6 Things We Learned About Pikmin’s Development – News

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’s just a taster of what was revealed in Nintendo’s Ask the Developer Interview about Pikmin 4. The first installment brought together members of the original Pikmin development team that started working on the game way back in the days of the Nintendo 64. Some of the tidbits are fascinating. Here’s six things that we learned.

The Original Idea Revolved Around “Thought Chips”

Shigefumi Hino and Masamichi Abe started working on what would become Pikmin in the mid-1990s with the guiding idea of displaying a “large number of characters on screen.” This idea, according to Hino, was to take these characters and control them using “thought chips” that would instruct them to do specific tasks such as fight, defend, and heal. As the game wore on, the AI-controlled characters would be able to equip more chips.

Early Pikmin Creature Designs Were Inspired by Tim Burton

The first design of the creatures for this prototype were more Yoshi-like according to Hino, but he “felt it lacked impact as a character.” Miyamoto added that part of the goal was to make a critter that high school girls would find cute.

In came the designer Junji Morii who put together a number of sketches that solidified the look of the elongated Pikmin. He cited his affinity for Tim Burton’s worlds, saying that he “wanted the designs to not just be cute, but also give a sense of eeriness, or some emotional weight.”

Hino added that he “wanted to take a bold step and depict a somber, mature, and mysterious world.” The team watched the 1973 French animated movie Fantastic Planet for inspiration. Hino even tried to read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, though he admitted it was too complex for him to wrap his head around. Miyamoto elaborated on their inspirations by saying they all watched a bunch of arthouse indie movies that “you wouldn’t find in regular video stores.” I would kill to know this list that helped fuel the weird GameCube era of Nintendo.

Mario 128 Didn’t Actually Directly Influence Pikmin

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. “We 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.”

That’s not to say Mario 128 didn’t help Pikmin out along the way; it likely doesn’t 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’t involved with Mario 128. That being said, as NWR’s John Rairdin pointed out, Miyamoto was intimately involved in the creation of 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 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’s 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. “Are we dead set on doing this?” he recalled with a laugh.

Part of the overall goal of Pikmin was to, as Hino said, “convey a touch of somberness.” That overall touch of borderline magical realism seems to have been an inspiration from the European indie films the team watched.

Of course even if this all seems very artistic, Miyamoto is quick to clarify that the gameplay came first, as is Nintendo’s way.

At E3 2001, Miyamoto Lied And Said The Game Was Finished

He didn’t even beat around the bush: “At E3, I spoke as if the game was finished. (Laughs).”

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’s other directors, that “I’ll join as a director, so please give me three months. I’ll step down if it fails.” 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’s just saying that in hindsight or not.

When he joined, he put together a game flow diagram of what Pikmin would be. We can’t totally see the full details of this game design document, but it’s a rare look into how Miyamoto lays out a game. He explains the diagram further: “At 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’s 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, ‘Well, I guess we’ll have to figure out how to fit them all together!’ and flees the scene. (Laughs). But this diagram is also a declaration that we won’t do anything more than what’s written here! Unless we set those boundaries, we can’t 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.”

Ex-Argonaut Developer Helped Coin The Term “Pikmin”

Abe recalled that Colin Reed, a programmer on Pikmin who was a part of the Argonaut Software team that made Stunt Race FX on Super Nintendo, was responsible for the origins of the name Pikmin. He mistook the word “ippiki” (which means “one small animal” in Japanese) as the word “Piki,” thinking that was the name of the creatures. That developed into Pikmin over time.