Last night was the last time that this game was playable and in those final few hours where the servers just wouldn't quit, I understood how those in the original Squidbeak Splatoon must have felt battling in the front lines of the Great Turf War.

I turned on my Wii U yesterday at 6:30pm fully believing the Wii U/3DS servers were shutting down at 7:00, I sat down to watch the final iteration of Inkopolis news, I heard Callie and Marie's final "stay fresh!", and was emotionally prepared for my 8-year Splatoon 1 career to end in a climactic blaze of glory, in which as soon as the clock hit 7:00 I would be struck down by an error message in the heat of an exciting battle.

So for that half hour, I played some of the most intense turf wars of my life. Every one of us in that 8 person lobby was playing like it was life-or-death and fighting for our final matches to be wins. And as I sat there, placing inkstrike after inkstrike on my Wii U gamepad which by this point had gathered so much dust over the years that you needed to press twice as hard for the touch screen to recognize you, I reminisced over how much the silly squid game has done for me, and how much has changed since I first played it.

Splatoon is many things to me. Its story mode was the first game that I completed on my own. It was the first game that I became invested in and followed along with in real time. It was the first game that gave me a sense of competitiveness, it was the first game that I can remember ever wanting to get better at. It was the first game I played that had a strong sense of community around it because of its ties to Miiverse (which I still mourn to this day fly high Miiverse you were gone too soon). Splatoon is without a doubt the franchise that I have invested the most hours into across each of its three games, and all because of how much fun I had with the first entry.

So of course I was sad to see it go. When I queued into a turf war match at 6:58 last night, I got ready to say goodbye. Turf wars only last 3 minutes so as soon as the match started, expecting it to be cut short, I started a squid party. In the middle of Moray Towers, 7 other inklings gathered around me, booyah-ing and super jumping to their heart's content, and in that moment the community that I remembered from 8 years ago had been revived and was back in full glory to celebrate the end of the game that had meant so much to all of us. What a way to go.

But then 7:00 passed and the match was still going. 7:01 the match ended and Judd the cat appeared to tell my team that despite our actions, we had covered the most turf and won the game. By 7:02 I had levelled up and was in the lobby waiting for another match to start. Weird. Maybe the servers actually shut down at 8:00 and I actually have another hour?

8:00 hits. 8:01 and I'm in another match.

This limbo of not knowing when the servers were going to give up goes on for another two hours. At this point I was very confused and slightly annoyed. As it turned, out I had until the map rotation changed at 10:00pm to bid farewell to Splatoon 1 and the Wii U and 3DS era as a whole. An ending that honestly feels right for a console generation such as this one.

The final hours of Splatoon 1 were ridiculously nostalgic and confusing, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Farewell, Splatoon 1

Stay fresh :)