I've gone camping by mistake. I'll be in next week if I don't drown first.

You went camping for 4 hours?

So, the Splatoon World Championship 2018 happened this week.

I didn't want to go at first, wasn't really fancy standing in line for it, was a bit anxious about driving (and parking) to LA, was afraid I'd be the only grown up between a bunch of kids.

B convinced me to go in the end, there's nothing to lose, you can always drive back home if it's too busy, school holidays haven't started yet and anyone under 17 needed a supervisor. I do try and watch Splatoon tournaments on Twitch whenever I can, so a chance to see the best players from all over the world was quite tempting.

Official line would start at 12.30pm, so I left home around 10am. The drive was a little over an hour, and that would give me enough room to find a parking spot if it would all stress me out to much. Had my 3DS charged, Micro as backup and headphones packed. In case the waiting was boring.

The venue wasn't far from the highway, more or less a straight road from my exit. In typical LA style you will always pass a run down area, couple of tents on the sidewalks and some good looking graffiti. The Belasco Theater was easy to spot, and there were parking lots all around it. So I pulled into the first one, and a slight panic started. Spaces were tight and the car in front of me was parking in backwards, I can't do that fancy stuff! Turns out the owner of the parking lot was parking the cars, you give him money and your keys and walk away. Pfew, my main concern was sorted.


Look at that! That's a pretty nice building! Haven't read about the history but it feels like a left over from better times in Hollywood.

The line itself wasn't too bad, I mainly chatted with a Swedish guy for the whole wait. Nintendo staff checked in once in a while if everyone was doing OK, made sure to tell us pretty early on that we all would be able to get in. The group in front of us was streaming the conferences, a little excitement when Ubisoft showed an Airwing.
Not too long after 12.30pm wristbands were handed out, and a little note with rules. People were allowed to get out of the line now, but you'd loose your spot when the doors opened. Most groups appointed a designated food person to grab some food from somewhere.
At some point people were asked to check in with their Nintendo account on their phones, to get a qr code and a chance to win some signed artwork. Don't think anyone got it, but everyone got a phone pop socket. Free stuff to keep everyone in a good mood. I must say that Nintendo had enough distractions that the wait never felt long. Camera crew was walking around doing interviews, Nintendo staff came by a couple of times for a chat, atmosphere was pretty good overall.

Once the doors opened, we were met by the best Amiibo:


Stage looks pretty awesome, and they had the trophy up there as well. I've seen better pictures of it and it has the names of last year winners engraved.




Splatoon music was playing and the vibe was good. People were humming along to it, around 8 people near me that didn't know each other had their switches out and were playing a local game, their was a little bar with food and drinks, all felt like really good organized again.

When it was showtime we got a little intro of Mr. Nogami first, which was really cool of course. Not much time was wasted and the games were on. Screens were set up in a smart way, main screen was the match and the screens on the sides showed an overview of the map most of the time, to get a good feeling where everyone was etc.
USA clearly was a favourite, with Japan close behind them. Australian team had their mom with them, she had a lot of yells (and flag waving) going on and the audience usually caught up with that. Really nice to see everyone root for good plays in the end. Australia never had much of a chance (they won their local tournament out just 100 teams, all 3 other countries had at least 400 competing teams), but there was never any boo-ing or other negative business. Europe definitely was the most entertaining group that day, their matches against USA were some of the best I've seen.

So yeah, I didn't expect to enjoy it that much, but seeing so many people together just having a good time was amazing. No one was salty about their favourite not going to finals. I didn't feel a single negative vibe the whole day and I was surprised by that. Loved it.

Here's a squid and some security.


Octoling DLC is out people, go get it. I've only played a few levels, but this is gonna be quite the challenge. In a good way.

Briefly wondered why the tournament was called 2018 then realised I hadn't seen Nina's post. Sounds like Tilly heaven, she loves the Splatoon characters/music etc.

Splatfeeeessssttt