Nintendo announced a testfire event for the end of March.

I'm kind of surprised they're having one of these events so soon, and wonder if they'll have any more testfires before the official release. As a fan of the original Splatoon, I am itching to get some hands on time with the new game, but don't think this is enough to get me to bite on a Switch yet.

Does this shift anyone's barometer on an early Switch purchase?

I already preordered one so for sure I'll at least try out the server test event.

I loved Splatoon as well but I'm not sold on the Switch yet. No matter what, this is a good call for early adopters. Has Nintendo done a 'beta' type thing before...?

@nickhead said:

Yup, they had a Splatoon Global Test Fire for the first game. pre-launch (and brought it back a couple of times afterwards).

I'm looking forward to checking this one out!

Bumping this because the Switch is out now. I've never played Splatoon so I'm very excited! I should be able to make time for every testfire with a bit of discipline to wake up early.

Seems fun. Will be more fun with/if there is some sort of progression system. I think you unlock clothes right? I never played the first one.

Seems to be down now, though. Anyone playing?

@handlas: you unlock clothes (they have abilities and modifiers on them) and weapons. If I remember correctly you get points that you spend on them in their respective shops.

Wasn't there a live stream of this on the schedule? Are they still planning to stream one of the Splatoon 2 Test Fire sessions?

@jaws12: I think they did do a stream of it yesterday but I missed it so I don't know if they had bad luck with servers or what.

@citizencoffeecake: @jaws12: The stream archive is available Giant Bomb's YouTube channel:

I'm still hoping there will be a downloadable archive, since YT sometimes bugs out on my PC when playing longer videos.

I played today. Never played Splatoon before. I was playing in handheld mode and the forced motion controls were absolute garbage.

@bollard: You can turn off motion controls and affect sensitivity in the +Options on the weapon-select screen.

I played the first two Testfires and really enjoyed it. I also had difficulty with the motion controls but could see how they would clearly be superior if you got used to them. I never played Splatoon 1 and don't really play multiplayer games, but after a while I really started to enjoy it. I also frequently got top scorer on my team with the Splat Dualies. I had a lot of fun (especially on the second Testfire after I had figured out the controls from the first).

@dixavd: Ah thanks, I tried doing it in game and + does absolutely nothing!

@bollard: In the first test I did the same thing, I was really annoyed because I thought you couldn't turn the motion controls off, kind of annoying you can't do it in the menus but maybe that will be a thing in the full game.

Another one is about to start - so get your Squidlings ready.

@dixavd: I get so sad when it's over :(