Late last year Nintendo launched an official Tumblr page for Splatoon, which provides translations of the regular posts made to the Japanese Twitter account for the game. While always light-hearted, they often go beyond mere concept art to provide snippets of interesting information, rather like the good-old-days of Masahiro Sakurai's Pic of the Day Miiverse posts for Super Smash Bros.

Quite a few posts have been made since our last summary, so below are the snapshots and quotes from the official site in December and early January; yes, we're including the Holiday wishes courtesy of the lovely art provided!

Squid Research Lab, reporting in! Our research team just uploaded a new sketch this morning. This female squid creature appears to be holding some sort of long-range weapon. And look at that sweet-looking knit hat! These have got to be the coolest squids ever discovered.

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This just in! There appear to be some members of the octopus forces that hit hard like a freight train. They're also not so easy on the eyes… Just remember this: if it's got two legs—look out!

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Hey! It's a slow day here in the lab, so I thought I'd drop a few more squid facts on you guys. Did you know that there are over 15,000 squid species in the world? Most of them live in water-filled caves way beneath the ocean floor, pretty close to the Earth's core, in fact. The intense heat down there has apparently resulted in some crazy mutations too. Not that we've ever seen any of them, mind you, as getting down there would require some kind of insane diamond-tipped drill-dozer machine. I imagine they're pretty cool-looking, though.

Check it out! One of our lab assistants just texted over this fascinating new image. It looks like the interior of a giant warehouse, and the location of some intense turf-war battles. I sure hope the squids get permission before going in here and clean up after themselves when they're done…

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Breakings news! We've just received solid evidence confirming that some of the octopus creatures can take on a humanoid form, just like the crazy squids! However, this has so far only been observed in females. Are the octo-males not capable of this amazing feat? We're assigning two interns to focus on answering this tantalizing question.

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Merry Squidmas! Check out the awesome holiday card one of our senior interns sent us this year. From the looks of it, he's been bitten by full-on squid mania!

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You may already know this, but squids have a total of 10 limbs. So when these creatures turn into humanoid form, two of their limbs become legs, two turn into arms, two form their hair, but…where do the other four go? Well, I guess we have our answer! By the way, this will be our last research report of the year. Talk to you guys in 2015!

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Happy New Year! Wishing you a tentacular, squidtastic, cephalopoppin'-off 2015! Now let's get down to business. Check out the first photo we received this year from our research team. It looks like the crazy squids celebrate New Year's also! But…wait. Squids keep track of time?! I don't even…

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This just in! One of our senior research assistants just faxed over a fascinating new image. At first glance, this looks like a typical back alley, but word on the street is that it's a favorite battleground for these crazy squids. Apparently it's a popular place to hone one's skills in one-on-one duels. If fact, it looks familiar for some reason…

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Breaking news! One of our interns recently saw a squid guy fall into a creek during a turf war, and guess what?! The squid dissolved! This suggests that these creatures can't maintain a solid form when submerged in water. Does this mean that they're actually made of liquid? The mystery deepens…

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Let us know what you think of this batch of images; are you excited about Splatoon?