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Nintendo announced that the Pikmin series will make a comeback after a long absence, although it will be available on Nintendo handheld rather than a console.
Several long years have passed since the release of Pikmin 3 for the Wii U, but it appears that the surprisingly charismatic plant aliens will finally return to the lineup of Nintendo games very soon. Earlier today, Nintendo announced that the company plans to release a side-scrolling Pikmin adventure for the Nintendo 3DS sometime in 2017, tentatively called Pikmin for Nintendo 3DS.
Pikmin is going to be the first game in the series for Nintendo 3DS since the aforementioned Pikmin 3, and might be the Pikmin 4 game Shigeru Miyamoto hinted at a little more than one year ago. The Pikmin game will appear in the handheld market for the first time, and because of that drastic change, Nintendo has switched the classic top-down Pikmin gameplay with a side-scrolling viewpoint instead. Pikmin for Nintendo 3DS will see the return of Captain Olimar, with players having control over the perpetually peculiar space captain and throw individual Pikmin by flicking the 3DS’ stylus across the screen.
If fans get disappointed by the change in direction for Pikmin can take comfort in the fact that Pikmin for Nintendo 3DS has not yet been officially recognized as the game Miyamoto was discussing earlier, which means there may still be a Pikmin 4 on the way. It was only a couple of months ago that Miyamoto talked about Pikmin’s development, stating that things were going slow because Nintendo was busy with other, higher priorities.
It will be interesting to see what changes have been made in the past 4 years since Pikmin 3 – reports surfaced early after the game’s release that Nintendo had tested Pikmin 3 for the Nintendo 3DS, but the handheld wasn’t convenient for the series. Obviously Nintendo changed its mind, and whatever led to that shift in development philosophy should make fans of Pikmin excited for the game’s debut on handheld devices.
Pikmin for Nintendo 3DS is going to be available for Nintendo 3DS sometime in 2017.
