Did you watch the most recent Nintendo Direct? If you didn’t, you really should. It’s one of the best we’ve had in a while, full of amazing looking JRPGs. As a Splatoon fan, however, my personal highlight was the new trailer for Splatoon 3’s updated Salmon Run mode. It looks great! One of the bigger reactions was to the music over the trailer. My own editor said that it scared her. So I thought, why not try to pin down what is actually going on with Splatoon’s music?
So, I’m going to go through it. I’ve listened to every single Splatoon song as research. I’ve also been listening to lots and lots of music for my whole life, which helps. I feel like I know enough to pick out different influences and vibes. I could be completely wrong, but that’s the challenge. Then I’ll take a magnifying glass to the slivers of music we’ve heard from the Splatoon 3 soundtrack, and try to work out why to some it can seem scary, yet I can find it so exciting.
It’s pretty hard to work out what else is out there that sounds similar to Splatoon music. The track ‘It’s Up To You’ by Polysics is the closest I came to something that sounds like it could slot into the soundtrack easily. But the influences are more eclectic than first appearances suggest. And even though it might appear to be wacky music for a wacky game, there are some absolutely stellar compositions that fuse together a wide array of genres.
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