Arcade machine



The Arcade Machine offers retro-style mini-games in Splatoon, all played on the GamePad. They can be played in the Lobby for online battles as well as accessed on their own via the physical Arcade Machine in Inkopolis Plaza.

When a mini-game is interrupted by a battle, the player's current progress is saved automatically and can be continued next time. However, progress is not saved when Splatoon itself is closed; upon starting the game again, mini-games are reset to their first level.

There are four mini-games in total: Squid Jump, Squid Racer, Squidball, and Squid Beatz. Only Squid Jump is unlocked by default, with the other three given as rewards for amiibo challenges.

Modes
The Arcade Machine features four different mini-games in total, with all the amiibo challenges completed.

Squid Jump


Squid Jump (Japanese: イカジャンプ ika janpu) is the first of these games, and was the only game playable in the Splatoon Global Testfire.

This game has the player make a squid jump from platform to platform, holding down the button for longer to get a higher jump. To prevent the player from staying still for too long, some purple ink will chase them after a certain amount of time. As the Stages progress, more obstacles are added like slippery ice platforms and moving platforms. After every 10 stages, the background changes, the score per stage is doubled and a checkpoint is saved. You have three lives. Once you've lost all of your lives you can choose to either restart the game or go back to the last checkpoint. The game has 25 stages. The fish makes you do a jump. The Jellyfish lets you jump in the middle of the air. The star makes the squid jump faster and sometimes takes you upwards to the next star. You get an extra live every 10.000 points.

Squid Racer


The second game is Squid Racer (Japanese: イカレース ika rēsu), which is unlocked by the Inkling Boy amiibo.

This mini-game is a race between the player, a white squid, and their blue jellyfish foes. The aim is to reach the end of the map first, avoiding touching the jellyfish and the sides of the stage, which slow you down. The button is used for accelerating and the  button for drifting. After every 5 stages is a checkpoint. Every track has a time limit. Once time runs out, you lose a life. You get three lives. Once you've lost all your lives, you go back to the last checkpoint.

Squidball


The third game is Squidball (Japanese: イカボール ika bōru), which is unlocked by the Inkling Girl amiibo. There are 30 stages in it.

In this game, the player has to hit the creatures on the other side of the net with a Zapfish to score points. The zapfish can only be bounced up once and to hit it, the button must be pressed after bouncing one to jump, and again to hit it. The angle of the zapfish changes with the direction held when launching it, which can be either neutral, back or forward. After every 5 stages is a checkpoint.

Squid Beatz


The last mini-game is Squid Beatz (Japanese: イカラジオ ika rajio), which is unlocked by the Inkling Squid amiibo.

This game is a music player featuring all 31 tracks from Splatoon and is also a standard rhythm game. The button switches between no game, normal mode, and hard mode and the  button is the Play/Pause switch. The player will have to press the Control Pad and Buttons represented on the line at the bottom at the correct time to cause the jellyfish to turn into yellow rabbits.

Squid Beatz was updated in Version 2.0.0 to include the four new tracks added and their information.

It is the only game not to have a numbered scoring system, instead it uses yellow rabbit type creatures to track the score.

Trivia

 * The rabbits in Squid Beatz are likely a reference to an early stage of Splatoon's development wherein the protagonists were to be humanoid rabbits.
 * The art for each of the four games parodies that of NES games from popular studios. Squid Racer's artwork is based on Irem's titles, Squid Beatz' is based on Namco's, and Squid Ball's is based on those of Nintendo.
 * The Arcade Machine is also featured in Ancho-V Games, with four individual machines throughout the stage. Unlike the one in Inkopolis Plaza, they cannot be interacted with.