Pikmin 3 almost seems to have become the veritable unicorn of the games industry - often talked about, rarely ever seen, and 'in development' since the early days of the Wii, it seems to have been stranded in development limbo ever since. Missing out on a release on the Wii, development quickly shifted over to Nintendo's next console, the Wii U, where Pikmin 3 was originally penned as a launch title - and has yet to arrive, nearly six months later. They'll be calling it Pikmin Forever before long, just you wait.With the previous two instalments having been released on the Gamecube, Pikmin is a series that may have passed many by - telling the tale of a bobble-headed pilot with a huge hooter who crash-landed on a planet inhabited by strange flower-like creatures, the series garnered quite a fan following in the years that followed. Controlling Captain Olimar, and commanding a whole army of the little Pikmin people, whose different colours represented different abilities such as fire resistance, swimming proficiency and more, the aim of the game was to round up the parts of his exploded ship so old Olimar could return home, doing your best to avoid being eaten by the local wildlife in the process - which meant getting all the Pikmin to do the dirty work for you.
For Pikmin 3, Captain Olimar takes a back-seat to some new protagonists. And seemingly, they're either tiny, or they have some MASSIVE fruit on this planet...
With Pikmin 3 'definitely' coming to the Wii U later this year, it seems Nintendo have hatched a plan to help those unfamiliar with the series get up to speed, with the news that they're currently hard at work on a number of animated shorts. Featuring key characters, such as the up-until-now series protagonist Olimar, the first episode introduces his love of carrots - a love so deep, he named the little Pikmin creatures after his favourite brand, PikPik carrots. Nintendo's senior managing director and the man behind the likes of Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, Shigeru Miyamoto - who also created the original Pikmin series for the Gamecube back in 2001 - is overseeing the creation of the aforementioned cartoons, and believes Nintendo could even sell them, if they turn out to be rather well-received.
Of course, with the Xbox 360 bombarding us with more TV streaming options than we know what to do with, and the freshly announced Playstation 4 offering a whole host of similar services, Nintendo certainly have an opportunity to bring something wholly different to the table if they expanded these shorts to include some of their strongest franchises - after all, we'd buy a console in a heartbeat if we knew we could have every Pokemon, or Kirby episode on demand, not to mention a string of brand new exclusive ones to boot.Set to be released on the 3DS (presumably in the Nintendo Video application), and with any luck, the Wii U too, the only question that remains is when we'll be able to see them. With a release date for Pikmin 3 still not set in stone, the only thing Nintendo have confirmed is that the cartoons will see a release before the game hits the shelves, which certainly makes sense.
