During Nintendo’s 3DS centric Direct presentation yesterday, the company announced that a Pikmin game, tentatively titled Pikmin would be coming to the 3DS sometime in 2017.
What makes this adventure different from previous Pikmin outings is that this one will be a solely side-scrolling affair.
(Thanks to Nintendo World Report for the video)
As you can tell from the trailer, players once again take control of Olimar, the hero from the first two games. According to Nintendo’s Bill Trinen, the game was “designed with action in mind” and as such will be receiving a slight mechanics change. In Pikmin 1 – 3, players had to aim where they wanted to throw their Pikmin, which was a fiddly experience at times. However, in the 3DS game, players simply tap where they want their Pikmin to go on the console’s touch screen.
The game also retains the Pikmins’ abilities: red are fire resistant, blue can swim, and yellow are resistant to electricity and can be thrown higher. Overall the game looks like a worthy 2D adaptation of the series.
This might not be the only Pikmin game we will be getting either. According to Eurogamer, over year ago Nintendo confirmed to the site that a Pikmin 4 was in the works and at E3 this year Miyamoto told Game Rant that the game was still in development. He noted that production hasn’t stopped, but with the NX coming in 2017, Pikmin 4 fell down the priorities list.
Yes, you are right, and we’re working on [Pikmin 4]. So, you know, when we’re in development we have to create a list of priorities and it has been hard to kind of fit that into that list, but we’re hopefully starting to see that on the list now.
It’s not known if the game Pikmin game mention is Pikmin 3DS or not so it’s possible that players could see a Pikmin game on the NX.
Pikmin 3DS is slated for sometime in 2017 and will be out for all Nintendo handhelds.
You can watch the entire Direct presentation below.