Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s legendary game designer and the creator of Mario, Zelda, and more, is a busy guy these days. He’s helping Nintendo make movies while also being involved in the construction of Mario theme parks at Universal Studios. But really, it seems like Miyamoto just wants to make more Pikmin games, movies, and other stuff.

The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Pikmin 4

In a recent and lengthy interview with IGN, Miyamoto talked about his work on the upcoming Super Nintendo World and Donkey Kong Country areas of Universal Studios Orlando. But when the interviewer mentioned spotting some hidden Pikmin in the theme park, Miyamoto couldn’t stop talking about how great the little creatures are and how he wants more people to love his odd creations which first appeared in 2001’s Pikmin on the GameCube. The latest main game in the series was released in 2023 for Switch.

“I spent a lot of time the past five, six years really wanting to grow Pikmin,” said Miyamoto. “Obviously a lot of that is focused around Pikmin Bloom and there was also new Pikmin titles that released. But I wanted to see if there’s other ways that we can have people engage and get to know Pikmin that’s outside of the population that plays video games, for example.”

Miyamoto continued, apparently having waited years to unleash all his Pikmin thoughts on the first person lucky enough to ask him about the strange franchise featuring a tiny alien man controlling an army of small, cute critters.

“And it really stems back to 20 years ago when we did a presentation where it starts off with, there’s a Pikmin next to you,” said Miyamoto. “And so in Nintendo there’s sort of like an unwritten rule. Mario needs to stay in the Mario universe, or Splatoon needs to stay in Splatoon, and we don’t use different characters in the same place. But Pikmin has this kind of unwritten rule where they’re okay to appear with other characters.”

When asked if Pikmin could ever appear in movies or TV shows, Miyamoto couldn’t say yes or no, of course, but explained that he would love for that to happen one day.

“I really see Nintendo as sort of like a talent agency and we have within our roster a lot of talented characters,” said Miyamoto. “So we create a game with a certain gameplay concept, gameplay experience, and then we look at the roster and see who would best fit this gameplay concept or experience.”

“So looking at things from that perspective, I think Pikmin has a lot of potential to be used in many different occasions. When you’re looking at small kids, they have a certain appeal for things that are cute and when they grow older, maybe in their twenties, they start to lose appeal for that. But I think Pikmin has this unique ability to have appeal across a broad range in that it’s still appealing for both younger audiences and older audiences and in Japan. And so I’m hoping that we can expand that globally. So whether it’s some kind of a movie or show, things like that would be really fun.”

Look, Nintendo, Miyamoto has done so much for you and your company. I say you give the man a few million dollars and a team and let him make all the weird Pikmin crap he wants to make while he’s still able to do so. It’s the least you can do. And the world would be a better place if we had more Pikmin stuff in it.

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