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Pikmin side-scroller announced for Nintendo 3DS, coming 2017

I haven't played it yet but I'm always confused when I see it brought up in these discussions. Seems really solid and it's based on not one, but two games people liked (Four Swords/A Link Between Worlds)

It has its share of weird designed choices (particularly rearing their head in single player) but the game is something excellent (and hilarious) played with friends.

The dungeon and puzzle designs are excellent too.

Legends was just a port of Hyrule Warriors. The people who wanted to play it did on Wii U.

There are a lot more fans on 3DS than WiiU for Zelda. Its not just the IP, its the quality of the product.
 
Yoshi's Woolly World and Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze both broke 1 million units. New Super Mario Bros. U has sold over 5 million units. New Super Luigi U sold 2.64 million units. This is on a console which has sold 12 million units. Hardly flopping, mate.

This doesn't say much, though. Like, a WiiU does nothing in and of itself. Its purpose is to play games, and so the demand for the WiiU is largely a function of the demand for the games available for the WiiU. If the WiiU is selling poorly, that's indicative of the fact that people don't have particularly high demand for the WiiU's library. The WiiU, by and large, doesn't hold back the games available on it; the games determine whether the WiiU sells in the first place.

Now, I think a large part of that has been marketing - what people want can be shaped by companies and the image they present of their products. That is, in a way, good for Nintendo - it means the problem can be fixed more easily. But another part of the problem has been poor word of mouth. Even GAFfers who normally show strong preference for Mario platformers and so on having been panning the NSMB series and the like.
 
You're upset that people are taking away from your joy with their opinions. What am I missing?

That I'm not upset and that the point isn't that people like it or not, just that they prefer to be overly negative, jaded and jump to conclusions when a game doesn't seem to be exactly what they want.
This from a small trailer that doesn't show anything particularly wrong other than "it's 2D!", "it reminds me of Zip Lash" or "I didn't like these other games that have nothing to do with this one!".

Taking away my joy though? lol
 
This is just another cheap outsourced spinoff to keep the 3DS alive while all their good developers make products for NX. Almost every retail game Nintendo has released in the last 12 months has been outsourced.

And this is the point that seems to escape the understanding of so many people here. Nintendo's main teams are not hard at work on games like this. This is a stopgap game designed to have a low investment while filling up the 3ds's release calendar and keep Nintendo's main studios free to work on more ambitious titles. If the NX announcement comes and every game on that platform turns out to be a 2D platformer, sure I think there could be some valid complaints, but we just have no idea what Nintendo's core teams are working on right now.

Honestly, the negativity on this forum regarding Nintendo is reaching a fever pitch. They need to hurry up and announce the damn thing so that we can at least complain about things with a more valid reason.
 
I think it's fairly obvious this is one of the multitude of stop-gap releases to get software out the door so that they're not shipping literally nothing this holiday.

Whether or not people are cool with it is something else entirely. But even people looking forward to this have to admit this isn't Nintendo's output at its best. I think everyone already knows this.

And this is the point that seems to escape the understanding of so many people here. Nintendo's main teams are not hard at work on games like this. This is a stopgap game designed to have a low investment while filling up the 3ds's release calendar and keep Nintendo's main studios free to work on more ambitious titles. If the NX announcement comes and every game on that platform turns out to be a 2D platformer, sure I think there could be some valid complaints, but we just have no idea what Nintendo's core teams are working on right now.

Honestly, the negativity on this forum regarding Nintendo is reaching a fever pitch. They need to hurry up and announce the damn thing so that we can at least complain about things with a more valid reason.

To be fair, this was said of the WiiU launch. "The Wii's been having two terrible years because everyone's hard at work on their WiiU games!", and we all know how that one turned out. We've grown to learn that a long wait at the tail end of a console does not necessarily mean we'll be "rewarded" with tons of games.
 
This doesn't say much, though. Like, a WiiU does nothing in and of itself. Its purpose is to play games, and so the demand for the WiiU is largely a function of the demand for the games available for the WiiU. If the WiiU is selling poorly, that's indicative of the fact that people don't have particularly high demand for the WiiU's library. The WiiU, by and large, doesn't hold back the games available on it; the games determine whether the WiiU sells in the first place.

Now, I think a large part of that has been marketing - what people want can be shaped by companies and the image they present of their products. That is, in a way, good for Nintendo - it means the problem can be fixed more easily. But another part of the problem has been poor word of mouth. Even GAFfers who normally show strong preference for Mario platformers and so on having been panning the NSMB series and the like.

One early solution could've been to ditch the gamepad, pack it with a pro controller and drop the price by $100. That would've solved the biggest problem the Wii U had. Not ditching the gamepad while also barely using it in games is the funniest mess ups in Nintendo's history.

They quickly strayed from requiring the gamepad for all of their good games, but were too stubborn to just ditch it from the package all together.


I think it's fairly obvious this is one of the multitude of stop-gap releases to get software out the door so that they're not shipping literally nothing this holiday.

Whether or not people are cool with it is something else entirely. But even people looking forward to this have to admit this isn't Nintendo's output at its best. I think everyone already knows this.

This way of thinking is so untrue I can't believe it. (A) the game isn't even releasing this year. (B) Nintendo has a jam packed holiday, and (C) if you removed the ports of Mario Maker, Yoshi, and this Pikmin game from the line up, 3DS still has a ridiculously strong line up for the rest of 2016 and early parts of 2017.
 
It has its share of weird designed choices (particularly rearing their head in single player) but the game is something excellent (and hilarious) played with friends.

The dungeon and puzzle designs are excellent too.



There are a lot more fans on 3DS than WiiU for Zelda. Its not just the IP, its the quality of the product.


And Legends was, then again, a late port with no incentive. It's like judging Mario Maker's performance on 3DS when it may perform worse than on Wii U.
 
I think it's fairly obvious this is one of the multitude of stop-gap releases to get software out the door so that they're not shipping literally nothing this holiday.

Whether or not people are cool with it is something else entirely. But even people looking forward to this have to admit this isn't Nintendo's output at its best. I think everyone already knows this.

The game doesn't come out this holiday, though. Not refuting your point, but I do think that's an important distinction since it does arguable then that it's a rush job.

I will say I don't agree that we can say with certainty it's not Nintendo at their best. We have brief trailer indicative of Kirby Mass Attack, one of my favorite games ever. For all we know the game is a Tokyo EPD and HAL collaboration and will brilliantly translate Pikmin into 2D.

To be fair, this was said of the WiiU launch. "The Wii's been having two terrible years because everyone's hard at work on their WiiU games!", and we all know how that one turned out. We've grown to learn that a long wait at the tail end of a console does not necessarily mean we'll be "rewarded" with tons of games.

But with Wii U and 3DS, after the initial droughts we were in fact rewarded with tons of games.
 
The game doesn't come out this holiday, though. Not refuting your point, but I do think that's an important distinction since it does arguable then that it's a rush job.

I will say I don't agree that we can say with certainty it's not Nintendo at their best. We have brief trailer indicative of Kirby Mass Attack, one of my favorite games ever. For all we know the game is a Tokyo EPD and HAL collaboration and will brilliantly translate Pikmin into 2D.

But with Wii U and 3DS, after the initial droughts we were in fact rewarded with tons of games.

The Pikmin team programmers, who patented the DS Pikmin prototype, are in Kyoto. The HAL Kirby team just finished that game, I doubt they are involved. If another developer is helping Nintendo on it, I think it's more of the Vanpool/Vitei/Arzest kind of thing. But I do think Miyamoto was referring to this Pikmin game in those previous quotes.
 
The Pikmin team programmers, who patented the DS Pikmin prototype, are in Kyoto. The HAL Kirby team just finished that game, I doubt they are involved. If another developer is helping Nintendo on it, I think it's more of the Vanpool/Vitei/Arzest kind of thing. But I do think Miyamoto was referring to this Pikmin game in those previous quotes.

Thanks for the clarification. What makes you think Miyamoyo was referring to this game, especially since it was then referred to as Pikmin 4 specifically, which this seems to explicitly not be?
 
I would honestly like someone to explain to me why people have a problem with this game.
 
I agree that the actual content shown in the Direct itself was bland, but I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of a sidescrolling Pikmin game with a bigger emphasis on puzzles as long as there's a good game in there somewhere.

That said it's september 2016 now and we are still in the the 'budget games for 3DS' phase since E3 2015, what the fuck is going on??
 
I agree that the actual content shown in the Direct itself was bland, but I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of a sidescrolling Pikmin game with a bigger emphasis on puzzles as long as there's a good game in there somewhere.

That said it's september 2016 now and we are still in the the 'budget games for 3DS' phase since E3 2015, what the fuck is going on??

The optimistic theory is that they're holding back their quality output for NX. The pessimistic theory is that they're trying to cut costs and are making low effort games for cheap.
 
Full DLC and further DLC support was for Legends, not the WiiU version.
Such a dumb move imo, to leave a million+ buyers out in the cold. Legends really should've been multiplat with a discount upgrade option for current HW Wii U owners.
 
With Wii U we were rewarded with 6 2D platformers. SIX!
Of which New Super Mario Bros (+ Luigi) U, Yoshi's Woolly World and DKCTF are amazing games. Also, almost no one else is making 2D platformers, so this is far from excessive. To get to the 6 you are citing, are you including completely different games like Kirby, which plays absolutely nothing like a platformer?
 
With Wii U we were rewarded with 6 2D platformers. SIX!
Wow! OMG! How could they do that? What a shameless company daring to make six games like these.

I guess it's a crime to like 2d platformers these days. Even with Tropical Freeze being a disappointment, i'd rather have retro working on it than in that Metroid crap everyday.
 
Is there any official confirmation that this is being developed by Arzest (Yoshi's New Island dev) or were people throwing that around based on looks?
 
It's a shame this is more than likely a farmed out spin-off that might not be in the right hands, a 2D Pikmin puzzle/platformer game could probably work if it's clever enough in its design.
 
The opposite would be the case. I just ,,hate" seeing Nintendo pushing out their most generic, unambitious and objectively most monotonous output in their entire history- by a large margin. For the sake of an audience they lost many years ago, while constantly acting against real fans, even after facing such failure recently.

Especially since I unfortunately own these platforms.

I can't help but agree, and it's not even with 2D platforms. I'll keep buying these games that I think look kind of cool but with the exception of Mario Kart Nintendo have really started to make a lot of these side series newer iterations really empty and bland. Mario Sticker Star, Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon, Color Splash, Paper Jam, all of these games felt really lackluster to me. Even that Chibi Robo game was kind of half assed, I really hope that's not the case with this Pikmin game as I adore the series. I just hope this doesn't happen with Animal Crossinf anytime soon.
 
TFH is inherently flawed in some ways but is undeniably creative and excellent in many ways if you can get past those issues. It offers some of the most difficult Zelda gameplay ever, some degree of nonlinearity, character customization and innovative and entirely new dungeon mechanics. Those are all aspects people have clamored hard for in the Zelda series.

Sure... just not in the form of gimmicky multiplayer. I get the feeling that single player is Nintendo's strongest point, with Splatoon being the exception.
 
You named the best 3DS game of the entire library and a game literally nobody has played yet.

Dark Moon would be a far better game if it had more interesting ghosts and no mission structure. Not to mention collecting money and boos is worthless unlike the 1st game. (After a certain threshold of money that is)

I felt like the multiplayer was the best addition even though its probably dead by now.
 
I would honestly like someone to explain to me why people have a problem with this game.

I suppose because its side-scrolling nature reminds people of Nintendo's recent string of meh-tier side games like Chibi Robo Zip Lash

TBH I really liked Chibi Robo Zip Lash.
 
I'm not a fan of games that use the upper and lower screen to make a combined taller vertical image. The game might look better on a 2DS than any other system. Since the focus seems to be driven by the bottom screen, the 3D effect probably won't be implemented on the upper screen?

In a way, I wish they tried porting a Pikmin console game to the 3DS or expanded the Pikmin 3 Mission Mode into a handheld spin-off. The only thing that would be a major compromise is the screen resolution. I'm confident they could have fit the play area on the top screen and map at the bottom.
 
I wouldn't mind it if it really is made by Arzest. I thought Yoshi's New Island was really good, and unlike that one, Pikmin won't suffer from being just another 2D entry as it will be the first 2D entry in the series. It reminds me of previous generations when handhelds got reworked versions of 3D home console games. I was hoping for a Splatoon spin-off, but this is the first time I'm interested in a Pikmin game. Seriously, fans just got a very well-received mainline home console game on the current system. There's nothing wrong with bringing the series to a handheld and translating that gameplay to 2D now. It doesn't look as cheap as Chibi Robo and, unlike Federation Force, it preserves the art style of the franchise. I think it's pretty exciting.
 
Dark Moon would be a far better game if it had more interesting ghosts and no mission structure. Not to mention collecting money and boos is worthless unlike the 1st game. (After a certain threshold of money that is)

I felt like the multiplayer was the best addition even though its probably dead by now.

I felt the ghosts had enough personality even if they weren't as uniquely depicted as they were in the first game, but I can understand your point of view at least. Missions I liked, but I can understand that people might prefer the first game's format as well. I'd be curious to know how you felt money was more worthwhile in the first game than the second though. As far as I remember, all it got you in the first game was your end ranking. In Dark Moon, aside from the upgrades, money does contribute to individual level rankings, so not really much of a difference there.
 
Dark Moon would be a far better game if it had more interesting ghosts and no mission structure. Not to mention collecting money and boos is worthless unlike the 1st game. (After a certain threshold of money that is)

I felt like the multiplayer was the best addition even though its probably dead by now.

You'd be surprised. I just finished this game for the first time a few months ago and played Scarescraper a few times randomly with no issues finding a few small groups to join. I imagine it's not what it once was, but there's a heartbeat in there somewhere.
And it was definitely a good palette cleanser after the main game left me so polarized.

As for this Pikmin game, it looks like a game. As long as it doesn't disrupt a "Pikmin 4" then it's mostly harmless. It seems like it has some potential.
 
I suppose because its side-scrolling nature reminds people of Nintendo's recent string of meh-tier side games like Chibi Robo Zip Lash

TBH I really liked Chibi Robo Zip Lash.

I really liked zip lash too, and really look forward to this. But I like almost all of Nintendo's side scrollers. Even as a side scroller, this looks pretty unique. I'm surprised people aren't giving it more of a chance, considering we just had a classic (and argued by many, or at least some, to be the best) Pikmin game, and I can't think of any other side scroller game like this. It seems to be a novel idea in the domain.
 
This game is not a 2d platformer. Olimar cannot jump. It appears to be a 2d action puzzle game. The rts aspect doesn't seem to be there, but that was already mostly shoved to the challenge mode since pikmin 1 (unfortunately)
 
This doesn't say much, though. Like, a WiiU does nothing in and of itself. Its purpose is to play games, and so the demand for the WiiU is largely a function of the demand for the games available for the WiiU. If the WiiU is selling poorly, that's indicative of the fact that people don't have particularly high demand for the WiiU's library. The WiiU, by and large, doesn't hold back the games available on it; the games determine whether the WiiU sells in the first place.

Now, I think a large part of that has been marketing - what people want can be shaped by companies and the image they present of their products. That is, in a way, good for Nintendo - it means the problem can be fixed more easily. But another part of the problem has been poor word of mouth. Even GAFfers who normally show strong preference for Mario platformers and so on having been panning the NSMB series and the like.

nah, that point based on flawed hipothesis, the problem with the Wii U is that it has too many problems, underwhelming power (pretty games but no "next gen" hype), little third party support, terrible, TERRIBLE name, lack of innovative concepts, high price, expensive controller that in the end no one wanted, confusing marketing, and the list goes on.

The first party lineup is also very good, but too similar to the 3DS one to the point consumers will be ok playing their 3DS instead of buying a Nintendo premium home console, and thats also part why we are seeing so many ports and rumors of NX being the sole Nintendo system.

the hardware is as important to the software, its not that all games on Wii U were poor quality when you see impressive sales numbers for a 12 million sold system supported by only one big publisher, so the games definetly have an audience.
 
The optimistic theory is that they're holding back their quality output for NX. The pessimistic theory is that they're trying to cut costs and are making low effort games for cheap.

Why not both?
My assumption was that they were shifting the focus of their main teams to ensure the NX has a good slate for its first year, while getting secondary teams to work on cheaper 3DS games to keep that platform healthy at a low cost. Cheap 3DS games to kill time while other teams to work on the NX. We'll know one way or the other when the NX's reveal titles get revealed. If it's more GameCube (Melee, Pikmin, Mansion, Rogue Squadron) than Wii U (Mario, Nintendoland) launch we should be good.

BTW, still pumped for Pikmin 3DS and I don't understand the Zip Lash comparisons either. Zip Lash is almost a completely different game than other Chibi Robo titles, the only significant difference we know right now is Pikmin is a side scroller.
 
But with Wii U and 3DS, after the initial droughts we were in fact rewarded with tons of games.

WiiU has the smallest library of any Nintendo console and the smallest amount of games with high critical acclaim (even if you take away 3rd parties from previous machines).
3DS unloaded in 2013 particularly, but then it also regressed into a 2D land, with the occasional port and other poorly received spinoffs (from a 1st party perspective anyway).
It's not exactly a given that NX is going to be any better. Or rather, I can't imagine that the NX development already hindered Nintendo's development since the end of 2013...
 
I'd love to know how many of those "shit" spin-offs you've actually played yourself or if you are just going by Gaf's hateboner for every non-high-budget-and-or-non-3D Nintendo game.

Edit: Just look at how that Arzest crap spread like wildfire. People are literally looking for things to be pissed at.

I've played quite a few. Chibi-Robo!, Ultra Smash, and Tri-Force Heroes (it's not shit, but it's the worst Zelda besides the DS ones). I haven't played FF yet, but I'm also not willing to risk that I dislike it at this moment and end up paying $40.

Captain Toad was a really good game.

I think the problem with some of the titles released in the last year is that they had to push something out there to fill a gap. They obviously moved and changed projects in line with the NX release and i don't think they are representative of what Nintendo can do.

If we're talking Captain Toad, I found it to be a great potential game. Captain Toad had a ton of repetitive padding that ultimately soured the experience for me. With that said, obviously Nintendo has had quality reimaginings and spin-offs in recent years, but for the most part these titles have not been good (in fact, some have been among the worst games Nintendo's ever made - amiibo Festival for instance).

I'm confused. I was told people were only pissed about Federation Force because there hadn't been a real Metroid game in a long time. But here we are and people are pissed about this Pikmin spinoff even though Pikmin 3 came out 3 years ago, and Nintendo already said they're looking at Pikmin 4.

Mario Kart?

I meant in terms of games in the last couple of years, where Nintendo has been going spin-off silly.

Super Mario Bros is a spinoff of Donkey Kong.

Yeah, and it sucked
 
I feel like I'm the only person around who's actually a fan of Arzest, if only because of the people there.

I mean you have notable folks like Naoto Ohshima (one of the founders) who was one of the creators of Sonic, but also numerous folks who left after Sonic Adventure with numerous being Field Artists in that game. Another person though only worked on their first mobile game called Slot Monsters was Manabu Kusunoki, and that person is another Sonic veteran who seemingly created Mighty the Armadillo and was responsible for the CG art in Sonic Adventure (which still really holds up IMO, very stylish).

You also have Yoji Ishii, the second founder who was central to their classic arcade games in the 80's, one of which was being the one behind Flicky.

Yutaka Sugano, the third founder, was a very high-up in the Panzer Dragoon games IIRC.

I explain this actually a lot more in depth in a blog post I made awhile back last year on my site, which you can read if you're interested:

https://goldmetalsonic.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/musing-1-why-arzest-matters/

The sum it up; they have great talent there, they just need the right project.

My personal wish is that they and Nintendo (alongside Prope) work on a Sonic game together. Including with Yasuhara (who's no longer at NST) if they can.

That's one of my dream games right there.

Yoshi's New Island was kinda poop, ESPECIALLY the music but that's Chamy Ishi's fault (the composer). Though likely someone else heard it and said "that's good!" so who knows. Funny enough Chamy worked on many Sega games also, including Sonic Rush as Sound Creator.
 
Looks much better than their other spin offs, unsure if I want it but I expected a lot less when I first heard about it.

Hope we get another full blown Pikmin have sometime
 
Thanks for the clarification. What makes you think Miyamoyo was referring to this game, especially since it was then referred to as Pikmin 4 specifically, which this seems to explicitly not be?

Could have been mistranslation or misunderstanding. The original quote from Miyamoto doesn't really say it's Pikmin 4 from what I can tell. Or they could simply have been referring to this as Pikmin 4 or the 4th Pikmin game.
 
Could have been mistranslation or misunderstanding. The original quote from Miyamoto doesn't really say it's Pikmin 4 from what I can tell. Or they could simply have been referring to this as Pikmin 4 or the 4th Pikmin game.

The original quote does indeed mention specifically the game in development as Pikmin 4. However that doesn't mean the name isn't being changed in development. I truly think this is the Pikmin he was referring to.
 
Could have been mistranslation or misunderstanding. The original quote from Miyamoto doesn't really say it's Pikmin 4 from what I can tell. Or they could simply have been referring to this as Pikmin 4 or the 4th Pikmin game.

Yeah, I don't think there's really any way to know one way or the other if this game is the "Pikmin 4" from 2015 or not. Hopefully there's an opportunity for Miyamoto to be interviewed soon and someone thinks to ask him about it. (Of course, if a traditional Pikmin game gets announced for NX, that would be an answer.) This is probably that game unless this is mostly developed by external studios. I wouldn't be surprised if Miyamoto is pushing internally for Pikmin to become bigger.
 
I said a long time ago that Pikmin could make for a great 2d platformer and that the IP seemed naturally suited to the genre. I hope this game fulfills the potential of 2d platforming pikmin with good use of the pikmins' different abilities and environmental puzzles and creative platforming level design.

With the action mainly taking place on the bottom screen with stylus control and some verticality with the top screen, this feels much more like a classic Nintendo DS game rather than a 3ds game.
 
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