This thread is to discuss one of my favorite series ever: Pikmin.

Pikmin is a strategy game by Nintendo, and one of the favorites of Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, the Producer or Director of many many famous Nintendo titles.

At any one time, Pikmin may have upwards of one hundred moving parts, literally. In the original Pikmin, you play the roll of an interplanetary delivery boy, Captain Olimar. He crash lands on an uncharted planet after colliding with a meteor. Your goal is to collect the thirty parts of your ship which you have lost in as many in-game days, as oxygen is poisonous for Hoctatians and your suit only has enough power left for that many days.

You are tasked with using the abilities of three types of Pikmin, the Red, fireproof Pikmin, the Blue, waterproof Pikmin, and the Yellow, high flying, bomb carrying Pikmin, in order to solve puzzles and defeat enemies to obtain the parts of your ship.

In Pikmin 2, Captain Olimar returns home to find that his company has had to take out a loan because a space bunny ate all their Pikpik Carrots on a delivery. Your mission is to go back to the planet, but this time you are collecting artifacts of the planet to bring home and sell for money to repay the loan. You are paired up with Louie. Louie, who was in charge of the carrots at the time, is revealed to be the one who ate all of the Pikpik Carrots after you complete the game fully, all 201 treasures.

In this installment of the Pikmin series, you not only have the three base Pikmin, but the Yellow Pikmin have gained the ability to resist damage from electricity, which is normally an instant kill, but have lost the ability to carry bomb rocks because they have grown in size massively. You also obtain two new Pikmin, the White, poison proof, poison filled Pikmin, and the Purple sumo wrestlers of Pikmin.

After you repay the debt the company owes, you are ordered to return to the planet in order to collect every possible treasure, but you forgot Louie on the planet, so the President of your company goes in his stead.

Pikmin 3 has given the entire game play and story a complete overhaul. It no longer involves the iconic Captain Olimar, and not even his home planet of Hoctate. No, this time, we follow the story of three captains and their new home planet, Koppai.

The planet faces mass extinction of its inhabitants due to their ravenous appetites. They have eaten their planet down to the bones. In order to prevent their extinction, they have searched the entire universe for a planet with edible food. All seems lost, but as the final search vessel returns, they bring a new hope with them. They have found a planet with bountiful food.

When they attempt to land, something goes horribly wrong. Your mission in this game is to obtain fruit in order to not only feed your starving race, but to survive. When you obtain fruit, the amount of days you have to live increases to a maximum of 100. Shigeru Miyamoto has said that the expected amount of time it will take to beat is 30 in-game days.

In this complete revamp of the game play, instead of wildly throwing Pikmin at an enemy to defeat it, you have to think about how to bring each one down using certain Pikmin or by using weak points, such as eyes, to bring them down faster. Instead of ordering your Pikmin to go smash a wall or a bridge until it is complete or destroyed, you have to figure out how to break walls the fastest or get Pikmin to carry bridge pieces from one location to another to build it piece by piece.

You also get two new Pikmin, the Rock Pikmin and the Pink Pikmin.

The Rock Pikmin are obtained by defeating the Medusal Slurker. When defeated, it drops Pikmin equal to the amount of Pikmin that it ate plus six. These are all Rock Pikmin. Rock Pikmin are immune to blunt force and sharp objects. They will simply be moved around if hit by them. After obtaining the Rock Pikmin, you are tasked with ramming them into a crystal to free their onion.

Speaking about the onions of Pikmin 3, they are completely redone. Not only do they look diferent, but every Pikmin in the game not only has an onion, but they fuse together and become the Master Onion. Pressing Z under this new Onion takes out equal amounts of each discovered type of Pikmin.

The Pink Pikmin still have only a little amount of information released about them, but they are constantly flying, and fly over ground hazards, such as water, holes, and most enemy attacks, assuming they stay roughly the same.

Some sources say that there may be one more new Pikmin type in the game that they have not announced.

Boop.

I just.. Don't get this.

Can you just quickly start by summing up the gameplay?

In the series, you are basically the leader of an army of up to one hundred Pikmin, who are humanoid plants that have lived on this Distant Planet for many, many years.

You use them to carry your ship parts, treasure, or fruit back to your ship in order to finish the main goal of the game, which changes per game. While doing so, you also have to use the Pikmin to break down walls, build bridges, and kill the nocturnal predators that eat the Pikmin if they are awoken or if you leave Pikmin behind.

While controlling your army of Pikmin, you must think about the hazards around you, such as water, fire, electricity, predators, bomb rocks, and poison, and make sure the wrong type of Pikmin does not enter the hazard.

You are also tasked with taking the predators you kill and anything they drop to the Pikmin's homes, the Onions, which are evolved Pikmin. These Onions will produce seeds based on what your Pikmin carry to them and which ship they were taken to. You then pluck them and increase your army's size.

You must use each of the Pikmin that you have in order to get certain things, such as Yellow Pikmin to get high things. Keeping each type of Pikmin's population above 100 at any one time is recommended, as that will allow you to obtain everything with every hazard without having to worry about running out of Pikmin.

If you die or run out of Pikmin, you must either start the game over or restart from your last save.

Pikmin 3 finally comes to stores tomorrow.

This game actually looks weirdly fun; kind of like Lemmings was back in the day.

Beat the main story of Pikmin 3. Best. Credit. Sequence. Ever.

I liked the new locking on, liked the new Pikmin, and loved the new bosses. Cool story, too. I definitely liked that the Game Pad has a map. Amazing graphics upgrade. Actual water physics. I liked that you could choose to just move the reticle. New enemies were fun and nothing like they had done before. Definitely a whole new experience from the previous games.

I didn't like that the only way to swarm is to use the locking on mechanic. They should have kept the swarm mechanic from the other two games in addition to the new one. They should have kept the Ultra-Bitter Spray, not just the Ultra-Spicy Spray. It would have been nice to see White and Purple Pikmin in the main story, but I can see how it wouldn't fit. The final boss's chase stage could have been less annoying, but I did like the challenge. The throwing of other captains should have followed the trajectory of Red, Blue, and Rock Pikmin, for they weigh the same on scales.