Waiting patiently for the Edward Scissorhands and Pikmin crossover game.
Did you know that when Pikmin was announced at E3 in 2001 and Shigeru Miyamoto said Pikmin would be released that year, all they did was pretty much just what was in the demo? Here are just a few of what Nintendo’s developer interviews about Pikmin 4 revealed. In our first installment, we gathered members of the original Pikmin development team who started working on the game way back in time on the Nintendo 64. is attractive. Here are the six things we learned from him.
Original ideas revolve around “thinking chips”
Shigefumi Hino and Masamichi Abe began working on the development of later Pikmin in the mid-1990s, based on the basic idea of ”displaying a large number of characters on the screen.” According to Hino, the idea was to control these characters using “thought chips” that instructed them to perform specific tasks such as fighting, defending, and healing. As the game progresses, AI-controlled characters will be able to equip more chips.
Early Pikmin Creature Designs Inspired by Tim Burton
According to Hino, the design of the first creature in the prototype was Yoshi-ish, but “I felt it lacked impact as a character.” Miyamoto added that part of the goal was to create creatures that high school girls would find cute.
Designer Junji Morii stepped in and put together a number of sketches to solidify the elongated Pikmin look. Citing an affinity for the world of Tim Burton, he said, “I wanted the design to be not just cute, but give it some spooky and emotional weight.”
Mr. Hino said, “I wanted to take the plunge and draw a mysterious world that is bitter and mature.” For inspiration, the team watched the 1973 French animated film Fantastic Planet.Hino-san also read selfish gene By Richard Dawkins, he admits it’s too complicated to get into. Miyamoto elaborated on the inspiration, saying that they had all been watching a lot of arthouse indie films “that you can’t find in regular video stores.” I’d die to know this list that helped spark Nintendo’s weird GameCube era.
Mario 128 Didn’t Actually Influence Pikmin Directly
For the past two decades, the GameCube demo Mario 128 was thought to be directly related to Pikmin. According to programmer Yuji Kando, that was not the case. “We didn’t know about the existence of ‘Mario 128’, so ‘Pikmin’ wasn’t influenced by ‘Mario 128’ in terms of planning or technology, but the ability to move a large number of characters on the Nintendo GameCube , a lot of new ideas were born, which were not possible in the Nintendo 64 era.”
That doesn’t mean Mario 128 didn’t help Pikmin along the way. Without that tech demo, it probably wouldn’t exist as it stands. However, the game’s most important ideas were formulated long before the demo, and core members of the development team were not involved with Mario 128. That said, as NWR’s Jon Laildin points out, Miyamoto was heavily involved in the creation of Mario 128. Both Pikmin and he definitely knew about Mario 128.
The development team had doubts about violence and death in ‘Pikmin’
At this point, we all know what happens when Pikmin fails and dies. Bulbarbs scoop them up with their mouths and munch on them until you hear your beloved creatures’ final screams and disappear into ghostly forms. It’s now accepted that after using your army to defeat a Fiery Blowhog, you can bring its carcass back to your base to generate more Pikmin to join your mission. But Miyamoto said he had some big questions. “Are we going to do this?” he recalled with a laugh.
As Hino puts it, part of the overall goal of Pikmin was to “convey a brooding atmosphere.” The overall touch of magical realism seems to have been inspired by the European indie films the team watched.
Of course, this all seems very artsy, but Miyamoto was quick to make it clear that, like Nintendo’s way of doing things, gameplay comes first.
At E3 2001 Mr. Miyamoto lied that the game was over
He didn’t say bland. “At E3, I spoke as if the game was over. (laughs)”
Only the stage shown at E3 was actually completed. And it was made specifically for E3. Editing the debut trailer took place a few days before E3, but Miyamoto had just joined the team as director earlier that year (he had been the title’s producer before then), so he had a heavy responsibility. He told Abe, one of the game’s other directors, “I’ll be joining as director, so please give me just three months.” If I fail, I quit. Miyamoto made such a bold statement because he was confident that the game would be completed by the GameCube release in late 2001. Who knows if he’s saying that in hindsight.
When he joined the company, he put together a game flow diagram of what Pikmin would look like. This game design You can’t see all the details in his document, but it’s a valuable resource that gives you an idea of how Mr. Miyamoto lays out his games. He further explains the diagram as follows: “At first glance, this diagram looks like a series of puzzling sentences, but if you follow the sentences one by one, you can understand the flow of the program with just this one sheet. Nothing else happens, and that’s what happens in game development all the time.You want to do this, you want to do that, and then the director says, ‘Well, how do you combine them? I think you have to think about it!” And run away from the spot. (smile). But this diagram is also a declaration that I will not do more than what is written here! You can’t develop with so many people involved unless you set that boundary. I figured I’d better draft my own before trying to intimidate others. Therefore, I wrote it while discussing with Mr. Kando about how AI works in the system, whether the processing can catch up, and if it cannot catch up, whether it can be replaced with another mechanism. ”
Former Argonaut developer helped birth the term ‘Pikmin’
Abe recalled that Pikmin programmer Colin Reed, part of the Argonaut Software team that developed Starfox on the Super Nintendo, was responsible for the origin of the name Pikmin. He mistook the word “ippiki” (meaning “one small animal” in Japanese) for the word “piki” and thought it was the name of a creature. It eventually evolved into Pikmin.
