The Original Splatoon Was Almost A Mario Game

gamerant.com:

With Splatoon 3 out, gamers are enjoying turf battles, tableturf, Salmon Runs, story content, and gear collecting. The series has come a long way since its first title that came out in 2015. More and more has been added, and the series has truly made itself unique. However, not everyone knows that the game was almost not unique at all. In fact, it was almost a Mario game during its development stage.

Inklings were not always considered to be the main characters for Splatoon. This was revealed by big names in Nintendo such as Shigeru Miyamoto, who shared that Nintendo had internal debates in the development stage about whether Splatoon should be another addition to the Mario franchise or be a new IP. Now, seven years later, it is hard to imagine what Splatoon 3 would have looked like as a Mario game.

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According to Miyamoto, part of the pressure to make Splatoon a Mario game was because it was a safe bet that the game would sell. Creating a new franchise altogether was risky. Building upon what was already successful guaranteed sales, while trying something new meant delving into the unknown.

It would have been far from the first time Mario got a new game series. Nintendo already had many series that used Mario as a selling point such as Paper Mario, Mario Party, and Mario Tennis. So a Mario Splatoon could have been added to this trend.

While some gamers have known about Splatoon almost being a Mario game since it came out in 2015, the whole scenario brings up many questions, like what Paper Mario could have looked like if it was a new IP instead of a Mario game. There are a lot of games out there that could have been original but were developed with Mario for promised