In Splatoon 2’s McDonald’s showdown, nuggets take narrow victory

Japanese Splatoon 2 players have weighed in: When it comes to McDonald’s most iconic foods, chicken nuggets reign supreme. But the final tally shows just how divisive of a war this was, and that the nugs’ ultimate victory was a lot less certain than some of my colleagues might have thought.

In the popular vote, French fries actually swept players away. A majority voted in favor of those good, good potatoes — 71 percent joined that team, while only 29 percent went with the misshapen pieces of over-processed chicken. But when it came to the battlefield, McNuggets edged out fries very, very closely. Team McNuggets won the Splatfest with a tiny 51 percent success rate.

We have seen this happen before in another high-profile Splatfest, albeit one that ran in far more regions than this Japan-exclusive did. In the Splatfest between mayo and ketchup, mayo won handily — as it should have — even though it dramatically lost the fan vote portion of the competition.

This just goes to show that if you’re signing on for a Splatfest, you gotta splat up or shut up. That, or Nintendo may want to consider tweaking Splatoon 2’s battle matchups so that players on the same team are less likely to fight against each other, skewing the win rate.

I’m feeling a little salty about all of this, personally, and that pun is very much intended: French fries are superior all the way. Please listen to me plead my case on the most recent episode of The Polygon Show, embedded below, even if the rest of the crew — and our weekend editor Owen Good — argued vehemently in favor of the nugs.