Shigeru Miyamoto, the managing director of Nintendo, has been playing with the idea of creating animated shorts featuring the Pikmin from the series of the same name. Miyamoto showed one of these shorts to Polygon and explained the story behind them.
Apparently, Miyamoto went to see a movie and was inspired by the video telling people to turn off their cell phones, thinking that he could make one featuring Pikmin. Instead, however, he created one about 3D glasses, and Japanese movie theatre chain Toho Cinemas agreed to place the video on approximately 150 screens in around 60 theatres around the country. After that, Miyamoto also worked to create the cute video that started off Nintendo's E3 presentation last year, which featured Pikmin following him down a hallway and hiding in his jacket pocket.
Now, Miyamoto is creating more standalone shorts, which haven't yet been shown publicly but the first of which was shown to Polygon earlier this year. In the video, which Miyamoto showed off on a 3DS, Captain Olimar is chopping up and blending carrots into juice that he then drinks, but the Pikmin (and initially the audience) mistake the carrots for Pikmin. It sounds pretty dark, but is relevant to the game; after all, Olimar calls the creatures Pikmin after his favourite brand of carrots, PikPik.
These shorts will be downloadable through the Nintendo store sometime before the launch of Pikmin 3 for the Wii U. What other Nintendo characters would you like to see feature in these kinds of cartoons?