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In the latest developer interview published for Pikmin 4 today, Shigeru Miyamoto said that he feels “Pikmin to be Nintendo’s most global characters.”

Miyamoto’s comments came about when asked what Pikmin means to him. He expressed wanting “people to have this real sense that Pikmin are all around us, that they aren’t just fantasy creatures.” Also brought up is how Mario is strictly limited to his world, but Miyamoto believes Nintendo has “finally reached a point where people can find Pikmin in various places, not just in their imaginations.”

Pikmin 4 Oatchi

The space dog Oatchi is a brand new addition for Pikmin 4, and Nintendo has now discussed its origins while also providing other interesting insight. This comes as part of an official interview published today.

The company’s Yuji Kando revealed that one idea that came about early on was letting players control a Bulborb. Continuing on from that, Nintendo then considered letting players “ride and control various creatures in the story”. However, “it became difficult to weave it all into a coherent game.” Oatchi was born from these ideas.

Shigeru Miyamoto Pikmin 4

In a new interview published today, Shigeru Miyamoto commented on the Pikmin series and said he’s wondered why the games haven’t sold more and why people think they’re so difficult. 

For Pikmin 4, it sound like Nintendo wanted to make the game as approachable as possible. The company’s Yuji Kando said the team “prioritized ease of play and experimented with making the controls easy enough for those who aren’t used to playing games.” Camera and AI improvements were a focus as well. Miyamoto added that Nintendo wanted to “retain the depth of gameplay that makes Pikmin so interesting, while providing the functional support to address the challenges around controls.”

Here’s the full interview excerpt:

Pikmin origins concept art N64

The original developers behind Pikmin have discussed the game’s origins, including how it was originally being developed for the N64.

Masamichi Abe, who was director at the time, said in a new interview published today that “discussion of this project started during the transition from Super NES to Nintendo 64, so we had a strong aspiration to utilize its ability to display a large number of characters on screen.” Shigefumi Hino, who also was director, added that it was originally “envisioned a game that would control a lot of characters with AI.” The interview includes a number of concept art / images as well, and character designer Junji Morii talked about being inspired by Tim Burton.

Final Fantasy name origins

Have you ever wondered about the origin of the Final Fantasy name? The series’ original creator has now shared the backstory.

While there’s been plenty of fan speculation, Hironobu Sakaguchi has now confirmed what happened directly. He shared in an official interview from Square Enix that the inspiration came from Fighting Fantasy. However, that couldn’t be used “because of trademarks and the like.” Sakaguchi said Final Fantasy was “a last resort.”

Zelda Tears Kingdom Elden Ring

The developers behind The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom didn’t take any inspiration from Elden Ring or any other major titles for that matter. That’s according to Hidemaro Fujibayashi, the game’s director and Eiji Aonuma, the producer of the series.

FromSoftware previously said that when the studio was developing Elden Ring, it was influenced by various titles including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, it sounds like the team at Nintendo was too busy to play that game – or at least that goes for the developers at the top.

As the director and producer respectively, Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Eiji Aonuma are two of the most important people working on the Zelda series currently and they recently finished up Tears of the Kingdom as director and producer respectively. Both have been involved with the franchise for decades at this point. Fujibayashi started out with Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages in 2001 while Aonuma has been around even longer – specifically in 1998 with Ocarina of Time.

Fujibayashi and Aonuma, speaking with RTL Nieuws, were recently asked if they’re afraid of getting “stuck” in the sense that they only continue to work on Zelda games. However, both don’t seem to view it that way.

Here’s what the two shared:

Classic style Zelda

The Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma has again commented on the possibility of revisiting the style of past entries in the series – but there are no plans as of now.

Speaking with RTL Nieuws, Aonuma said that games like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were possible because of what came before them. However, rather than looking back at the old entries in the series, Nintendo instead prefers “to look to the future.”

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has spoken on the performance of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, and believes the company should have hold off on releasing the game until Switch’s successor launched.

Speaking with GamesIndustry, Guillemot mentioned how Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was already available on Switch, and the sequel resulted in “two similar experiences on one machine.” He further mentioned “Nintendo [has advised] that it’s better to do one iteration on each machine.”

Guillemot’s full words:

Splatoon 3 DLC

The developers of Splatoon 3 have discussed the game’s DLC, including Side Order which will be released in the future.

Director Hisashi Nogami along with co-directors Shintaro Sato and Seita Inoue weighed in as part of a recent interview with Famitsu. According to Nogami, Side Order will feature “completely new and different” gameplay. Whereas the main game is based on the final Splatfest for Splatoon 2 in which Team Chaos defeated Team Order, the new DLC is based on the latter side coming out on top. And yes, we’ll be seeing Off the Hook.

You can find our translation below, which also includes talk about why Inkopolis was brought back for the first part of the Expansion Pass DLC.


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