New Play Control! Pikmin

New Play Control! Pikmin
New Play Control! Pikmin
Japanese name	Wiiであそぶピクミン? (lit.: "Let's Play On Wii Pikmin")
Rating
Console	Wii
Developer	Nintendo EAD
Publisher	Nintendo
Genre	Real-time strategy
Players	Single-player
Saved game size	31 blocks
Release date
Japan	December 25th, 2008
North America	March 9th, 2009
Europe	February 6th, 2009
Australia	February 26th, 2009
South Korea	October 27th, 2011
Related games
Re-release of	Pikmin

New Play Control! Pikmin is a re-release of Pikmin for the Wii, as part of the New Play Control! range of video games. It was released in 2008 in Japan and 2009 elsewhere, and features a number of changes to the original game, mainly in its controls.

Changes

Gameplay

To do: Make a video or gif comparing the time it takes for Pikmin to burn up/drown, in the classic and in this port. Care to do so?

• A new control scheme allows control of the cursor by pointing at the screen with the Wii Remote. Because of that, the player can now call the Pikmin at a greater distance. Throws have also received slight physics changes.
• An updated save system allows the player to restart play from any previous day, from the saved game selection menu. This allows the player to retry mistakes or fix problems such as the Libra glitch.
• Yellow Pikmin holding bomb-rocks no longer drop them when whistled to. In addition, they will automatically try to run out of range of a planted bomb-rock's explosion or throw it at an enemy.
• When Mushroom Pikmin attack Captain Olimar, they pause between each hit, while in the original, they would attack over and over.
• Pikmin last longer when on fire or drowning.
• The player can press to cycle through the types of Pikmin they are holding and to cycle through maturity, a feature which was first introduced in the GameCube version of Pikmin 2.
• Cutscenes can be skipped, similar to the European localization of the orignal Pikmin 2.
• When centering the camera with , it points to the direction Olimar is facing, and not the direction the cursor is at.
• Whenever the Nunchuk or Wii Remote is disconnected, the gameplay will pause and a prompt will appear notifying the player.
• The cardboard box cutscene softlock glitch has been fixed.
• On the GameCube, Pikmin thrown at a Pellet Posy will knock down the pellet and then return to Olimar, if he is close enough. In New Play Control! Pikmin, the Pikmin stays idle, leading to it carrying the pellet right after taking it down.
• Thrown flower Pikmin now fall straight instead of twirling horizontally at the apex of their throw arc. This also makes them fall at the same speed as leaf or bud Pikmin, instead of falling slower.
• If a Pikmin holding a bomb rock is killed, its bomb will only explode when the Pikmin succumbs and its soul appears. In the original game, its bomb would explode right away.

Graphics

• The game is now in widescreen.
• The cursor was changed to reflect the new control scheme:
  • The cursor is composed of a large pointed ring and a smaller segmented spinning ring inside. The large ring follows the Wii Remote's pointer, and the segmented ring cannot go past a small range around the leader; this is the location Pikmin land on when thrown.
  • Parts of the cursor located on uneven terrain become gray.
  • A faint trail follows the cursor.
• When Pikmin are being issued to swarm, some arrows will appear between the leader and the cursor; the latter will also flash yellow.
• When Olimar is behind the level geometry or an object from the camera's perspective, his silhouette will be drawn in red to indicate his position. Pikmin do not have these silhouettes.
• The camera will move up when it gets close to a wall.
• The carrying numbers are like in Pikmin 2, which means they show the color of the Onion they are being carried to.
• Only the "tails" of Pikmin souls are blue, the main bodies are colored according to the dead Pikmin's type.
• Some bubbles are fused together into one such as the ones that say "Best 5", "Challenge", "Ship Parts", "Pikmin Population", and "Final Analysis". In addition, the text on the Challenge Mode menu that says "It's the single day challenge mode!" is all in a single line as opposed to two.
• The credits play differently; instead of going from the bottom of the screen to the top, they "roll" across the surface of the planet. Meteors will also occasionally pass the screen in the background.
• The enemy reel is presented differently. It plays as usual, but around the edges of the screen, five-petaled flowers are falling, in addition to what looks like snowflakes towards the end of the enemy reel.
• Some fonts and text boxes have been cleaned up, most notably on the area selection menu.
• Bomb rocks are almost twice as big in this version.

Audio

• Some sound effects are played by the Wii Remote speaker: whistle, dismiss sound, the swarming theme, punches, the elastic noise when stretching a buried Pikmin to pluck it, the sounds played when panning and zooming the radar, the whistle when under an Onion, the sound that plays when toggling the held Pikmin type, the noise that plays when damage is taken, the "low health" beeps, and the jingle that plays when a task is complete.
  • In addition, some entirely new sound effects also play from the speaker: two sound effects play when opening and closing menus, like the radar or the Onion's menu, and a sound effect that plays when a Pikmin is grabbed onto.
• Some enemy sound effects are different, notably more "squeaky". This is because they have the wrong sample rate, making them play sped up around 6 times. The European and Korean releases fix most of these problems, which was later carried over to the Nintendo Switch port of the game in all regions.
  • Almost all Red Bulborb, Dwarf Red Bulborb, Wollywog, and Yellow Wollywog sounds are sped up.
  • With the European and Korean versions, Red Bulborb and Dwarf Red Bulborb sounds are working properly, and Wollywogs and Yellow Wollywogs have all sounds corrected except for the death animation thud.
  • Some Onion sound effects use a lower sampling rate in the European and Korean versions, making them sound faster.
• During the bad ending, Olimar's Ship makes different malfunctioning noises.
• The saved game selection menu had a small change in its music, slowing down the sound effect at the beginning of the theme.

Other

• Naturally, all references to controls in the GameCube version have been altered to their Wii counterparts.
• The player can now use the D-pad to navigate through menus.
• The Nintendo logo before the title screen is white.
• The title screen's copyright info has been updated from "© 2001,2002 Nintendo" to "© 2001-2009 Nintendo".
• The "Continue from Last Save" option in the pause menu has been renamed to "Continue from previous save".
• The options menu lacks the language setting (even in the European version), the rumble setting, and the mono/stereo setting.
• A typo has been corrected where the Onion menu would say "There are no blues Pikmin to take out.", when attempting to take out more Blue Pikmin than the Onion has.
• Pikmin can no longer swim through gates.
• On the European version, Wollywogs have been renamed to Wollyhops. This name difference does not exist in the GameCube game, and is believed to have happened because Nintendo feared British players would take "wog" as being offensive. This change became the norm for the European version of any subsequent Pikmin game.
• In the Japanese version exclusively, a fifth attract mode movie is present with Ai no Uta as the song.
• In the Final Analysis screen, the Anti-Dioxin Filter is instead labeled the "Non-Dioxin", and all text is left-justified instead of being centered.

Controls

See: New Play Control! Pikmin controls

History

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Release

On September 1^st, 2016, the game was made available as an eShop download for the Wii U, in Europe. In North America, it was made available on September 29^th, 2016. Finally, in Japan, it become a Virtual Console download in June 20^th, 2017. As of March 27^th, 2023, the Wii U version of the game is no longer available for purchase due to the closure of the Wii U eShop.

The Japanese version of the game is only available in Japanese, the American version is available in English, Latin American Spanish, and Canadian French, the European version of the game is available in English, European French, German, Italian, and Castilian Spanish, and the Korean version of the game is only available in Korean.

Versions

Main article: Region.

There are three versions of New Play Control! Pikmin. One version was released in Japan, and uses Japanese text, another was released in North America, and uses English text, and a third was released in Europe and Oceania, and uses European-language texts. Beside language options, there are almost no differences between the North American and the European releases, except for the fact that the latter renamed some enemies in order to avoid controversy.

To note is that New Play Control! Pikmin is a Wii port of the 2001 GameCube original, titled simply Pikmin. The Wii port has some substantial differences to the GameCube release, as seen in the changes section.

Credits

See: New Play Control! Pikmin credits

Media

To do: Upload the flip side of the covers. Care to do so?

• 

  Japanese box art.

• 

  Korean box art.

• 

  Logo.

See also: Promotional material.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning	Notes
Japanese	Wiiであそぶピクミン? Wii de Asobu Pikumin	Let's Play On Wii Pikmin
Dutch	NEW PLAY CONTROL! Pikmin	-	Name taken from various official sources.
French	Nouvelle façon de jouer ! Pikmin	New way to play! Pikmin	From cover, written as Pikmin NOUVELLE FAÇON DE JOUER ! on official website.
German	New Play Control! Pikmin	-
Italian	New Play Control! Pikmin	-
Korean	피크민 pikeumin	Pikmin	This version lacks New Play Control! branding, likely because this is the first time any version of the game was released in Korea.
Portuguese (NoE)	NEW PLAY CONTROL! Pikmin	-	Name taken from the official New Play Control! Pikmin website.
Spanish	New Play Control! Pikmin	-
Russian	NEW PLAY CONTROL! Pikmin	-	Name taken from the official New Play Control! Pikmin website.

Trivia

• The save data description is "Pikmin are alive!"
• This is the first game in the Pikmin series to be available in Korean, Latin American Spanish, and Canadian French.

External links

• Official North American New Play Control! Pikmin website
• Official European New Play Control! Pikmin website
• Official Japanese Wii de Asobu Pikmin website
• Pikmin listing on official Wii website of South Korea
• US version instruction manual
• Video demo