Captain Olimar is back, and this time he means business… literally.

To say the original Pikmin was a success is a very easy thing to do. It did, after all sell enormously well, win numerous awards for originality and set its place amongst Nintendo's lead line-up of games. Nevertheless the game needs to grow over the years in order for it to reach the multi-million status and to warrant such sequels the game will need to progress both with innovative ideas and clever improvements… and that is exactly what Nintendo promise.

One way in which they plan to do this is by offering us more. More extra modes, more gameplay innovations, more Pikmin and even more spacemen. The latter is the most significant of the new Pikmin additions. How Olimar's slightly deranged looking assistant has been implemented is mainly up for speculation but not only is he important to the single player mission but he also opens up a much needed Pikmin multi-player feature, the co-operative mode. Of course this adds a vital element of length to proceedings, especially considering that was one of the main complaints lunged at the original.

The addition of this extra character will undoubtedly create puzzle-solving concepts similar to the ones use in Resident Evil 0. One character needs to do something at one end to assist the other at another end. Perhaps Olimar's assistant has the ability to react to certain types of Pikmin. Whatever Mr. Miyamoto has up his sleeve it's sure to be genius, he did, after all, like the two character idea enough to use it in two games (Mario Kart). All I do know is that much like Mario Kart it is easy to alternate between the two characters.

So what exactly is the game about, Surly Olimar isn't stupid enough to crash again? Well indeed he isn't, you see the Science Company he works for is going bankrupt, in fact a dramatic 10,000 Pokos in debt! (I have no idea either) and so in order to reach this money Olimar must go treasure hunting around the world of the Pikmin. With the aid of his assistant and brand new Pikmin types, Olimar is sure to get the money he needs. Of course with a storyline like this the 30-day time limit has gone, kaput, vanished, so now the wonderful concept of exploration is added to one of the luscious games around. You can have days simply raising Pikmin and destroying the monsters. Once again another brilliant length addition. And for those worried about the loss of the time management principle don't fret, the daily time limit is still in place.

So this brings me onto a Pikmin fans most interesting development… new Pikmin. So far we have 2 new Pikmin colours, each with their more obvious physical differences. One being the nice new fat purple Pikmin, what the new colour does in comparison to the other Pikmin is a mystery. By its size it is presumable they can't be thrown and purple often signifies poison in games such as this. So perhaps they cannot be thrown far and can withstand poison, of course this is to be seen. The second new type of the Pikmin is the slightly disturbing white/red eyed Pikmin. As the Pikmin is smaller perhaps it is more agile and easily escapes attacks, alternatively maybe the red eyes allow it to see in the dark. Or maybe the red eyes are simply there to make them stand apart from the Pikmin that have been “left” (who subsequently turn white).

Hopes are being pinned on more variety of levels, snow worlds have been hoped for (something else for the white Pikmin?). If this works as well as it looks then we'll have one of Nintendo's best ever games, some developers take ages to progress their games as dramatically as this, Nintendo do it in one fell swoop. And we love them all the same for it.