Invitational to Nintendo HQ Community Event! 12/07/17

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We were fortunate enough to be invited to attend a community event for the upcoming release of Splatoon at Nintendo’s HQ in Windsor.


After a very early start for our train, we arrived at the red doors mid morning, excited for the day of gaming ahead of us.


Once we got in we marvelled at the pieces of Nintendo art and history on the walls and the large Piranha Plant in the corner. Around the room there were 13 Switches set up for us to play with. Nine were dedicated to Splatoon 2, eight for two teams of four and a ninth as a spectator and for setting the rules.



Two other Switches had a selection of recent releases from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and ARMS to Indie hits like Graceful Explosion Machine and Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap. They also had Splatoon 2 so we got a chance to try the single player mode while teams fought it out on the other consoles.


The final two had the games that were demoed at E3. Sonic Forces, Mario x Rabbids and crucially, Super Mario Odyssey.


Super Mario Odyssey was the first game we got to play as Splatoon 2 already had some pretty enthusiastic players. We were so impressed with the new game, even with the demo time limit of ten minutes at a time. We even raced against time with Darren learning from my previous attempts and getting to fight one of the bosses in the game.


When we got a chance to play Splatoon 2 it went terribly at first. I was on a console where the player had a roller and motion controls turned off. I am terrible with a roller and Splatoon without motion controls is unthinkable. Our team lost quite rapidly.



Next time around I switched to the Splat Dualies and turned motion controls on. We still lost, but I did much better.


Later we got a chance to play the new Salmon Run mode. This was brilliant and really adds to the Splatoon experience. In this mode, four players have to defend against wave after wave of enemies. Occasionally large boss types will appear and once defeated they’ll drop large orbs which have to be collected and delivered to a basket in order to pass a level.


The variety of enemies was very impressive, each requiring teamwork and changing strategies. We managed to beat four waves of enemies but I suspect it was probably set on a fairly easy difficulty.


A Splatoon 2 tournament was held and I was too busy playing the single player mode and other games to pay close attention to how the matches turned out, but I know South Wales did very well and despite us not joining in the tournament, we felt we could ride on their coattails for the pride of Wales and some reflected glory.



Sadly around half four we had to leave for our train, we would have happily stayed and played for a lot longer. We had a great time meeting people from groups from around the UK and playing some of the brilliant games coming out soon. Hopefully once I’ve got my own copy of Splatoon 2 I’ll get enough practice so I’ll do better at multiplayer. I might even try harder with the roller.

Photo credits to, and written by EuclidianBoxes (John)

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