Splatoon at 10: Still Fresh, Still Weird

Splatoon is officially 10 years old, and it’s still the strangest online shooter Nintendo—or anyone—has ever made. Born in a post-Call of Duty world and somehow made for kids, it never fit into any traditional genre lane. It wasn’t about kills. It wasn’t about territory control in the usual sense. It was about colour, chaos, fashion, and vibes. Ten years on, that decision to break from the norm still feels revolutionary.

What made Splatoon so different was that it didn’t pull most of its ideas from other games. Instead, it looked out at the real world—Tokyo streetwear, graffiti art, J-pop idols, summer festivals—and remixed it all into something completely its own. This wasn’t a coincidence. Nintendo didn’t set out to make a kid-friendly shooter. They wanted something totally new, and they started with 70 different concepts before landing on Splatoon.

“We wanted to create a new kind of game, without worrying about trying to fit into existing game genres.” — Former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata

That quote was part of a promo interview, but it holds up. What’s striking in that early design process is how little traditional gaming lingo shows up. Instead, the developers kept asking themselves basic, intuitive questions. Not “what mechanics work in shooters?” but “what feels good to play?” “What makes sense visually?” “What would be fun to wear?”

The first working prototype had players covering a battlefield in ink. But the characters weren’t squids. They were tofu blocks. Simple, blank-faced cubes that could disappear in the ink. Functional, but completely unmarketable. The team briefly swapped to rabbits—easier to read in motion, with their long ears and distinct silhouettes—but they hit a wall again: why are rabbits shooting ink?

Eventually, someone said, “Squids shoot ink.” And everything clicked.

That’s when design, narrative, and mechanics finally aligned. Squids could swim through the ink. That meant vertical traversal. It meant sneak attacks. It meant turning a shooter into a territory-painting race. That one decision unlocked everything else.

Weapons in Splatoon aren’t guns in the traditional sense. They’re water pistols, paint rollers, ink brushes, and buckets. The kind of stuff you’ve seen at a playground or an art class. There’s no learning curve if you’re a 10-year-old picking it up for the first time. You just get it.

That playfulness spilt into the rest of the game. Splatoon’s maps felt like skateparks and city plazas. Its main hub, Inkopolis, was a mashup of Tokyo fashion districts and Instagrammed alleyways. Its mascots—the Squid Sisters, Pearl and Marina, Deep Cut—took cues from real-world idols and DJ culture, from Hatsune Miku to hip-hop duos.

Getting into Splatoon didn’t just mean learning how to play—it meant discovering a whole vibe. Aesthetics mattered. Fashion mattered. Not because it boosted stats (usually), but because it said something about you. In that way, it actually beat Fortnite to the punch.

The comparison is hard to avoid. Both games feature style-first design, rotating seasonal events, and in-game concerts. But Fortnite wants to be everything—a movie theatre, a concert venue, a brand deal machine. Splatoon has always been smaller. Tighter. More focused.

Each Splatoon entry eventually has its "final Splatfest"—a last showdown before live support stops. There are no endless updates, no branded crossovers, no Ariana Grande or Star Wars skins. The game has a beginning and an end. The party doesn’t last forever.

Still, Splatoon’s events were never just throwaway gimmicks. Splatfests asked players to pick sides—Ketchup vs. Mayo, Pirates vs. Ninjas—and then battle it out for weekend glory. It was part debate club, part online rally, and part marketing push. They were obvious attempts to drive engagement, but they also gave the game structure. A ritual.

“When they’re at their best, Splatfests feel like block parties.” — GameSpot

Splatoon’s approach to social media followed the same logic. Inkopolis lets players post hand-drawn messages that appear in-game, pulled from real-time updates. No algorithm, no curation, just raw thoughts and weird art from strangers. Like a feed with no infinite scroll.

That immediacy of fashion, events, and communication makes Splatoon feel like a snapshot in time. The world isn’t just stylish. It feels lived-in. These squid-kids wear old human clothes. They listen to music humans might’ve made. They play human games in a post-human world. Everything’s bright and upbeat, but the underlying lore is post-apocalyptic. Earth is gone. The squid took over.

It’s not subtle. And it doesn’t try to be.

You can’t play the original Splatoon anymore. Servers are down. The Inkopolis of 2015 is gone. You had to be there. In that way, Splatoon reflects its own story—a culture built on the bones of another. Kids in cool jackets, dancing to music they don’t fully understand, throwing paint around like it means something.

And for a lot of us, it did.

Splatoon at 10 isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about recognising how something this weird, stylish, and bold could only have come from Nintendo in 2015. And how, despite everything that’s changed in gaming since, nothing else really feels like it.