Pikmin. A really good game loved by a lot of people. Though how did Pikmin become Pikmin anyway? Well, before we get to that, we'll have to talk about another game first, and that game is Super Mario 128. Super Mario 128 was a tech demo that was shown at Space World 2000 in order to show the Gamecubes power.
Super Mario 128 was supposed to be a sequel to Super Mario 64, but never made it's purpose. The sequel was changed to Super Mario Sunshine. However, Miyamoto tried to carry over the development over to the Wii and even stated that a brand new character would be at Mario's side. Sadly, development officially stopped in 2007 .
"Why did I just read this and what does this have to do with Pikmin?"
You'll see...
See any similarity? Yep, Miyamoto even stated that Super Mario 128 is Pikmin as both games have many characters on the screen at once. It doesn't stop here though, oh no. Pikmin went through a lot of changes during it's development. In fact, Pikmin weren't even called Pikmin at first. Instead, they were divided into two categories: Adam and Eve. Pikmin was originally supposed to be about controlling the lives about the Adam and Eve in a prehistoric world. The better you did with controlling their lives, the more likely they will have children and create a colony. Though everything seemed to be going fine during the development, they ran into a HUGE issue. What would the objective be? This issue became so big that they would have to change the game COMPLETELY. The developers started experimenting what kind of new game they could make with the Adam and Eve groups and they decided the best option was something to do with the player throwing the Adam and Eve. This kind of gameplay was used for the rest of the development. The early Pikmin had the same body shape, but no facial features and the only color they were was black. The development team didn't like the look so they made the Adam and Eve have one color and different sizes. To make it easier to develop however, they chose to have one size and different colors.
Pikmin was going to be a LOT more complex than it is today. Including throwing your Pikmin, you could swap your Pikmin and choose your favorite to follow you into battle. They were also going to have a life meter for each Pikmin, but they decided it would be too complex and they wanted to give the Pikmin more freedom to make their own decisions.
Now let's go over all the unused material that's in the game.
Unused levels:
route - Believed to be a prototype impact site. Slopes have odd textures.
map06 - Area that appeared on an old commercial. Resembles Distant Spring a bit, but with unused textures. No borders, so walking too far will send you into the abyss.
tut02- This is probably one of the strangest levels. According to the games files, it was an opening level for a two player game.
Unused Models:
Here are some early and unused models. Some models were leftovers from Super Mario 128.
cylinder.mod:
Early pellet model
kuribo.mod
Kuribo is the Japanese name for Goomba
mario.mod
Probably a leftover from Super Mario 128. This model is very, very big though.
door.mod and key.mod
Key would have been used to open the door
OldMarkr.mod
There is an old marker. This was used in development. X shows where the Pikmin is going to land. The grey circle is the whistling area. Other circle is unknown.
Unused Textures:
Bomb Rock textures
These textures seem to indicate that not only the Yellow Pikmin could pick up bomb rocks. Pikmin 3 added this ability however.
Moon:
This moon was probably cut due to levels being too dark.
Well, this is all that I can cover about the beta of Pikmin! I'll be doing more of these so please comment telling me what I should do next (game has to be pretty old, though not too old).
"Why did I just read this and what does this have to do with Pikmin?"
You'll see...
See any similarity? Yep, Miyamoto even stated that Super Mario 128 is Pikmin as both games have many characters on the screen at once. It doesn't stop here though, oh no. Pikmin went through a lot of changes during it's development. In fact, Pikmin weren't even called Pikmin at first. Instead, they were divided into two categories: Adam and Eve. Pikmin was originally supposed to be about controlling the lives about the Adam and Eve in a prehistoric world. The better you did with controlling their lives, the more likely they will have children and create a colony. Though everything seemed to be going fine during the development, they ran into a HUGE issue. What would the objective be? This issue became so big that they would have to change the game COMPLETELY. The developers started experimenting what kind of new game they could make with the Adam and Eve groups and they decided the best option was something to do with the player throwing the Adam and Eve. This kind of gameplay was used for the rest of the development. The early Pikmin had the same body shape, but no facial features and the only color they were was black. The development team didn't like the look so they made the Adam and Eve have one color and different sizes. To make it easier to develop however, they chose to have one size and different colors.
Pikmin was going to be a LOT more complex than it is today. Including throwing your Pikmin, you could swap your Pikmin and choose your favorite to follow you into battle. They were also going to have a life meter for each Pikmin, but they decided it would be too complex and they wanted to give the Pikmin more freedom to make their own decisions.
Now let's go over all the unused material that's in the game.
Unused levels:
route - Believed to be a prototype impact site. Slopes have odd textures.
map06 - Area that appeared on an old commercial. Resembles Distant Spring a bit, but with unused textures. No borders, so walking too far will send you into the abyss.
tut02- This is probably one of the strangest levels. According to the games files, it was an opening level for a two player game.
Unused Models:
Here are some early and unused models. Some models were leftovers from Super Mario 128.
cylinder.mod:
Early pellet model
kuribo.mod
Kuribo is the Japanese name for Goomba
mario.mod
Probably a leftover from Super Mario 128. This model is very, very big though.
door.mod and key.mod
Key would have been used to open the door
OldMarkr.mod
There is an old marker. This was used in development. X shows where the Pikmin is going to land. The grey circle is the whistling area. Other circle is unknown.
Unused Textures:
Bomb Rock textures
These textures seem to indicate that not only the Yellow Pikmin could pick up bomb rocks. Pikmin 3 added this ability however.
Moon:
This moon was probably cut due to levels being too dark.
Well, this is all that I can cover about the beta of Pikmin! I'll be doing more of these so please comment telling me what I should do next (game has to be pretty old, though not too old).
