Nintendo has started a new video shorts series to introduce new gamers to the titular Pikmin of Pikmin 4.
As far as squeaky voiced diminutive creatures designed to appeal to children come and go, Pikmin are a few years older than Rabbids, and decades older than Minions, but now quite as old as Smurfs, Snorks, or Sylvanian Families.
As you probably already know, Red Pikmin are resilient to fire and brave, Blue Pikmin can swim and dive underwater, and Yellow Pikmin are resistant to electricity.
It’s all part of a new push to get Shigeru Miyamoto’s latest pet franchise up to prominence. While Nintendo’s Creative Fellow saw unprecedented success with Mario and The Legend of Zelda, other franchises spearheaded or managed by Miyamoto had as consistent a track record.
Fans may remember Miyamoto has also had frustrated attempts to revive Star Fox, the technical marvel of a rail shooter on the SNES. It’s not exactly that Star Fox games don’t sell well, but the success of the SNES and Nintendo 64 game didn’t get replicated consistently across different new games and platforms.
Most fans may still think about Star Fox Zero as the game that’s ended that push for the franchise, but years before that, Miyamoto tried to recreate the original magic with Star Fox Command on the Nintendo DS. That game was directed by Dylan Cuthbert, one of the original SNES developers for the first Star Fox game.
Fans often think of Nintendo’s franchises as tropes, games that the company projects favoritism towards like they were the company’s children. But just like other game companies, Nintendo has to focus on making successful games. Goals may vary per project, but basically if games don’t make enough money, they can’t keep the company afloat. So it’s hard to justify making more of those games.
So it may seem surprising that Nintendo is trying so hard with the Pikmin franchise. But there’s a clear crossover appeal in Pikmin that it hasn’t fully realized yet.
Pikmin 3 itself originally sold about half a million units on the Wii U, but would go on to sell over 2 million units in its Switch rerelease as Pikmin 3 Deluxe.
Pikmin isn’t as big a franchise as Splatoon or Animal Crossing right now, but Switch has proven to be an ideal platform for Nintendo to push their franchises, thanks to its success. With Pikmin 1+2 also seeing a special editon release on the console, the Switch is geared to be the ultimate Pikmin console.
Pikmin 4 comes out exclusively to the Nintendo Switch on July 21, 2023 worldwide. You can watch the new video courtesy of Perfectly Nintendo below.
