoe (Region 3, Zero Suit Samus), and Fletchling (Robin, Region 2) for getting the grand prize or the first prize. For who won which prize, watch the video. (So you don't complain I spoiled the outcome to you.)

The neat thing about this tournament is that they ask participants to report the characters they used in the matches, which lets me go and add up all of the stats across the eight regions to figure out how many times each character was used. I consider this data to be representative of the online Super Smash Bros. Ultimate landscape, since the free-to-enter requirement and Nintendo's endorsement (and advertisement) means that the broadest and most representative group of players will join and participate—not just those that are highly competitive (even if the ruleset is a competitive one).

And by the way, compared to the US-only NintendoVS tournaments that happened in October 2021 (there were two), this tournament had more registrants... and WAY more people who actually showed up on the day of to play. 1538 players registered, and 1052 of those played at least one match in the ladder round that my stats in this article reflect. That's a 68.40% participation rate, which is the highest that I've recorded since I've been doing these stats where it's low-mid-50%s. (Possibly attributable to actually sending out emails to people when the tournament was starting to remind them to show up, which wasn't a practice done before.) And that's with the ladder being delayed by 30 minutes when the tournament began (the matchmaking button didn't work due to an error on the part of Battlefy, the eSports platform the tournament was hosted on). The results below represent 23,786 character interactions (divide that by two for the number of games). There were no character reporting issues—no new DLC characters means everything was ready to go before it started, unlike some past tournaments where someone forgot to make that tournament's newest DLC character available from the character picker in the site.

In a WEIRD (but real) Tweet, Miyamoto/Illumination Delay the Super Mario Bros. Film to Spring 2023

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Let's...break down that tweet.

In a strange message that was just posted on Twitter (a company and service that still exists regardless of today's actual biggest news), Nintendo, under the guise of Shigeru Miyamoto himself, delayed the Super Mario Bros. film to Spring 2023:

This is Miyamoto. After consulting with Chris-san, my partner at Illumination on the Super Mario Bros. film, we decided to move the global release to Spring 2023–April 28 in Japan and April 7 in North America. My deepest apologies but I promise it will be well worth the wait.

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) April 26, 2022

You know how there is a small army of fake Nintendo Twitter accounts? They might have a slight alteration in the handle to look real, like “@NlntendoAmerica”. They like to make fake Nintendo Direct announcements to get foolish people to retweet those and get the fake stuff viral. Anyway, this tweet reads like it's one of those fake accounts producing FAKE NEWS... but it is, in fact, the authentic and official Nintendo account. The same message is on Nintendo's @Nintendo Japanese Twitter account, too.

Anyway, so it's a real tweet and a real announcement, even if it doesn't read like it is. Let's break it down line by line:

Splatoon 3 for September 9, 2022 Release (Still Summer)

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I'm not putting a shoes pun in this article's headline, too.

I was very committed to publishing something entirely different today, but, no, Nintendo is pulling this “Release Date Revealed” stunt again for the second time this week:

After a full three-minute Turf War match revealing new weapons and special weapons, the end of the video says that Splatoon 3 will become available on September 9, 2022. This is in-line with what Nintendo said in the February 2022 Nintendo Direct, which declared the release date to be Summer 2022. September 9 counts as the summertime. Sure, it's after Labor Day and the kids will be in school and not on vacation. But summer ends over a week later. Who cares about the school kids? People who work JOBS are working even in the summer anyway. Unless they're in Europe and just take a vacation in the whole July and August. Then, yeah, I figure September 9 is a bit inconvenient. Oh well.

If you want something to do until Splatoon 3 releases in four and a half months, and you for some reason are a subscriber to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack (which we're not at KoopaTV), then today Nintendo also made Splatoon 2's excellent single-player story-based Octo Expansion included in your subscription. That doesn't help if you don't already own Splatoon 2, and if you don't have that yet... I wouldn't recommend it now. Just wait for Splatoon 3.

I think the coolest thing of the gameplay trailer was the Octobrush user's grappling Special at 1:33 that lets them zip around, even behind entrenched Charger lines, go behind them, splat them, and then retreat back when the timer is up. That whole sequence was really cool to me. And it looks like everyone gets a Discord tag now or something, with customisable (?) name tags and identifiers. The animations and movements and style is above even Splatoon 2's, and I'm curious how the new gameplay changes will affect the metagame that developed throughout Splatoon 2's lifetime. Even the act of spawning is a bit different now.

...Though what I'm most curious about are the things not shown in this trailer... like the story mode and lore and such. Ah well. We'll experience that for ourselves starting September 9...


The release date isn't faster or slower than what was promised, so Ludwig won't go around talking about Swim Speed-Up sneakers or anything. Let him know if you want to play Splatoon 2 sometime soon. He still thinks it's quite fun.


Also on or before September 9 will be Splatoon 3-themed Pro Controllers, Carrying Cases, and an (OLED model) skin.
Ludwig bought Splatoon 3 on launch day.

Censorship? Contrived Chrono Cross Controversy

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...Well, MOST of that headline is actual alliteration.

Ever since Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition was announced at the February 2022 Nintendo Direct, I've wanted to hear more about it. For... a very long time now, I've only read bad things about Chrono Cross—though I've heard very good things about it because its music is fantastic. But I don't know how much of the bad things are because Chrono Cross deserves it and has real flaws, and how much of the bad stuff that's said about it is because of perpetually triggered Chrono Trigger fans complaining because Chrono Cross is not a real sequel.

I see Chrono Cross as in a similar situation to the likes of Paper Mario: Color Splash and Paper Mario: The Origami King—polarising games with fantastic soundtracks but iffy gameplay and relatively-pointless-to-enter, slow combat that are demonised by fans of the earlier game in the series (Chrono Trigger or Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door) that won't give it a chance for being something different.

I'll probably get Chrono Cross when it's on sale (which I'm sure will happen at least once this calendar year); though it's already only $20. The remaster adds “cheats” that serve as potential quality-of-life features... plus RADICAL DREAMERS - Le Trésor Interdit - exists. There are upscaled graphics, and the frame rates are very similar (or worse) to what they were on the original PlayStation... which isn't a good thing, but not the absolute worst thing for a turn-based RPG.

But that's not actually the worst thing about this Chrono Cross remaster. Not according to “anti-censorship” critics. The worst thing is that the nine-year old diva character Marcy has slightly longer underpants beneath her tutu. Critics consider this “censorship” and claim that they won't buy the game because of it. While I find the screenshot comparison a tad distasteful in that hyperlinked source (and that whole source, Sankaku Complex, is distasteful), I will supply this related image instead:

No More Heroes 3 Coming to Non-Switch Platforms Fall 2022

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - ...Punks. (Though that's thematically fitting.)

Last week, XSEED Games, a component of games publisher Marvelous, announced that No More Heroes 3 (also known as No More Heroes III will be released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, the Xbox Series, and PC (Steam and Windows Store) this autumn. By the time it releases on those systems, it will have been a Nintendo Switch-exclusive for slightly over one year. And if you asked SUDA51 in September 2021, he'd say there are “no plans at the moment” to port the Nintendo Switch exclusive to other systems. ...And then Grasshopper Manufacture got acquired by NetEase Games a month after that and everything changes, I suppose.

Non-Nintendo gamers really didn't have to wait long for SUDA51 to create plans!

XSEED promises this port will have “improved HD visuals, framerates, and faster loading times”... of course, it already has HD visuals, although the frame rate and the loading times on the Switch version do leave a lot to be desired. All three of the visuals, frame rates, and probably loading times were improved for the Switch version right before release, as well as in a day 1 patch and a day...40-ish patch. ...But, yes, they could be improved a lot more.

The improved port will release at $60, just like the Switch version. There will also be a limited-time “Day 1 Edition” that's physical with an art book, a CD with “select songs from the soundtrack”, and a licence plate. My biggest question about all of this is if that CD with select songs (read: not all of them) will be the same ~56-minute selection of twenty songs that Marvelous made available on YouTube for only four months before taking it down. I was at first wondering if they'd re-upload that altogether for the benefit of the expanded audience, but I can totally see it now being an “exclusive” physical bonus that you won't ever see again after the promotion period is over. To this day, lots of the soundtrack isn't available ANYWHERE.

No sign of No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle being ported to PlayStation and Xbox too. ...But they probably will. I mean, they suddenly got on the Switch, so...


Ludwig would recommend the mainline series! He doesn't regret it. (Though he does think that Day 1 Edition would probably be a bad idea.) Maybe they'll be even better on stronger platforms? Let KoopaTV know what you think in the comments section.


That Day 1 Edition is available as a Digital Deluxe edition with a 22-song soundtrack that is different than the 20-song soundtrack, but still omits most of the soundtrack.

Post-Easter Ester Shoes Accessory Brings Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Release Date CLOSER

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I didn't see that coming. Neither did you!

In a very surprising move to make sure your post-Easter experience isn't totally ruined, Nintendo dropped this bombshell to the universe:

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is releasing on July 29, 2022. You may remember that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was announced in the February 2022 Nintendo Direct for a September 2022 release. July 29, 2022 is a month or two before then, which is crazy. Companies tend to delay games, not push them earlier. (Hopefully it's not a rush job.)

It's an especially interesting contrast when you look at the likes of Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp, Metroid Prime 4, and the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that all have been significantly delayed! Clearly, the MONOLITHSOFT folks working on Xenoblade Chronicles 3 put on the Ester Shoes from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, because their Agility is a lot higher than promised and expected! (No confirmation on if Ester Shoes will be in the new title.)

The IRS doesn't scale up well... and can be abolished

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The system was designed by politicians and lobbyists, not system planners or economists.

Gross. You Americans gotta deal with TAX DAY today. I know that even at this late hour, SOME people are STILL filing their taxes to the last minute, drowning under the byzantine maze of forms. It's a miserable experience—and that's because it's not designed to be anything but. Taxes are supposed to raise the needed revenue to the government to fund essential services that constituents agree are essential.

But the American tax code is purposefully complicated both as an agent of social engineering—politicians shape your behaviour by taxing some activities (perhaps more heavily than others) or giving credits to other activities to incentivise you—and because the tax preparation industry has lobbied for it to be that way. The government, if you work for an employer or do investments, could just tell you how much money you owe it and you pay them because the counterparty sends them files anyway. But... no, it's gotta be more complicated than that. Part of the reason is reportedly also because some anti-tax conservative activists WANT paying taxes to be difficult. That way, you'll resent paying taxes, and that gets you into the “get your first paycheck to Republican voter” pipeline. I'm not sure why states demand that you pay the government in order to send your tax form in, though. That's bonkers.

A big issue with republics is that politicians and interest groups run on identifying problems... and don't actually solve them, because if the problem gets fixed, then their job is done, and then there isn't a reason to re-elect them because they've served their purpose. But if a problem gets to exist forever, and you get to blame someone else as the reason for that, then you can keep running on that issue forever. Tax system broken? Keep it broken so people can vote on your single issue and you can get yummy contributions towards that. As someone who is part of a monarchy, I don't like that.

Anyway, this is all gonna get worse.