Splatoon producer on creating the gameplay, 4v4 battles, and what the game was almost named

Coming from a Nintendo Dream interview with producer Hisashi Nogami...

- director Shintaro Sato came up with the idea of inking
- Sato wrote a program for a drawing system, which included affixing textures on models and processing shadows
- he thought at the time, “If I replace a shadow with the possibility of repainting with a color, wouldn’t that be a new way to play?”

On the decision to feature 4 on 4 matches in Splatoon:

It’s not like we couldn’t have made 3 vs. 3 battles, but if just one player is splatted, the balance changes drastically and the enemy team can make a push in one go. On the other hand, when we tried increasing the number of players, the effect of splatting one person was small. However, when we tried 4 vs. 4, just splatting one player got the other team into a quite unfavorable situation. It is like a power play in ice hockey.

On the Super Jump:

Director (Tsubasa) Sakaguchi came up with the Super Jump function, but utilizing the Gamepad was one of the development themes from the start. To tell you the truth, when Super Jump was implemented for the first time, the characters were still rabbits. But when the characters were changed to squids, there was a concern as to whether they could jump… there is some kind of logic behind it (laughs).

- another title considered for Splatoon was Ikasukiz
- Ikasukiz has four meanings: ‘Ika’ (squid) and ‘Ikasu’ (being stylish), in addition to ‘Kiz’ (kids) and ‘Sukiz’ (squids)
- Ikasukiz would have only worked in Japan and the team wanted to have a common title worldwide