Splatoon Mess Fest on Santa Monica Pier Gets Dirty

"Ooh-wee-ooo-wee-ooo," that's the song from Splatoon, as best as I can capture in words. It was blasted on this day of half-sunshine and rain when Splatoon took over a portion of the Santa Monica Pier with an epic obstacle course and a demo booth that let you get your hands on an early demo of the game. Free Splatoon T-shirts were handed out for those who took a dive and tried the game Friday.

This was TTDILA's third test of the game playing it at WonderCon and the Global Testfire previously. Alongside three other fans we battled the insidious nature of the green team. After three rounds of blasting are ink on each other we had to call it a draw.

Splatoon easily captures the fun of shooters and makes it anybody-friendly with a colorful course you have to cover in your team's ink. It's not about getting rid of you enemies, it's about covering the most of the map. Controls are easy to master with the Wii U Game Pad's gyroscopic sensors being used for you aim up and down and it's triggers used for firing your guns and throwing your bombs. The pad also lets you tap on a team-mate to get to their location fast.

The day was marked with fun as Nintendo made a real obstacle course similar to the one you might find in the game. Lucky celebrities like James Marsden and Andre from Black Nerd Comedy got to run the course. So did some of the crowd. Lucky fans who had lined up to play a demo of the game were picked at random for their own run on the course.

People fell.

They fell on ink of green and purple. They wore white as the slid down a slide on their teams color. You could hear the sounds, "squish, squash" and again "squish, squash" only to see their frail human forms jump up a rope wall and their legs fly over their head as they flopped to the other side.

The guns they picked shot their ink out on to targets that then exploded with even more ink. It was a sight to behold. 

It was not over, bodies were pulled like vacuum cleaners and people rolled like dogs over and over again. Like the game the last test of this course was that all four members of the team had to completely douse a section of pure white with their color; by any means necessary.

Nintendo commanded a worthy event on the high seas of Santa Monica that day. A day when you could watch not only women and children fall on as obstacle course, but then you could beat them at a video game afterword.

Fans at the event were more than happy to have a chance to flop on the obstacle course, play the game and get free goodies. One fan wore a Inkling helmet they made themselves. Others wore Splatoon hats that need to be sold or given away at events.

No really Nintendo, I want the hat that you had at this event. So many others did as well. Sell it at Hot Topic or make it part of the special edition.

Others won some Splatoon hats  it looked like an alien ink-vasion of sorts. A sort of fun invasion with squid aliens. You could think of the event as a squid alien invasion done right... now I'm gonna watch Squid Girl.


The Second Global Test Fire is
Saturday, May 23, for an hour starting at 3 p.m. Pacific
Splatoon comes out May 29 on the Wii U