Nintendo is still working hard supporting Splatoon 3 across the globe in all sorts of ways. One of the biggest things that they consistently do for the game is offer Splatfests about once a month. While these are definitely loved by players around the world, Japan occasionally seems to get special, or maybe different, treatment. Things were no for the February 2024 Splatfest. Today, we’re going to take a look at Sweets Fest, the Japan exclusive Splatfest focusing on, you guessed it, sweets. Let’s get into it.
Background
If you’ve followed Splatoon news for some time, you will know that this isn’t the first time that Japan has seen an exclusive event. This goes all the way back to the first two games. Fans that picked up the game on Wii U or Splatoon 2 on Switch found that the game was language locked (and region locked for the Wii U, of course). There seemed to be an ulterior motive for those, or at least one that worked out. This allowed NCL (Nintendo) to strike some deals with with popular brands and pit them against one another in the Splatfests. Of course, things like Japanese snacks or some noodle brands might not have been known to many people in the west, so it made sense for these to be their own thing here.
As for the February 2024 “Sweets Fest,” the event itself kicked off on Saturday, February 17 and ran until Monday, February 19. The tri-color topic for Japan - “Which (sweet) do you like?” The choices were:
- Anko (red bean paste)
- Custard
- Whip Cream
For myself, it was a very tough choice. I like all of these kind of snacks here, but I went ahead and picked custard.
This differed greatly from the Splatfest in English speaking territories which was posing the question, “What’s the best day of the weekend?” Coincidentally (or maybe not at all, who knows!), the last Japan exclusive Splatfest from November 2023 also featured an anko based snack. Since the name had regional variants, the question posed was “What do you call this?”
Merch & Campaign
Nintendo started selling physical versions of the t-shirts found in the game via the online My Nintendo Store in Japan as a way to kick off the event early on February 1. Those that ordered early enough were even able to receive their shirts in time for the event. The in-game festivities kicked off on Friday, February 9.
7-Eleven also began a promotion with Nintendo featuring the very sweets that the Splatfest featured. Unlike campaigns from the past, the convenience store chain did not offer special sweets, bur rather offered a variety of goods with the purchase of already on the shelf items. For the first week of the campaign, lasting from Friday, February 9 to Friday, February 16, the purchase of any two “Seven Sweets” items would offer you the chance to enter into a lottery for a special t-shirt (100 winners), a Smallfry plush keychain (1,000 winners) or a ¥1,000 7&i Holdings gift card (100 winners).
At the same time as the first campaign, Bandai Spirits’ popular Ichiban Kuji lottery teamed up with Nintendo to offer a handful of prizes which could be won via random draws. I got to try this out myself. I only played a few times and managed to grab some lower tier prizes. I did however, have a cool Big Man blanket given to me by a friend, which was pretty cool. At my local 7-Eleven, things kicked off a day late on Saturday, February 10 due to stock coming in a bit behind schedule. When I visited the shop again on Sunday evening and chatted with the staff, I was surprised to learn that they the lottery was already sold out.
There was one more campaign with 7-Eleven and Nintendo, and this took place starting on the day of the actual Splatfest, February 17. Similar to the receipt bar code campaign, fans can simply purchase two of any item from the “Seven Sweets” selection of goods at the shop. This time, they would get one of three keychains. Each store had four or each keychain (twelve each). I got lucky on these and managed to pick up the last ones available at my local shop. You can see photos of these as well as some other pictures from inside 7-Eleven below.
Conclusion
I personally like the fact that Japan has their own Splatfests that are based around some things that people in the west might not even know about. I really wish that other regions would do more of this, though it does admittedly lower the number of participants in the Fests. But let’s turn things over to you. What do you think about this Splatfest? Did you hop on your Japanese account and try it out? Of the three choices, which would you choose (anko, custard or whip cream)? Sound off in the comments down below! We’ve love to hear from you.
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