Ask the Developer Vol. 10, Pikmin 4 – Chapter 1 is out now, the 10th iteration of Nintendo’s new internal interviews that take place on their official sites.
 

This interview gathered some of the Pikmin 4 and original Pikmin team together, including Shigeru Miyamoto, Yuji Kando, Shigefumi Hino, Masamichi Abe and Junji Morii, to discuss the upcoming game, as well as the history of the series and how Pikmin came to be.

During the interview, many interesting pellets of information were shared, including early inspirations, ideas and concept art.
 

Hino:

Abe-san and I were directors at the time. Our discussion of this project started during the transition from Super NES to Nintendo 64, so we had a strong aspiration to utilise its ability to display a large number of characters on screen.

Given the limited processing power of the N64, the game would have had a different look to the one we ended up with, and would have had a top down view, with perhaps 2D objects similar to the Paper Mario games.

Kando:
When we were first developing the game for Nintendo 64, we expressed the idea of many characters being there by combining flat boards called billboards to create characters, thereby lightening the processing workload. When the platform changed to Nintendo GameCube, we were finally able to express each individual character as a 3D model.

Those N64-era Pikmin (pictured above in the article banner) bare a striking resemblance to the small creatures found in 2004's GameCube title, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door! Sadly the interviewer didn’t ask about any connections to that game, but it has us wondering if they were indeed a homage.

The interview then asks about early inspirations for Pikmin designs, and they seemed to follow a much darker route than the ones we ended up with, or indeed the above N64 designs.
 

Morii:
Back then, I really liked the world of Tim Burton, so I wanted the designs to not just be cute, but also give a sense of eeriness, or some emotional weight. That's why I was drawing the sketches like this, with a style that layers scribbling lines.

Hino:
Nintendo games up to that point were strongly associated with the bright and vibrant designs of the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series. That’s why I wanted to take a bold step and depict a sombre, mature, and mysterious world. So, we said, “Let’s watch a movie together for inspiration!” and the choice was an animated movie called Fantastic Planet. We all had puzzled looks on our faces while watching it. (Laughs)

The interview goes on to ask about how the gameplay of Pikmin took shape over time. They also go into detail about how the original name of the Pikmin had a few changes along the way, and that only one level was complete upon its GameCube reveal!

The whole interview is full of fascinating information regarding early Pikmin creation, and can be read in full here!