Nintendo to release new Pikmin video shorts before Pikmin 3 launch
Nintendo is creating a number of new animated shorts based on the Pikmin franchise. Shigeru Miyamoto is personally overseeing the videos’ development, which are planned for release ahead of Pikmin 3’s arrival.
According to Miyamoto:
“They’ll be released sometime before the release of Pikmin 3. Possibly as a Nintendo video. If they’re popular we could consider selling them.”
Miyamoto developed a number of mock-ups with the 3DS’ Flipnote Studio app (why isn’t this out yet?!), and teamed up with an external animation studio to create the shorts. Some members of the press were given a sneak peak look at one of the clips which was directed by Miyamoto himself.
“We were working on several Pikmin CG animated videos and wanted more people to be able to see them. I had gone to a movie theater and saw the videos telling people to turn off their cell phones and thought we could create a Pikmin version of that, but instead decided to do the 3D glasses video.”
Eventually, Nintendo partnered with movie theater chain Toho Cinemas in Japan in order to determine how much interest there would be in this type of content from Nintendo. 60 theaters carried the video, and it was displayed on 150 screens throughout the country.
Speaking about the short films, Miyamoto said that they were born when trying to determine how he could “give more life to the Pikmin characters.”
“I didn’t want to license our characters out to someone else to create films. Instead, since I used to draw four-panel comics when I was younger, I thought it would be fun to bring a four-panel comic approach to creating video content, so we started work on these Pikmin videos. We didn’t have a good opportunity to announce that we were doing this, so while we were working on the movies we also created the Pikmin video that opened our E3 presentation last year.”
At this point you’re probably wondering: “what the heck are these videos about”? All but one are a mystery for now.
Polygon did manage to provide the following description about one short they were given a look at:
“… the game’s main character, Captain Olimar, is caught blending up what appears to be a red, vivisected pikmin, and then drinking it. When Olimar sees the characters, he begins walking toward them with a knife. They back away until they bump into a massive pile of what Olimar was actually cutting up and blending, a massive pile of carrots.”
Miyamoto also offered some insight into the video:
“When Olimar first discovered the Pikmin he named them based on the PikPik brand carrots in his home world, so he clearly loves carrots. I thought it would be fun to have a scenario where it seems like he is going to eat the Pikmin. So it’s kind of dark, but he doesn’t eat them.”
Nintendo may be dabbling more in film content as of late, but it isn’t moving away from the idea that the 3DS is more of an entertainment platform rather than just a gaming system.
“We really just want to take advantage of the Pikmin characters. We have started selling Shaun the Sheep videos, so we’re continuing to look at ways to expand the eShop offerings. Nintendo 3DS is great for viewing 3D video content so we wanted to look at ways to expand that offering.”
And just in case you were wondering, Miyamoto isn’t ending his work on games to focus more on videos. This was simply “a fun side project”.
“That absolutely won’t happen. It’s just a fun side project with Pikmin.”
