With Pikmin 4 releasing nearer to the end of this week, Nintendo has seen to it to make sure Pikmin 4 was the latest game to get the “Ask the Developer” interview treatment. Across the interview’s multiple instalments, we got to hear from the likes of Shigeru Miyamoto, Yuji Kando and more.
During the interview, Shigeru Miyamoto discussed the original diagram compiled of all original ideas for the first Pikmin game:
Miyamoto on Pikmin’s Design Diagram:
Shigeru Miyamoto: At first glance, this diagram just looks like a bunch of cryptic sentences strung together, but if you follow each sentence one by one, you can understand the program’s flow with this single sheet. In other words, nothing other than what’s written here will happen. It always happens with game development. We want to do this, we want to do that, and we end up with lots of new elements. Then the director says, “Well, I guess we’ll have to figure out how to fit them all together!” and flees the scene. (Laughs)
But this diagram is also a declaration that we won’t do anything more than what’s written here! Unless we set those boundaries, we can’t develop with so many people involved. I figured I’d better draft them myself before bossing others around. So, I wrote it all down while discussing with Kando-san things like how AI works in the system, whether the processing would be able to keep up, and, if not, whether it could be replaced with other mechanics.
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 10, Pikmin 4 – Chapter 1Ask the Developer Vol. 10, Pikmin 4 – Chapter 1.
Ask the Developer | Pikmin 4 (Participating Developers)
- Shigeru Miyamoto | Representative Director Fellow
- Yuji Kando | Entertainment Planning & Development Department, Production Group No.10
- Shigefumi Hino | Entertainment Planning & Development Department, Production Group No.10
- Masamichi Abe | Entertainment Planning & Development Department, Co-Production Group
- Junji Morii | Entertainment Planning & Development Department, Production Group No.4
