Obviously, Shigeru Miyamoto is best known for creating Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Donkey Kong, but from the sounds of things, he's got a special place in his heart for one of his later creation – Pikmin.
Debuting in 2001, Pikmin was one of the last brand-new franchises Miyamoto was credited with creating (Nintendogs would follow). The director said it was inspired by him exploring nature as a kid, and since then, he's been a big proponent of the series, even during its long hiatuses.
Since its creation, Pikmin have had all manner of cameos, from carrying your data through the system transfer from Wii to Wii U, a statue appearing in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and hidden around the Super Nintendo World sections of Universal Theme Parks.
Speaking to IGN at the new Super Nintendo World opening at Universal Orlando, Miyamoto explains how he views Pikmin. "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."
He also explained why the Pikmin are so prominent in crossovers: "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."
And despite not being the biggest series under Nintendo, Miyamoto is still determined to help it grow, saying, "I spent a lot of time the past five, six years really wanting to grow Pikmin." He adds, "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."
Funnily enough, Pikmin has already proven it can work in movie form. Back in 2014, Nintendo released "Pikmin Short Movies," which were three vignettes featuring the characters. They were also Shigeru Miyamoto's first movie production credit ahead of the Mario movie. These were great little films and I would love to see Nintendo make more of them and play them as shorts before their movies like Pixar does... But also a Nintendo Switch 2 Pikmin 5 with mouse controls should take priority.
Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto explains the big ape's redesign was all in service of making him "more expressive."
