10 Years of Splatoon 1 - What Was Your First Day Like?

[Smash Arena]

Splatoon 1 will be turning 10 years old in a matter of days. I am sure those of us who played the first Splatoon game in its heyday are plenty nostalgic for those times and initial excitement when the game launched. That being said...

Did you get Splatoon 1 on or around launch day? If so, please share the story of the day you got the game and your initial impressions! Even if you got the game a bit later, feel free to share the story of the first time you played Splatoon 1. Would love to hear everyone's initial experiences!


For my Day 1, I had just finished my Freshman year of college and had pre-ordered Splatoon 1 from my favorite GameStop in my local mall. Launch day hit, and because I didn't have my driver's license yet, my mother drove me to the mall because she enjoyed shopping at the Macy's there. I went into the GameStop, paid for my pre-order, and then waited in a blue room in the Macy's for my mother to finish shopping. The whole time, I was just looking over the game case, thinking "I wonder how much I'm going to get out of this game?". My mother completed her shopping and we went back to my house, where my older brother was hanging out in our TV room ready to try out Splatoon 1. We popped the game in the Wii U, and loved it immediately! There were a ton of SpongeBob-themed Miiverse posts on Day 1. I messaged my friend to see if he was going to pick up Splatoon 1 only to find that he was already playing it after buying it with amiibos at Toys 'R US!


Though, I made on fatal mistake on Day 1 that would haunt my Splatoon experience for the next 5 years - turning off motion controls!

 

[Cephalobro]

I first heard about it through word of mouth from my brother. However, I was in a bad habit of leaving the one game unfinished (Majora's Mask 3D), so before actually getting Splatoon, I buckled down to finish Majora's Mask 3D 100%, then after that, I got my very own copy of Splatoon and got to playing, naturally picking the male Inkling due to me favoring to play as the male characters in many games. I remember one of the first things I did was dress up my Inkling to look like a video-game nerd, not bothering to even think about weapon stats, I ironically skipped the Splattershot and went right to the N'Zap 85. That turned out to be a rookie mistake on my part.

 

[DzNutsKong]

It's funny because I know what my first day of most big series I'm into now were like, but not Splatoon. My first time with Pokemon was seeing a snippet of the Pokemon anime and wanting to learn more (from seeing...Psyduck, of all things) and my first time with Smash was at a friend's house and I was excited about there being a game where I could play as Pikachu instead of a trainer. Like, I very vividly remember my first day of Splatoon 3 specifically, but not Splatoon 1.

I know the game was the one thing that ended up really sticking with me from the Wii U's lineup though. I didn't get the Wii U or any of its games on launch except for Pokken Tournament which I did not like at that age so I wasn't there for any of the pre-release hype for any of that. Mario Maker was a pretty good game, Smash for Wii U was really good but I rarely had any reason to play it as opposed to Smash 3DS, and there were some Virtual Console games I had bought but never sunk too much time into.

Splatoon was great though. I guess this much kind of steers away from the point of this thread since it took me a long time to articulate what I ever liked about it in the first place, but I loved its mechanics and how seamlessly all of the parts of its gameplay flowed into one another. Funny enough that much is kind of a similar feeling as I get when I watch top-level Splatoon players' gameplay. Plus, I loved the game's pacing and overall feel even if this is something later entries got better.

I couldn't tell you a single thing that I thought or did on my first play session though. Shame.