Pikmin 3 to bring 'stress' back to series

Pikmin 3 for Wii U will be a "back-to-basics" Pikmin game that aims to return "stress" to the series. That's according to designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who told United Kingdom magazine GamesMaster (via Official Nintendo Magazine) that Pikmin 3 aims to capture the essence of the first game.

"First of all, by looking at Pikmin 1 we noticed that it wasn't a very easy game for people to play, and from time to time they had to feel some stress," Miyamoto said. "Our main aim in Pikmin 2 was to get rid of any stress as much as possible, so that it would be very user-friendly. Well, I myself couldn't agree with that direction perfectly. That kind of nature of Pikmin 1 was exactly what I wanted to reproduce and I was actually intentionally doing so, so that Pikmin 1 could be a strategic game."

Miyamoto explained that when Nintendo began to conceive Pikmin 3, he gathered the core developers from Pikmin 2 and instructed them that it was important to return to the basics of Pikmin 1. This did not come easy, he said.

"Or I should say that half of my job at that time wasn't just to talk, but rather to persuade them to understand what I intended to do and to agree to my idea," Miyamoto said.

Pikmin 3--recently delayed to the April-June quarter--was announced during Nintendo's 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo briefing in June. It is a direct sequel to 2004's GameCube title Pikmin 2 and introduces new features like a Rock Pikmin, which can be used to destroy hard objects.

The game is fully playable with just the Wii U GamePad, but can also be directed with a Wii MotionPlus controller. Miyamoto previously explained that the game skipped online multiplayer because having numerous small creatures onscreen at once would present problems when syncing up over an Internet connection.

For more on Pikmin 3, check out GameSpot's preview from E3 2012.