On 7 October , Nintendo (with very little warning) released a just under 4-minute-long animated video of a baby trying to recover her dummy after an invisible creature stole it from them. The story follows a baby with blonde hair, travelling round the room to find her dummy, all leading to a heart-warming conclusion with their mother watching their first steps. All thanks to this mysterious force; but what even is it?
At first glance, you start to gain an understanding that this video was designed to be linked to the Pikmin Universe from context clues alone. The jaunty piano soundtrack, the red, yellow, and blue building blocks, stuffed toys around the room, etc. This was in fact entirely confirmed by Nintendo when they published a sequel to the short but with the whole cast of Pikmin revealed! The video was published a day later exclusively on a calendar and news app called ”Nintendo Today!” which I had to download for the purposes of this article. The NEW video includes a whole new variant of the piano soundtrack with more instruments being added to the music, all the Pikmin mischief now visible on camera and a variety of adorable little Pikmin sounds. After the moment of the first steps, the Pikmin start to bloom which honestly made me tear up just watching it.
You might be wondering, is there a new Pikmin game coming out?! Sadly, this hasn’t been confirmed as of yet. I know, we are all disappointed too… However, Nintendo did state that “Nintendo Pictures will continue to explore new creative possibilities through video content.” This new concept for Nintendo could be sparked from their work on the new Super Mario Galaxy Movie currently in production, and maybe Illumination encouraged them to work on other ways of engaging an audience: short form content. While Pikmin 5 is not exactly in the works, speculation has definitely been fuelled from the film, with some viewers guessing that the concept of ‘invisible Pikmin’ could be a new feature in later games. Although it could be inferred that a parent’s imagination is not as creative as a little baby’s could ever be and so they cannot see the hundreds of Pikmin around the room, which may be what Nintendo is trying to get at here.
What franchises are you looking forward to seeing in a short film? I for one am looking forward to seeing what Nintendo has in store for these Pixar-like short stories, although personally I’m desperate for a short film on either Kirby or Rhythm Heaven...
The original video can be watched on the Nintendo YouTube accounts.