The Radio Is Your Gateway to Multiplayer
After you finish Splatoon Raiders' introductory missions, the team's ship base opens up for exploration. Tucked away in the corner opposite the treasure bot, a radio sits quietly with no tutorial prompt or waypoint directing you toward it. That radio is the entire multiplayer lobby system. Interact with it and you'll be prompted to choose a nickname — pulled automatically from your Switch 2 profile but fully editable within Nintendo's terms of service — before the game presents two connection options: online wireless and local wireless.
Local Wireless Isn't Local Co-op
This is the restriction that catches everyone off guard. Despite the name, local wireless does not mean split-screen or shared-screen play on a single console. Splatoon Raiders does not support couch co-op at all. If you want to play with friends in the same room, every player needs their own Switch 2 and their own copy of the game. The local wireless option simply connects those separate systems directly without routing through Nintendo's servers, which can be handy for LAN-party setups or if your internet is acting up.
Online Wireless: Rooms, Friends, and Passwords
Choosing online wireless opens the full suite of matchmaking tools. You can join a room another player created, pull friends directly from your console's friend list, or create your own room and set a password for private sessions. The room system works nearly identically to Splatoon 3's lobby structure, so veterans will feel right at home. Password-protected rooms are the cleanest way to coordinate with a regular group — no randoms dropping in mid-raid.
Expect More Chaos in a Party
The game rebalances encounters when it detects a full squad. Enemy counts scale up, spawn patterns get more aggressive, and the general tempo shifts from methodical to chaotic. This isn't a difficulty spike so much as a design acknowledgment that four coordinated players clear rooms faster than one. If you've been soloing raids and feeling comfortable, your first group run will feel like a different game entirely — in the best way.
Why This Matters for Your Weekend Plans
Nintendo marketed Splatoon Raiders as a single-player adventure, but the multiplayer layer is where the replay value lives. The radio system is intentionally low-profile, almost hidden, which means plenty of players will finish the campaign without realizing they can bring three friends along for the ride. Knowing where to look and how the connection types actually work saves you an evening of troubleshooting. And with the difficulty scaling designed around full squads, the "intended" experience might just be the multiplayer one.
If you're coordinating a regular group, set up a standing password-protected room and treat it like your own private ARC Raiders session — consistent crew, known callouts, zero randos. The local wireless option is a nice fallback for Among Us-style LAN gatherings, but online wireless is where the game's social systems actually shine. Either way, that unassuming radio on the ship base is the most important piece of furniture in the game.
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