Fans of the Nintendo game franchise “Pikmin” were hopeful for years that a 3DS and DS game would eventually be released. However, right before the release of “Pikmin 3” on the Wii U, legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto finally explained to fans why the handheld game was cancelled.
According to Shigeru, during development, the game just didn’t work.
“The truth is we were doing prototype tests of Pikmin for the DS and 3DS but it turned into unit management with only the touch pen and no matter what it just didn’t seem like Pikmin,” explained Miyamoto to 4Gamer (translated via ONM).
It came down to the game’s controls on a handheld platform.
“We concluded that Pikmin is a game that revolves around action based on its controls and the strategy sits on top that. Although there are elements that are built on the strategy, there are other overall things that have to be well considered. This complete experience is an important element of Pikmin.”
Thankfully, “Pikmin” worked well with Wii U gamepad.
“[Pikmin 3] may seem difficult on first glance but once you try the controls, it’s easy. Even if you find using the pointer difficult, there is a control method using the GamePad similar to the previous GameCube titles that we’d like people to utilize. To that end, we hope people are able to look at this as a carefree, easy action game.”
“Pikmin 3” will be released in North America on August 4. The game is already available in Europe, Australia, and Japan. It already landed at No. 2 in the UK charts after its first weekend on sale.
