?When you think of Nintendo, you’d not be wrong if The Super Mario Bro came first to your mind, Mario. I’m sure Pokemon, Link, and also Donkey Kong would come up through your thought process as well. After all, Nintendo is world renowned for its classic and iconic staple franchises! That’s because when Nintendo releases a mainline title for their marquee IP, the gaming population and Nintendo fans must stand up and take notice, due to the fact that they’ve produced something unique, surprising, special, and inventive!
All those words so fittingly describe Nintendo’s new kid on the block – Splatoon!
If you were to say it’s been anything short of 14 years since Nintendo birthed a new IP character, in that answer you would be wrong and up an ink-filled creek. The début of Pikmin was 14 long years ago! Half my life.
When did Nintendo first release Mario and all those other iconic characters? Well, they’re not called classic IP for no reason; for some of you readers, Mario is old enough to be your father!
Again, this is where Splatoon comes in and makes a mess of everything – and I mean that in the greatest possible way!
Nintendo’s own Entertainment Analysis and Development division actively sat down for 6 months to create “a new kind of game, without worrying about trying to fit into existing game genres.”
Stop and understand the above quotation. That’s a noble goal for any game developer, let alone a developer of Nintendo’s caliber! They’ve literally done it all!
Nintendo revived gaming 30 years past, all the while defining genres, making enduring characters, and establishing industry trends! So the question became, does Nintendo have it in them, the guts, the know how to create “a new kind of game?”
The answer is an emphatic S~P~L~A~T! BOOYAH! Splatoon is a surprise and delight!
This isn’t Brain Age, Nintendogs, Miis, or anything that has the word Wii at the start of its title. Although I love all those games, they left something to be desired.
What Splatoon tells me about Nintendo is that, as core Game Creators and Designers, they still have IT! Actually, Nintendo never came close to losing their unique, special, inventive touch!
Letting their new generation of young talent go to work, or in this case, ink the urban town neon, proved to be the time to finally focus on creating a title that would endure for them, and for us, for another 30 years forward!
Remember on top corner of your game box or case where it said the words “only for/on” that particular Nintendo platform? That statement was showcasing its exclusivity!
Splatoon feels so distinctly Nintendo made, nourished, and developed, that it can be rightly said that “only” Nintendo exclusively could come up with all these amazingly wonderful and complete ideas that make Splatoon all that it is!
EAD of Nintendo, you’ve made this longtime, veteran-gamer’s heart go SPLAT!