What is Splatoon?

Splatoon is a third person shooter developed by Nintendo and created by Hisashi Nogami. With its first installment releasing in 2015, the series went on to make two other games releasing on the Nintendo Switch. The series gathered a hearty fanbase for its colorful and fun gameplay, with its third installment selling a whopping 10 million units a few months after launch.

In Splatoon, you play as your Inkling or Octoling character and can play in an assortment of online matches, from Turf War to Tower Control. With the latest installments, more game-modes like Salmon Run, a frantic rush to collect Golden Eggs admist a delirious workplace, have been added.

There are also a few single-player campaigns where your cephalopod character is assigned to rescue the Zapfish (or something else, depending on the installment) from the enemy Octarians.
The game has an overall "sea, ocean creatures, fish" sort of vibe due to the fact that, well, firstly, the characters are all mostly humanoid cephalopods. (Some are fish, shrimp, or anemone-people.) Originally, the main characters of Splatoon were actually going to be rabbits shooting ink around. But the logic of rabbits shooting ink were questioned a lot and didn't make much sense; later on, they were switched to squids and octopi to fit the ink theme.

Along with the gameplay, Splatoon has been praised for its extensive character creation, with a variety of clothes, shoes and hairstyles to choose from. (There was a post I saw once joking how Splatoon was a dress-up game with a shooter minigame on the side...and, honestly, they're not wrong.) Overall, Splatoon is a really fun game, and even if you don't play it, the music and characters should be enough to reel you in!

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I can't remember exactly when I discovered Splatoon, but I do know that I liked it! I remember having one of the Callie and Marie Nintendo 3Ds themes and listening to Calamari Inkantation whenever it hit me.
I have this really, really clear memory of me speaking while gargling water and being really estatic because it sounded like the inklish speak lol..I didn't have a Wii U, so I couldn't play the first one, hah.

2017 rolls around and I play Splatoon 2 at a carnival game booth and I'm hooked. I know that our family has a Nintendo Switch in the garage, saved for a later birthday, but boy waiting for that thing to get out of the box so I could Squid Game was preeetty unbearable. It came eventually, though! I played a lot of Splatoon 2 and I have Splatoon 3 (can't play too much, though), but another thing that kind of fueled my Splat interest was the manga. In 2019 I was really into the manga, which will be elaborated in one of the other sections! Me and a friend bonded over the Splatoon games and the manga, which is another reason why I hold it close to my heart.

The Agents

The agents in Splatoon are the hero-mode's protagonists; or, more accurately speaking, the character you play as and is technically your cephalopod fella! Throughout the different games, a different Agent is enlisted in the single-player campaign to fight against the octarian army (despite being like. 15) to save the Great Zapfish, or enlisted to do something else entirely.
In Splatoon 1, you have Agent 3 (first in line in the photo) who is enlisted by Captain Cuttlefish to save the Great Zapfish from the Octarian army.

Splatoon 2 follows Agent 4 (second in line, you get the gist) who is. ALSO! asked to save the great Zapfish but is also tasked with finding Callie of the Squid Sisters, who has gone missing recently. This request comes from none other than her cousin Marie.

In Splatoon 2's DLC, Octo Expansion, you follow the amnesiac Agent 8 whos task is very different from the others! The gist of it is that you play as Agent 8 in the Deepsea Metro, braving various tests and gauntlets in order to get to Inkopolis and escape.

Splatoon 3 follows Agent 3...no, a new one this time, and are tasked with...finding the Zapfish again! And also discovering the mysteries of the strange, otherly world you landed in while trying to find it called Alterna! There's a lot going on in the third game's story mode that's REALLY hard to explain!

The Squid Sisters

Callie, the pink, bubbly one, and Marie, the green, laid-back one, make up the duo known as the Squid Sisters.

The Splatoon Manga

The splatoon manga (otherwise called Coroika and I will be calling it that here) is something that exists. Yep.