You know how the Discovery Cable Channel has Shark Week?  Well this week we’re going to have Squid Week, with squid themed blogs at the beginning and end of the week.  This first blog will be about Splatoon.  It’s been a very well-received Wii U title and a lot of people have praised it.  But not a lot have talked about the retro-styled mini-games in Splatoon, so I’m going to do that right now!

There’s probably one good reason why not a whole lot have talked about the mini-games.  It’s a little tricky to get them!  You have to have the Splatoon Amiibo 3-Pack to unlock them all, and they’re pretty hard to find.  I was lucky enough to snag a set, and I wasn’t going to buy the Splatoon game unless I could get the set, because I wanted to have all the games unlocked (I just like retro style mini-games).  I didn’t want to miss any content just because I couldn’t get some Amiibo figures.  But I’m glad I found the Amiibo figures because the game is really fun.

So what you have to do is go to the special Amiibo display in the game’s hub, scan an Amiibo, and then you get a set of missions from the single player game mode, but with special rules.  The Girl Amiibo lets you use only the sniper gun, the Boy Amiibo lets you use the paint roller, and the Squid Amiibo has a mix of limited ink missions and timed ones where you can be the Kraken.  By completing missions, you’ll either earn money, special gear, or one of the three mini-games (one is already unlocked).  You can play the mini-games two ways.  There is an arcade cabinet in the Inkopolis Square, or you can play them while you wait for online matches to start.  You play the games on the Wii U pad, and it’s a pretty good idea.  So here are the mini-games you can play!

Squid Jump

OK so the first game you don’t have to unlock with any Amiibos.  It comes with the game already so I won’t talk about it too much (you could even play it during their Global Testfire).  It kind of reminds me a bit of Doodle Jump.  You make a squid jump on platforms in a vertically scrolling stage.  You won’t die if you fall too far, but there is some rising purple water that will kill you, so you do have to keep moving upward.  You hold down the trigger button to charge up and release to jump.  Charge up more to jump higher.  You can also charge while in the air, which saves time, but when you do this, you have less control over your left and right movements.  So it’s a tradeoff.  Watch out for moving platforms and icy floors in later levels, and collect power-ups that’ll help you jump higher.  Make it to the top to win the level.  Again, anyone can play this game on Splatoon, so I won’t go into the game any further (although that’s about all the game is anyway).

Squid Ball

This one is kind of a volleyball game.  Your squid is on one side of the net, and a group of jellyfish and starfish are on the other side.  Your job is to knock a certain number of them out with the volleyball to move onto the next level.  You get three chances, and each ball is bigger than the last.  Except they aren’t really balls.  I think they’re either shrimp or snails or something.  The graphics aren’t good enough for me to really tell what things are supposed to be (remember those days?).  Anyway, the balls will be served on your side of the field, and you must move left and right to bounce them into the air.  Then press the R trigger button to jump (just like Squid Jump) to spike the ball to the other side of the net.  Depending on where you are and where you jump, you’ll spike the ball at a certain angle, but it’s still pretty hard to judge where you want it to go.  It kind of reminds me of the GameCube volleyball game Beach Spikers, which is one of my favorite sports games.

Squid Racer

This top down racer reminds me of Atari’s classic Sprint games.  You and a bunch of other squids race around various tracks, most just go from point A to point B with a curve or two in between.  Press the R trigger button to accelerate and the control stick to steer, also kind of like the Micro Machines games.  You can also press the L trigger button to do a powerslide, but since it’s hard to tell where your squid is facing, this can be a tricky move to pull off.  You can also collect power-ups that look like the volleyball fish, but I’m not sure what they do.  I think one lets you take out other racers if you run into them.  You can go onto the next track if you place and don’t run out of time.

Squid Beatz

The last unlockable game is a music rhythm challenge where you choose any song from the game and time button presses to the beat.  But I’m not sure how you score or anything.  The music just loops over and over and there is no score or Game Over requirements that I can tell.  I think this is really just the game’s Sound Test Mode with a little interactivity thrown in.

Conclusions

And that’s all the games!  Despite the bad things I said about them, I still think they’re really fun.  Hopefully Nintendo will let folks unlock those games in the future without having to get the Amiibo figures.  In the comments section, let me know what your favorite Splatoon mini-game is!

Tags: Game Reviews