Mario 128 Didn\u2019t Actually Directly Influence Pikmin<\/b><\/p>\n

Over the past 20 years, it seemed to be assumed canon that the GameCube demo Mario 128 was directly connected to Pikmin. That, according to programmer Yuji Kando, was not the case. \u201cWe didn’t know about the existence of Mario 128, so it’s not like Pikmin was influenced by Mario 128 in terms of planning or technology, but many new ideas came out of Nintendo GameCube’s ability to move a large number of characters, which wasn’t possible back in the days of Nintendo 64.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say Mario 128 didn\u2019t help Pikmin out along the way; it likely doesn\u2019t exist as is without that tech demo. But the paramount ideas of the game were laid out well in advance of the demo and core members of the development team weren\u2019t involved with Mario 128. That being said, as NWR\u2019s John Rairdin pointed out, Miyamoto was intimately involved in the creation of Pikmin and he definitely knew about Mario 128.<\/p>\n

The Development Team Had Doubts About Violence and Death in Pikmin<\/b><\/p>\n

At this point, we all know what happens when you fail your Pikmin and they die. A Bulborb will scoop them up in their mouth and chomp away until you hear the final screams of your beloved critters and they disappear into a ghostly form. It\u2019s just accepted now that after you use your army to take down a Fiery Blowhog, you carry its carcass back to your base so you can generate more Pikmin to enlist in your mission. But according to Miyamoto, he had some real doubts. \u201cAre we dead set on doing this?\u201d he recalled with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Part of the overall goal of Pikmin was to, as Hino said, \u201cconvey a touch of somberness.\u201d That overall touch of borderline magical realism seems to have been an inspiration from the European indie films the team watched.<\/p>\n

Of course even if this all seems very artistic, Miyamoto is quick to clarify that the gameplay came first, as is Nintendo\u2019s way.<\/p>\n

At E3 2001, Miyamoto Lied And Said The Game Was Finished<\/b><\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t even beat around the bush: \u201cAt E3, I spoke as if the game was finished. (Laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

In actuality, only the stage shown at E3 was complete. And that was specifically made for E3. Edits to the debut trailer were being made days before E3, with Miyamoto having a heavy hand because he only joined the team as a director earlier that year (he was a producer on the title prior). He said to Abe, one of the game\u2019s other directors, that \u201cI\u2019ll join as a director, so please give me three months. I\u2019ll step down if it fails.\u201d Miyamoto was so bold because he was confident that the game would be finished for the launch of the GameCube later in 2001. Who knows if he\u2019s just saying that in hindsight or not.<\/p>\n

When he joined, he put together a game flow diagram of what Pikmin would be. We can\u2019t totally see the full details of this game design document, but it\u2019s a rare look into how Miyamoto lays out a game. He explains the diagram further: \u201cAt first glance, this diagram just looks like a bunch of cryptic sentences strung together, but if you follow each sentence one by one, you can understand the program’s flow with this single sheet. In other words, nothing other than what\u2019s written here will happen. It always happens with game development. We want to do this, we want to do that, and we end up with lots of new elements. Then the director says, \u2018Well, I guess we’ll have to figure out how to fit them all together!\u2019 and flees the scene. (Laughs). But this diagram is also a declaration that we won’t do anything more than what\u2019s written here! Unless we set those boundaries, we can\u2019t develop with so many people involved. I figured I’d better draft them myself before bossing others around. So, I wrote it all down while discussing with Kando-san things like how AI works in the system, whether the processing would be able to keep up, and, if not, whether it could be replaced with other mechanics.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ex-Argonaut Developer Helped Coin The Term \u201cPikmin\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Abe recalled that Colin Reed, a programmer on Pikmin who was a part of the Argonaut Software team that made Star Fox on Super Nintendo, was responsible for the origins of the name Pikmin. He mistook the word \u201cippiki\u201d (which means \u201cone small animal\u201d in Japanese) as the word \u201cPiki,\u201d thinking that was the name of the creatures. That developed into Pikmin over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We will patiently wait for the Edward Scissorhands and Pikmin crossover game. Did you know that when Pikmin was revealed in 2001 at E3 and Shigeru Miyamoto said it would be out that year that all they had done was more or less what was in the demo? That\u2019s just a taster of what was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"http:\/\/www.nintendoworldreport.com\/media\/64323\/4\/1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[576],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nintendo"],"yoast_head":"\n