Gaming companies in the past have always wanted to expand the boundaries of competitive gaming. With many new companies entering the scene fresh-faced and hopeful, it becomes difficult to garner excitement before a release. Two games from Nintendo however broke through this barrier, such as the much anticipated Super Smash Bros. Melee and the Splatoon series. Since both games are part of larger franchises, many thought Nintendo would grab this opportunity to spread their games and name further by making strong strides into the gaming community– which, for a time they did. Unfortunately, support from the company stopped only after a small amount of time, not leaving the community with much in the end.
Since both are highly competitive games, Super Smash Bros. and the Splatoon series showcase talent and practiced skill over random luck or “button mashing”. Splatoon is a 4 4-team, third-person shooter game where you play as a squid (or octopus) and human hybrid. The game’s main point is to cover the map in your color ink as the opposing team tries to cover the map in theirs. Smash Bros., however, is a little different–it is a primarily platform fighter game where players choose a character to play as against each other on a stationary platform.
After its release in 1999, Super Smash Bros. 64 was an instant hit in many arcades and eventually online. Several players quickly rose to the top, also building a tight-knit community in the process. The game was initially confined to arcade machines for a small while, later leading to the release of the next Smash game, Super Smash Bros. Melee. With the release of Melee, the Smash community took off, and the game became a main feature of the competitive gaming tournament Evolution Championship Series or EVO for short. This period, however, signaled what seemed to be the end of official support of the game from Nintendo, who seldom hosted any official tournaments. This trend changed in 2022,. when SWT (a good-sized game company) tried to host a $250,000 tournament; unfortunately, this tournament was canceled three weeks before the finals due to legal action from Nintendo.
The origin of Splatoon was very different from Smash Bros in terms of the release process. The first game of the series was released on game DVD to the Wii-U, which at the time was the worst-selling Nintendo console. Splatoon was a unique game, bringing the third-person shooter genre to a much younger audience through the cartoon-like style of the game, and Nintendo seemed to realize this. Taking advantage of the hype built by the game’s release, Nintendo hosted several major tournaments throughout the first two years of Splatoon’s release, only stopping to announce the coming release of Splatoon 2 (which was also a massive success)This was also the time when Nintendo started to pull official support from the game, stopping tournaments because“the competitive nature of where the game is heading does not fit with Nintendo’s policy of being family-friendly first and foremost.” Nintendo also stopped updates for the beloved game without any messaging as to where the team had gone or if they were working on another game.
After nearly 2 years of radio silence, Splatoon 3 was announced for the summer of 2022. Supporters were initially extremely excited but were disappointed by an unfinished game with many errors. Nintendo has still maintained its “family-friendly” policy, continuing to only host 2 official tournaments in the year Splatoon 3 has been released.
