New Game Ink-coming? $1M Splatoon Tournament Announced in Japan

01:55 AM August 26, 2015

While everyone here in the Philippines was busy preparing and moving things around for eSports Festival 2015 (ESF) and Rampage 2015, exciting news came out of one of this year’s new releases. It’s trying to make a mark in the eSports scene with one gigantic splat.

image taken from: nintendoeverything.com

Released last June, Splatoon joined Nintendo’s rich portfolio of first-party developed games as its newest Intellectual Property (IP). For those unfamiliar, Splatoon is a third-person shooter where the player takes control of squid-human hybrid kids called Inklings.

In its standard game mode called “Turf Wars”, players are split into two teams which consists of four members each. These teams will battle it out to “ink” the most amount of area and claim as their turf. The team who inks a majority of the area at the end of the match wins.

image taken from: nintendolinked.com

One of the newest ideas presented in the game is the ability to transform to a squid and swim in areas covered by your team’s ink at any time. It adds a new dimension of strategy and mobility to the game. Along with this feature, players have a variety of ink-based weaponry at their disposal. The weaponry varies from normal ink-guns that look like the traditional Super Soakers to more unique types of arsenal like giant Ink-Rollers and Ink Brushes. There is even a literal Bucket filled with Ink.

Since its release the game has received a good amount of praise. Many have highlighted its unique mechanics and fresh approach to the genre. It is a welcome change among the sea of military-themed shooters.

While many complained at the somewhat bare-bones experience on day one, Nintendo did good on its promise of delivering free content and updates that expounded on the base game. The biggest one was this August which increased the level cap and added new game modes, maps, weapons and equipment.

Beyond the fun of casual matches, many are now trying to test the title’s viability in a competitive environment. It seems that we’ll have an answer soon enough, as Japan will put the title through its first real tournament showing starting next month.

image taken from: nintendoeverything.com

Announced earlier this August, the Splatoon Koshien 2016 will be a tournament series consisting of 40 events stretching across eight different locations throughout Japan. It is scheduled to begin this September at the city of Fukuoka and will be culminated in Tokyo for the grand finals by the end of January next year. The tournament is hosted by the Kadokawa Dwango Corporation, a large media company and owner of the popular Japanese video streaming site, NicoNico Douga.

Additional details for the tournament was announced last week August 19, including its prize pool amounting to a hefty $1 million (P46.6 million ~).

Together with Splatoon, Kadokawa Dwango will also be hosting a tournament series for the mobile game Puzzle & Dragons during the events.

Similar contests have yet to be announced for North American and European regions. However, if Splatoon Koshien proves to be successful over at Japan, then we just might have a new game added to the growing international eSports scene.