Its hard to believe that its been 10 years since the original Splatoon game appeared on the Wii-U console. Splatoon was one of the few good things to come from Nintendo during the Wii-U era because it was the birth of the franchise. During the 2010’s decade the shooter genre was becoming increasingly popular and Nintendo wanted to capitalize on the momentum the genre had at the time. Splatoon was a kid friendly third-person shooter that appealed to the casual family audience of gamers without being violent. The original Splatoon had enjoyable offline and online game modes including Battle Dojo, Turf War, 4v4 along with Hero Mode which was a single player campaign. In terms of map designs the original Splatoon probably had some of the best and the atmosphere felt more chaotic in comparison to its sequels. Despite, criticisms over the years for its broken gameplay mechanics and lack of depth in comparison to its sequels; the Splatoon game stood out on the Wii-U console because of how unique it was. The Splatoon had reached over 4.9 million copies since its release in 2015 and it ended up being the sixth best-selling video game on the Wii-U console. Even though, online multiplayer gameplay issues were among the few issues the original Splatoon had longtime fans of the franchise liked the first more than Splatoon 3 from 2022 which sold 13 million copies.

While Splatoon 2 from 2017 has been widely regarded as the best entry by many people the original game is the one that had more creativity in relation to map designs. It should also be noted that the popularity of the original Splatoon game lead to Nintendo shutting down its servers due to issues regarding hackers. The original Splatoon could have possibly have sold more if the game debut on Switch console opposed to the Wii-U which was considered a commercial failure. However, Splatoon was a game that Nintendo took a gamble on and it worked because of how fresh and innovative it was as a kid’s game in 2015. Splatoon is one of the new IP’s that Nintendo created post-2012 that developed into a prominent franchise. While online gameplay has never been the strongest attribute of the Splatoon series the games generally fun and they appeal to casuals while making profits for Nintendo. As memorable as the original Splatoon game was its almost certain that it was not Nintendo’s best in relation to series as a whole.