What got you into Splatoon and/or competitive?

[Power]

For me my brother told me about the first Splatoon 1 testfire and we played together. I had fun and forgot about it until the game released. Then I wanted to play with other people since coordinated play sounded sick with the fast game play. That’s how I found squidboards and got involved in competitive. Wild to think how if my bro never mentioned the game I’d probably have never played it or got involved in the scene at all.

 

[arias]

wayyyy too many things..... ive been eyeing this series since s2 release but i was too broke to get it lol
but now i got s3 around 4 months ago :-] best investment of my life

what got me into the series itself were the s2 idols and the singleplayer, the designs for this game are just way too good
but the first splatoon related content i ever saw was the song squid melodies by the living tombstone arounddd maybe 5 or 6 years ago (even though the song itself is 8 years old lol)

 

[Skoobz]

I got the first game on release. Funnily enough I thought the game looked stupid before the single player was revealed. Now I have over 3,000 hours across all the games.

 

[sevenleaf]

for splatoon in general: i somehow didn't get interested in it during splatoon 1 & 2's life cycles, but a good friend of mine convinced me to play the splat3 world premiere demo and it was already over for me, i'd already passed the point of no return

i started out intending to play casually and stay playing casually, but getting more and more into the series led me to seek out all sorts of splatoon-related content... including competitive content. and when i came into the series i kind of had this notion that competitive gaming was some super toxic space dominated by gamer bros itching to call you slurs over VC, but as i got exposed to more competitive content the more i realized that... that's really not true for splatoon. (and i don't think it's as true as the stereotype would have one believe for competitive gaming in general! i have a lot of thoughts about this topic but i won't get into it in this thread.)

but i came away from that thinking "oh yeah i respect comp splatoon players, but i could never get that good," but as i kept playing 'casually' and naturally getting better and picking up tips from the competitive content i watched 'just to get better at turf war and salmon run' i kinda hit a point where i was regularly getting like, 10+ splats in turf. now, at the time i was also convinced that getting kill counts like that in turf war meant i was sweaty and overcompetitive and ruining the game because that's what all the casual players on tumblr were saying about players like that... which is an attitude that annoys me today but one way or another it was the push that made me go "hey, maybe i should try out anarchy battles again, maybe it's not as scary anymore as i felt it was when i first tried it out"

and at first i still wasn't that good at the ranked modes, but i was motivated to learn and improve more than i was when i intended to just be a casual player. and that's when i started looking into where to find the rest of the competitive community, what playing in a team is like, what's going on in the competitive scene... and i was a combination of too shy and too busy for a while to actually make any steps to get into the scene myself, but now i'm trying! slowly.

 

[zyf_]

For me my brother told me about the first Splatoon 1 testfire and we played together. I had fun and forgot about it until the game released. Then I wanted to play with other people since coordinated play sounded sick with the fast game play. That’s how I found squidboards and got involved in competitive. Wild to think how if my bro never mentioned the game I’d probably have never played it or got involved in the scene at all.

you and this legend dumba**

 

[Joy]

I had just finished my last season of high level TF2 Highlander and I wanted out. 9v9 is stressful, I wanted something simpler. Splatoon’s first trailer came out and I fell in love, the complimentary gameplay with emphasis on movement made it an instant buy for me. A 4v4 movement shooter with explicit territory control? Definitely something I wanted to try out.

 

[Shayreep]

Haha so my friends played splat1 but i never had a wiiu so i kind of hated splatoon at the time becuz theyd always talk about it and play it together and i couldnt. But then we bought my one friend a switch/splat2 for their bday and i played it for a bit and for some reason?? Something about the gameplay and graphics captivated me. Got home still thinking about it. Went to GameStop a few days later and did the most splurgly impulsive purchase of my own switch and splatoon 2. Spent the first year playing Salmon Run in handheld mode lol

As for comp, my ex-boyfriend was more serious about the game and when he dumped me, i leaned into Splatoon immensely as a support system and a coping method, and as a spiteful way to reclaim it becuz splatoon was a big part of our relationship lol. I joined discord servers and got more serious with the intent of being better then he ever was 🫠 that was like three years ago.

 

[Jazellie]

i had watched alpharad's videos where he played through splatoon 2's story modes but i didn't become interested in splatoon until i saw all the talk about splatoon 3 on twitter after the direct a month before the game's release, most of the conversation i saw were about the idols so i decided to give the direct a watch for funsies... i'm so glad i did, i remember watching anarchy rainbow and it feeling so magical, the idols were fun and the music... my GOD the music... it was something i had never heard before and i feel in love with it because of how unique and fun it sounded.

after watching the direct, i decided that i would finally get a switch for my birthday present that year to play splatoon 3, my birthday was in november so i was eating up any splatoon content that i could until the day of my birthday came. finally, three days before my birthday, it would arrive!!! and i played through the story mode and got online on my birthday :3

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

For me my brother told me about the first Splatoon 1 testfire and we played together. I had fun and forgot about it until the game released. Then I wanted to play with other people since coordinated play sounded sick with the fast game play. That’s how I found squidboards and got involved in competitive. Wild to think how if my bro never mentioned the game I’d probably have never played it or got involved in the scene at all.

For the game itself? Advertising got to my parents when I was a kid. got Splatoon 1 + the squid sister amiibo the morning of the games launch.


For getting into comp? Meeting someone as a friend of a friend who happened to be on a team already, reigniting my passion for the game(they're also just a cool person in general to the point I drove 3 hours to St Louis MO to meet them irl)

 

[Shenorox]

the s1 testfire randomly appeared on my wii u home screen at some point, so i looked up the game on yt and started hyperfixating on it

i "quit" during s2, and then 2 years later i saw an octo expansion video from chara, so i decided to replay oe, then tried multiplayer again. i continued watching chara's content and thats how i got interest in comp upon s3's release

 

[Snikerop]

For the series: I started playing when one person kept talking about it on Twitter for a few weeks back in September 2022. So I started playing with Splat3.

For comp: I had been playing for a few months and stumbled on the set Cherry Limeade v.... Ya Mum? Mictlan Heroes? One of their LUTI sets. I don't remember because I ended up watching them back-to-back. I remember feeling inspired seeing how everyone was interacting with the game at such a deep level. It pushed me over the edge to seriously look at it from a competitive perspective.

 

[Karbine98k]

I looked up competitive terms back in November of 2018. Got super into it, my first Tournament was SAC (Season 0) Invitational Tournament.

Bread Gang -> Resilience -> College -> Placeholder

 

[DoubleDrewski]

I got splatoon 2 on launch (I wasn't even a fan of the series, I just needed more games for switch desperately and there were hardly any available) and played it entirely casually, barely touching ranked. I got splatoon 3 on launch and was still casual, albeit using motion controls and playing some ranked now. I found squid school this past spring and after he did a video on LUTI and that whole system, I was hooked and sign up for a team. A lost cartridge by the captain (long story) later and I basically skipped from casual to captain lol.

 

[Beat0s]

For me my brother told me about the first Splatoon 1 testfire and we played together. I had fun and forgot about it until the game released. Then I wanted to play with other people since coordinated play sounded sick with the fast game play. That’s how I found squidboards and got involved in competitive. Wild to think how if my bro never mentioned the game I’d probably have never played it or got involved in the scene at all.

i watched stampylonghead play s2 in like, 2019 and i fell in love with the game, begged my mum to get it and the addiction hasnt stopped since

 

[Hokuto]

"Hard in the Paint" by Griffinila was one of 13-year-old Hokuto's favorite songs, but I didn't have a Wii U. I made a couple of Inkling OCs just for fun and never really thought about Splatoon 1 after that. I didn't have Nintendo Switch Online either until someone let me bum off of their family plan a couple of years ago, so 2 didn't happen until long after the Final Fests. I'm not into competitive because I haven't even owned Splatoon 2 for six months. Heck, I just got 3 a few weeks ago!

To actually answer the question: I played the Gen 8 Pokémon games as not me, so each character unfolded into their own intangible person. Because they put a Switch in the characters' rooms, I figured one of them must play Splatoon. Then I did a bit of research to try and assign her a main weapon, got derailed, identified some parallels between her character arc and the Octo Expansion story, and decided "you know what, this might be your only way out" (as this character was doomed by Pokémon plot). This answer is not like the others.

 

[Hippo555467]

I got splatoon 1 on launch week when I was young just cause I saw bright colors but I’ve bought every other splatoon game the day it came out because I fell in love with the series

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

I found prochara's channel a while back and really wanted to play splatoon. I didn't have a switch at the time, only a wii u, so I ended up getting splatoon 1 for christmas. Then even splatoon 3 came out I bought it.

 

[_m3llow]

I bought the game on an impulse fueled by gender dysphoria and ADHD. Before this I had always written the game off as not being for me, but it had been years since I really sunk myself into a game and I was missing it tbh. I liked the idea of a game that grew with the player base, so I went for it. Immediately after my first Turf War game I was hooked, i knew right then I wanted to be good at the game, and maybe even do tournaments.

A year later, and I've already made it to around Div 6-7. Still low level, but for my first time in Splatoon I like to think that's a good rate of improvement.

 

[guster-animations]

at the time of splatoon 3’s launch, a tumblr mutual of mine was talking about it
then alpharad made his splatoon 3 video and i immediately fell in love with it and put the game on my birthday wish list
as for competitive, i found out about its existence from squid school’s weapon roles video. i watched more of his and chara’s videos, and in april last year i finally decided that i really, really wanted to join a team. so i found a recruitment post for a very unorganized team in squid school’s discord, and that was my first experience with comp
the team disbanded after 4 months but i’m still friends with everyone there and i now have a thriving team of my own

 

[9DB]

I got recommended it by a friend. As for comp, I just feel the need to be better than everyone else.