What got you into Splatoon and/or competitive?

[MMOToaster]

Friends 100%. I didn't really have any friends before I started playing competitive, so I desperately needed people to socialize with.

 

[kyubone]

i was in one streamer's discord when i moved apartments a couple years ago, and it had a splatoon chat that was just starting to pop off in anticipation of splatoon 3's release (good god that was in 2022 AUGH). since a bunch of players were either getting into splatoon 2 or revisiting the game to prepare for splatoon 3, i was able to jump in with some less-experienced players and ask questions from the more-experienced ones, making the whole thing much more enjoyable for me. i miss you so much, s2 forge pro.

after about a year of playing 3, ranking up to s+, and completing my initial x calcs, i was entertaining the idea of getting into competitive and decided to make a free agent post in a few discord servers. i was contacted pretty quickly by another player around my level, we ran some tryouts to fill out our remaining two slots, and eventually we had our first comp team!

 

[Cephalobro]

My brother told me about Splatoon 1 when the Wii U and the 3DS were still the current systems, then I played the demo of it at a Target a few years back, I knew I had to get myself a copy of the game. But before doing so, I made sure to finish Majora's Mask 3D first since I had this weird habit of leaving that game unfinished.

But while playing Majora's Mask 3D, I wondered which places in the game would be suited for an ink battle, or at least being covered in ink. Once I finished Majora's Mask 3D, I got myself a copy of Splatoon 1 and played a lot, and that was no easy feat since the game I played the most at the time was Pokemon Black 2.

 

[ikebro]

i first heard of splatoon through a tumblr artist i was a huge fan of at the time, but then watched a ton of splatoon videos and got into the series that way! i specifically remember watching peanutbuttergamer's splatoon vid a TON, probably one of the main reasons i got into the game tbh
i'm not a comp player but i only started paying attention to comp in splatoon 3 via prochara, i wish i kept an eye on it before lmao

 

[Jason4071]

I found Splatoon through watching Failboat back in 2018 and I got Splatoon 2 for my birthday that year! I think I started to dip my toes into the comp scene back in March of 2022 after watching Chara, and become more invested in the competitive side of the game during Splatoon 3. I don't have a team or do scrims or anything, but I've been on SendouQ a few times.

 

[MandatoryCatalyst]

The single worst week of my entire life was right around the release of Splat3. I'd seen my friends talking about how excited they were for it and despite my hesitancy (I'd OWNED Splat1 as a kid, but was too scared to go online. Instead I beat the singleplayer once and never touched it again), I was just DESPERATE for something to take my mind off of what I'd just been through.

My thought was best case scenario, I get a game I enjoy and can calm down from everything that happened. Worst case, I wasted some money. So I bought it and WHOOPS it consumes my every waking thought and is singlehandedly the game I've poured the most hours into. Can't say I was expecting that but I will HAPPILY take it

 

[PikaCress]

I got it as an unexpected christmas present from my dad for the wii u we have. I missed out on all splatfests in splatoon 1 but I still played quite a lot, reaching level 30. I don't play splatoon competitively though.

 

[Mx_Diva]

I was playing during the pandemic but finally got the chance to buckle down until 2022. Put my preorder down for Splatoon 3 after that.

 

[Shayreep]

The single worst week of my entire life was right around the release of Splat3. I'd seen my friends talking about how excited they were for it and despite my hesitancy (I'd OWNED Splat1 as a kid, but was too scared to go online. Instead I beat the singleplayer once and never touched it again), I was just DESPERATE for something to take my mind off of what I'd just been through.

My thought was best case scenario, I get a game I enjoy and can calm down from everything that happened. Worst case, I wasted some money. So I bought it and WHOOPS it consumes my every waking thought and is singlehandedly the game I've poured the most hours into. Can't say I was expecting that but I will HAPPILY take it

Hey i hope everything is better now. Splatoon helped me thru some of my darkest times too. Cant say any other video game has mentally comforted me as much as this silly squid game

 

[MandatoryCatalyst]

Hey i hope everything is better now. Splatoon helped me thru some of my darkest times too. Cant say any other video game has mentally comforted me as much as this silly squid game

Aww, thank you! For the record everything ended up fine (My cat had gotten into some toxic plants, but she survived and is happy and healthy now!), but genuinely Splatoon was like. The right game at the right time, y'know? I needed something to keep my hands busy and to work off my stress, and now even well over a year after everything it's still a go-to when I'm stressed out of my mind lol. The power of silly squid paint game is REAL

 

[nineball]

i played splat 2 for around a year since release before getting bored and forgetting about the game entirely.

fast forward to approximately two months ago, youtube is recommending me splatoon videos for no reason, reminding me of the game's existence. i was feeling nostalgic, so i bought it and now im 270 hours in, 100%ed the story mode, re-100%ed octo expansion, reached 2kXP, and now there is gonna be side order releasing this month please help me the funny woomy game is sucking me i- *pop*

 

[KrisSplatoon]

I got into it around the time I was watch a certain someone's Let's Play (I'm not gonna drop their name out of pettiness) but I don't think I got the first game at the time because the Wii U I had was broken. Then I got a Switch for my birthday and eventually got into playing Splatoon 2 and really enjoyed Hero Mode, the multiplayer modes and eventually Octo Expansion when that came out. I still remember remember the summer of 2019 when I first got the game and locked myself in my college dorm room playing the hell out of it, now I'm currently 2000 hours into the game and still play it from time to time 🥹

 

[Aiko.Octo]

Technically I first picked up splatoon 1 along with the Wii U because I had no idea what games were good (tbh I was never a console gamer, this was a joint decision with my then-roommate) and a friend recommended it. I loved the vibe and the characters and the concept but boy was I awful at it. I spent a loooong time trying to get through a few of the basic story mode levels and I think got totally stuck at the first boss. Then a few months later I moved and my roommate kept the Wii U, so that was the end of that. It stayed on my radar as a cute thing I liked but generally just felt outside of my skills to enjoy.

So fast forward years later when I was just finishing up a dramatic personal soul-searching quest to understand the true concept of play and not taking things so life-or-death seriously all the time and actually having fun not being good at something when someone in a friend-group discord server posted about 3's testfire happening. This seemed like the perfect time to put into practice all that I had been theorizing about playing something for fun's sake, regardless of skill. So I did, and just... had the absolute time of my life for those 12 solid hours. So many squid parties, y'all. I was in love.

The weeks between the testfire and 3's release were agonizingly long, so in the meantime I borrowed my housemate's copy of 2 and played through the story mode, which was... somewhat of a transcendent experience. Never in my life had I persistently tried so hard and for so long at something I was... so hilariously bad at. It was comical. I had absolutely no muscle coordination for these kinds of games, could barely get my character to walk where I wanted to, just jumping to onto an inked wall was a complicated combination of movements I had to think about each time. The last two kettles before the final bossfight I must have attempted over two dozen times each. But actually getting to the end and beating it felt like some kind of rite of passage. At least I had proven to myself that I had achieved the most basic level of competency and that these sorts of games were not totally outside of my capacity.

Then 3 finally released and has generally been the go-to use of my free time ever since. At some point I also went back to 2 just to play through octo expansion (which I won't write another essay on but that was also just... incredible to experience for a lot of reasons). And...from there, you know the pipeline-- you play a game and you have fun but eventually you want to learn more and get better, you look up resources to improve, you realize there's a comp scene, you discover there's some incredibly talented people and you start watching tournaments with increasing excitement, you start to wonder if one day you could be a part of it, however small. Well... I'm not quite there yet, but getting closer each day I think!

 

[Fyerluna]

Splatoon I got day one because it looked bright and fun and I had a WiiU to play it on. I was having a rough time so it was a little treat for me! The single player was silly, but most importantly: competitive was fun and silly too. Nintendo deciding to remove voice chat meant that no one could call me names, or yell at me, or tell me how terrible I was! Having just come off of playing League it was super refreshing to get to play in an environment where I felt like I was getting better because I wanted to, not out of spite.

One of my friends on Tumblr at the time put it succinctly: in League you spend all your time trying to get good, but never consider if you get should."

Anyway fast forward and Splatoon 2 comes out which I got right away. It was just as fun and maybe more, ranked was great! I still wasn't in the comp scene proper (because I was still nervous of voice chat ruining the silly game), but I still played regularly.

And then S3 came along and it was super fun and exciting and silly all over again! We had new movement techs, we had new kits! I started looking up on YouTube how to use my weapon and that's how I found out that the community was actually really cool and not scary at all. I watched some tournaments, learned some big names, and from there decided to get serious about getting good and having a team. So far it's been working out really well! My team is a delight to play with and even if we never win a tournament that doesn't matter because we're having a ton of fun with each other!

 

[Loctos]

Funnily enough I was a dude viewer and he mentioned squid boards in his video on starting comp, so I made an account and got into a clan
We weren't really doing anything related to comp directly but that's the first contact I had with the comp community in a way