- as Captain Olimar is making his way home, an asteroid onslaught forces him to land
on a nearby planet - Sparklium is the fuel for Olimar's Dolphin III ship - with the ship's fuel depleted, you have to find items
on this planet which can be turned into fuel - collect everything from seeds to large
scale treasures - you need 30,000 Sparklium to make your way home - you are eventually required to find a lost ship part at the end of the game - levels are more linear and puzzle based, and include specific goals / goodies to collect - move Captain Olimar with the Circle Pad, while all other interactions use the touchscreen - blow your whistle, throw Pikmin and also touch certain objects - worlds are called Sectors, with six areas altogether - find all the treasure and look for new passageways to complete a sector 100 % - passageways can grant you access to secret spots or additional levels highlighted with the letter X - the first world is called Brilliant Garden, which has lush forest environments - Yellow Pikmin can easily reach the upper
screen, where you can sometimes collect goodies and pull down vines - there's a level where you use yellow Pikmin as a source to connect two wires - connecting the wires lets you see
enemies and platforms that were hidden in the shadows - Winged Pikmin can be flung at high speeds, and they can pick up Olimar and help him descend down into new areas - in a later level, you need to use red Pikmin to stomp out fire and clear the way for you - Rock Pikmin are the strongest ones of the bunch and can break crystals - blue Pikmin can swim and fight well underwater - the maximum amount of Pikmin you can have in a stage is 20 - blow your whistle to call over the correct Pikmin for a task or puzzle - Ravaged Rustworks offers a unique industrial environment where you climb
on pipes - Loney Tower has you climbing to the top of a tower without any help of Pikmin, and instead use pipes and Olimar's jetpack - Valley of the Breeze, found in the Leafswirl Lagoon sector, relies complete
on Winged Pikmin - Barriers of Flame is in the Sweltering Parchlands sector - here you «lll be forced to improvise with Yellow and Rock Pikmin to get around fire - every world ends with a boss stage - one boss fight puts you up against a Fiery Blowhog, where you use Red Pikmin to pick up / feed bombs to the boss - beating bosses gives you treasures worth 1,000 Sparklium each - supports amiibo in the Splatoon, Super Mario and Animal Crossing lines - amiibo can be scanned in to grant you access to secret spots - these are one room puzzle challenges where you collect a statue - these bonus rooms will also get you 200 Sparklium every time - you are limited by how many amiibo you can summon to each secret spot - one of the treasures you will find is an NES cartridge for Ice Climbers, which carries the name «Revenge Fantasy».
- the game's shading mechanism has changed, which allows for increased gear texture quality - all graphical aspects and programming mechanisms have been built up from scratch for this sequel - maximum resolution is 1080p in TV mode - a bigger focus for Nintendo was the 60 frames per second - occasionally the resolution will be
scaled down when there is too much ink displaying
on the
screen - Nintendo reduced the CPU load and refined the way to use CPU power effectively to maintain 60 fps in all matches - weapons were tweaked to let players be more creative by thinking about unique weapon characteristics and their best uses - weapons are designed to be effective when they are used during the right occasion - Special weapons are stronger than the original ones when used in the right situation, but weaker otherwise - the damage and effect of slowing down your movement when you step in the opponent's ink are reduced from original - you can jump up in rank if you're good enough, but only up until S - you can't jump up from C, B or A to S + - when you win battles in Ranked mode, the Ranked meter fills and your rank goes up when its fully filled - when you lose a battle, the gauge does not decrease, but the meter starts to crack - once the meter reaches its limit, it breaks - when the meter breaks, you have to start over again from the beginning or from a lower rank - highest rank is still S +, but if you fill up the Ranked meter, you get numbers after the alphabet such as «S +1», «S +2» and so
on - maximum number is «S +50», but this number will not be displayed to your opponent - you are the only one to see it, and you can check it
on your own status
screen - Ranked Power is calculated by an algorithm to measure how strong each player is with minuteness - this will determine if a player's rank is worthy of receiving a big jump (like from «C» to «A»)- Ranked Power has no relation to your splat rate, and is more tied into to how well you lead your team to victory - you won't drop off more than one rank even if you play poorly - stage rotation time was changed to two hours - this was done because the devs expected people to play for an hour or so, but they found people play much longer - with Salmon Run, Nintendo considered how to implement a co-op oriented mode in a player - versus - player type of game - the devs will monitor how users are playing this mode to see if there's some tweaks they can throw in - more Salmon Run maps will be added in the future, but Nintendo wouldn't comment
on adding more
enemy types to the mode - rewards are changed each time Salmon Run is played - you can obtain rewards when playing locally, but not gear - originally Nintendo had an idea for this mode, but had no background setting,
enemy designs, etc. - Inoue suggested that it should be salmon - themed - when Nintendo hosted the Splatfest that pit Callie against Marie, the development of Splatoon 2 had started - the devs had already decided to have the result reflected in the sequel - they even had an idea to announce the Splatfest with a phrase «Your choice will change the next Splatoon» - the timing to announce a sequel wasn't right, so they decided against this - they eventually released a series of short stories about the Squid Sisters to show how the Splatfest affected the sequel's story - Nintendo wouldn't say if Marina is an Octoling, and noted that Inklings are not paying attention to this too much - Inklings don't care about appearances, as long as everyone is doing something fresh - the Squid Sisters had composers who produced their songs, but Off the Hook are composing their music by themselves - Pearl is genius artist, but she couldn't find a right partner because she's a bit too edgy - she eventually found Marina as a partner though, and their chemistry is sparkling right now - Nintendo is planning a year of content updates for Splatoon 2 - when finished, the quantity of stages will be more than the original - some of the additional stages are totally new and some will be arranged stages from the first game - not all original stages will return and they are choosing stages based
on the potential for them to be improved - Brella is shotgun-esque weapon, so the ink hits your opponent more if you are closer - it can shield damage when you open it, but the amount of damage has a limit and once it reaches it, it breaks - you can shoot ink, but you can't use the shield feature when it breaks - the shield won't prevent your allies ink - there are more new weapon categories which haven't been revealed yet - there are no other ranked modes outside of the three current options - the future holds any sort of possibility, but the devs didn't get specific about adding more content like that - for the modes, they adjusted the rule designs so that players will experience the more interesting aspects