Official Super Smash Bros. for Switch, Splatoon 2 tournaments coming to E3

Nintendo is bringing its live tournaments back to E3 in June, with this year’s events focusing on Splatoon 2 and the newly announced Super Smash Bros. game for Switch.

The tournaments, which will be held in Los Angeles on June 11 and 12, will have two different formats. The Splatoon 2 World Championship will feature four top teams who qualified in four regions — the United States and Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia — and is being touted as the game’s first world championship.

The Smash Bros. tournament is an invitational, with an undisclosed number of top players invited by Nintendo. Bill Trinen, Nintendo’s senior product marketing manager, told Polygon that it will be similar in structure to the E3 2014 Super Smash Bros. invitational. That event featured top players like Mango, Hungrybox and ZeRo — who went on to take the top prize — playing the then-unreleased version of the game for Wii U.

While Trinen declined to answer any of the questions swirling since Nintendo announced the Switch version of Super Smash Bros. on March 8, he said his aim for the tournament was to serve the wide variety of fans the franchise has accrued.

“We want to have an event that showcases a really high level of play,” he said. “We want it to be be fun for the players, fun for the fans in attendance and for those streaming at home. We want to have matchups that people want to see.”

Since Super Smash Bros. is played by everyone from casual and nostalgic Nintendo fans to an ever-growing competitive base (some of which is still split on whether to devote their time to “Smash 4” for Wii U or Super Smash Bros. Melee,), Trinen said the tournament will aim to make the matches digestible for both groups.

Splatoon 2’s competitive play faces similar challenges, especially as matches venture out of the familiar ground of modes like Turf War, but Trinen is hopeful the game’s spectator modes, which are piloted by a human operator, make the action easy to follow.

Those in the United States and Canada interested in participating in qualifiers for the Splatoon 2 tournament can sign up online for the Splatoon 2 Inkling Open 2018, which will have matches starting April 21.

Trinen also said that this is the first of “many” E3 announcements regarding Nintendo’s programming, and we should hear more in the next month or so. If pro players are getting their hands on Super Smash Bros. for Switch, it’s safe to assume E3 attendees — including ticket holders from the public — will be able to do the same when the show floor opens June 12.