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Thursday, March 22, 2018

Nintendo at E3 2018: Super Smash Bros. Invitational & Splatoon 2 World Championship 2018

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Awesome! The first concrete things to look forward to for E3 2018.

We are past the point where a mere three months from now, E3 2018 will have come and gone. It's coming up quick, so it figures that gaming companies are now announcing their E3 2018 plans to get people HYPED!

(For us, it's also helping us put our E3 2018 Schedule together.)

So, check out this video Nintendo dropped today, with the accompanying press release:



To put it in writing, there will be a Super Smash Bros. Invitational 2018 tournament and a Splatoon 2 World Championship (2018) from June 11 to June 12. They didn't mention which happens on what day, so that might mean they both start on June 11 and then conclude on June 12? ...Or they're still figuring out logistics.

There are some interesting details to dissect here about both of these tournaments.

Applying to both is what Doug Bowser (Nintendo of America's Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing) said:
“Nintendo always takes an original approach to video game competitions, and the portability of Nintendo Switch enables unique gameplay possibilities[.] We’re looking forward to watching some of the best players in the world test their skills against each other in these two uniquely competitive games.”
How exactly will Nintendo take an original approach to these?

Let's remind ourselves of the Super Smash Bros. For Wii U Invitational in E3 2014, as well as the Splatoon 2 World Inkling Invitational Championships of E3 2017.

In the first Super Smash Bros. invitational, they featured free-for-alls with items for most of the tournament, and invited presentable Super Smash Bros. community figures. They also had this weird fan bracket that the audience voice-voted Mega Man to keep going through. By fighting game community standards, that was certainly unique. It'll probably happen again to feature whatever is in Super Smash Bros. For Switch.

Splatoon 2 World Championship 2018 qualifying tournaments Japan Europe America Oceania
All of the Splatoon 2 regional qualifiers are happening very soon. (Japan's might have already happened?)
America's is the Inkling Open 2018.

How could the Splatoon 2 tournament be unique? Well, the prizes. We know the prizes for the qualifier rounds happening in April. First place, of course, is a trip to E3 and the chance to participate at the E3 tournament. The prizes for the other people? Pearl and Marina amiibo, as well as the Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion DLC. Did you already pre-purchase the DLC? Well, too bad. You shouldn't have done that! I would think giving away DLC as a tournament prize isn't conventional.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering why Doug Bowser mentioned the portability of the Nintendo Switch in a statement about fighting game tournaments. ...Are they really going to have the contestants play portably and not on a big stage with Pro Controllers? Where could they be? A bus? A plane? Skydiving?

By the way, when I wrote in the header of the 2017 reaction log for the Splatoon 2 World Inkling Invitational Championships, “I didn't put 2017 in the article title because... this won't happen in 2018, will it?”, I'm still not wrong. The 2017 tournament was an invitational. The 2018 one is decided by specific qualifying tournaments (see above). As for Super Smash Bros., both the 2014 and 2018 tournaments are invitationals. As such, we know no further information about it, but it seems like we will know for sure if the Super Smash Bros. game for the Switch is an enhanced port or not. You might think that there is no way they will have a tournament of a port as a main E3 event, but to that I say, that already happened last year, so why not again but for a game people actually care about?

My takeaway here is that the Super Smash Bros. Invitational was one of the best parts of E3 2014, and the Splatoon 2 tournament in E3 2017 was the only properly ran tournament of the three Nintendo had. E3 2018 is looking to be awesome, already!


KoopaTV will be around to give you live reactions (filled with humour and intelligent analysis) to these tournaments, as well as the many press conferences that occur during E3 2018! Stay tuned to KoopaTV for more information on E3 2018 as it becomes available, and feel free to speculate in the comments section.


When it became available, KoopaTV wrote an article about Nintendo's whole E3 2018 plan!
With all of these Nintendo events, some are bound to come in conflict with other E3 goings-on. Which to devote KoopaTV resources to?
This is the live reaction log for the Splatoon 2 tournament.
This is the live reaction log for the Super Smash Bros. Invitational of 2018.

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