Tuesday’s Nintendo Direct was a much-hyped affair, with 40 minutes dedicated to the Japanese company’s handheld console and its games. Most people kept their expectations somewhat in check for this one, because Nintendo said the event would be heavily focused on products coming out this holiday season. But this still leaves room for surprises, and when Shigeru Miyamoto appears on screen, you get excited. Miyamoto is legendary, after all. We tend to see him for big things like the announcement of the upcoming Mario animated movie that has stars in the cast, or things like the Super Nintendo World theme park. You know, announcements with mainstream appeal or questionable prestige projects. Miyamoto has also been with the company long enough that it seems he can pretty much do whatever he wants, though he still consults on many projects. Lately he’s focused on theme parks because it makes him feel like he’s doing something new again, and it’s just familiar enough to designing video games to spark excitement. “Now I’m focused on the need to keep finding new experiences,” he said in an interview with The New Yorker. “That’s always what interested me and excited me about the medium: not perfecting the old but discovering the new.” But that doesn’t mean Miyamoto is always far from doing something big and new. Having Miyamoto’s stature means he can also devote time to passion projects. So that brings us to today’s big Nintendo Direct. G/O Media may receive a commission $663 Total Value Humble Bundle 2K Megahits Game Bundle for Covenant House Provide housing and support services to young people experiencing homelessnessA series of games from 2K have been combined. You can pay whatever you want to support the cause, but if you want access to some of the big hits like Borderlands 3, The Bioshock Collection, XCOM: The Ultimate Collection, and Sid Meier’s Civilizatrion VI, you’ll need to pay at least $16. But hey, that’s almost nothing compared to the $663 value you get from all 18 games combined. Read more: The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2 gets a completely different name, release date and trailer The thing is, even if you weren’t expecting news of, say, a new Nintendo Switch model or BotW 2, for whatever reason, for a brief moment it looked like Miyamoto had something big to say. He began to notice that he had a few things to share, “including some news.” Soon after, Miyamoto started talking about the Chris Pratt Mario movie and the Super Nintendo World theme park. Except…all he said was that they were still working on the finishing touches for both projects. Nintendo When Miyamoto started talking about the Pikmin mobile game, which has been out for a while now, the chat started to lose its shit. We haven’t seen Miyamoto in a while and this is what he wants to tell the world? What made it especially funny is that there’s no way Miyamoto didn’t know how it might be received. He introduced the segment by telling people that the Pikmin series is 20 years old, but the company is “still” working on it. Franchises like Zelda, Metroid, and Super Mario are all older than that, but never reminding people that Nintendo is still working on them, that would be absurd. Nintendo also regularly revives random franchises, though often in the context of series like Smash Bros. But Pikmin isn’t exactly a popular series, and we already know that not many people play Pikmin Bloom, even though it has a developer like Niantic behind it. Nintendo The silver lining here, though, is that Miyamoto actually had some real news to share: Pikmin 4 is coming in 2023. The fact that the game exists probably isn’t a surprise to anyone, as Miyamoto somehow said it was “getting closer to completion” seven whole years ago. Pikmin 3 was released in 2013. It’s been about a whole decade. Shout out to all the fans who put up with it this long, though I’m afraid you’re still going to be a little hungry because the trailer we got today doesn’t really show much. Have you heard of this good Pikmin-like on Game Pass? While this news will make some very happy, as I was watching along on Twitch, the conversation was one of complete disbelief throughout Miyamoto’s department, even as the new game was shown. Most were shouting and disapproving of the whole thing. And it kind of makes sense: Thanks to the way the Direct was built, it almost looked fake. Everyone started holding their breath at the prospect of hearing Chris Pratt do an Italian accent, and instead heard about a franchise that had been on life support for years and was never that popular to begin with. “Lol”, as the kids say. For those of us who have been following Nintendo for a long time, though, this is classic Miyamoto. The dude has always been a little unusual, which is exactly what equipped him to design some of the most memorable games of all time. That, and Pikmin have always been close to the man’s heart. In 2013, Miyamoto said that in his lifetime, he had directed perhaps around 50 games and helped oversee over 100. And of those games, many of which were industry-defining, Pikmin 3 was one of better for him, he said. . The numbers are probably much higher now, over a decade later, but I’m willing to bet that it would probably rank Pikmin pretty high up there if it kept the series on life support.
