Pikmin is one of Nintendo's strangest gaming properties and that says a lot. They helped bring back the video game industry with the story of a plumber fighting turtle monsters to save a princess in a kingdom populated with mushroom people. Their next most successful property is a pink ball that sucks up enemies to absorb their power. The plumber and his enemies play baseball, soccer, board games, go-karts, and fight for sport. They solve puzzles with viruses and even teach children how to draw and swat flies. But, no. Pikmin is something quite special. A human lands on a strange alien planet filled with plant-like creatures that grow out of the ground. They run the planet during the day and help the human recover parts of his ship. At night, the deadly aliens show up and eat anyone good still on the planet's surface. These Pikmin sacrifice themselves at your command just to help you get back to your home planet before you run out of resources.
I told you it was a strange game series.
Pikmin is also incredibly beautiful and moving in its style and storytelling. It's cute and heartbreaking. Each game in the series so far introduces more of the plant-critters to play with and new challenges. The Pikmin themselves have become so popular that they will return to the Super Smash Bros. series without a human at the command this time.
Next month, Shigeru Miyamoto will debut the Pikmin film at the Tokyo International Film Festival. It is comprised of three short films about Pikmin and their relationship with their human companion. The shorts are pulled from a potential television adaptation of the game series, which itself would be an interesting experiment. The last time we had a Nintendo series on the air, Mario and Luigi taught real world lessons while cutting to animated Mario and Legend of Zelda shorts in the 90s. Well, at least an series we had ready access to in America.
That's assuming we get to see this Stateside. There's no word on any release anywhere beyond the film festival at this point. Nintendo and Miyamoto are so big on Pikmin, though, I'll be surprised if this doesn't work its way over eventually.