New Play Control! Pikmin

New Play Control! Pikmin
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New Play Control! Pikmin
Japanese name	Wiiであそぶピクミン
Console	Wii
Developer	Nintendo EAD
Publisher	Nintendo
Genre	Real-time strategy
Players	{{{players}}}
Release date
Japan	December 25, 2008
North America	March 9, 2009
Europe	February 6, 2009
Australia	February 26, 2009
South Korea	N/A

New Play Control! Pikmin is a re-release of Pikmin in the New Play Control! range of video-games. It was released in 2008 in Japan and 2009 everywhere else, and features a number of changes to the original game.

Changes

Gameplay

• 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.
• An updated save system allows the player to restart play from any previous day, from the saved game menu. This allows the player to 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 B to cycle through the types of Pikmin they are holding and Paddown to cycle through maturity, a feature which was first introduced in the GameCube version of Pikmin 2.
• Compared to the American version of the GameCube game, the player can now skip the end of day cutscene by pressing A. This feature is already present in the European version of the original Pikmin, (but Start is pressed instead).
• When centering the camera with Z, 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.

Graphics

• The game now has widescreen support.
• 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 move, some arrows will appear between the captain and the cursor; the latter will also flash yellow.
• When Olimar is behind the level geometry or an object, his silhouette will be drawn in red to indicate his position. Pikmin do not have these silhouettes.
• 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 spirits 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" and "Pikmin Population". In addition, the text on the Challenge Mode screen 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.

Audio

• Some sound effects are played by the Wii Remote speaker: whistle, dismiss sound, the group move 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.
• Enemy sound effects, "voices" in particular, are different, notably more "squeaky".
• During the bad ending, Olimar's Ship makes different malfunctioning noises.
• The saved game selection menu had a small change in its music, adding some psychedelic sound effect near the start of the song.

Other

• Naturally, all references to controls in the GameCube version have been altered to their Wii counterparts.
• 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, and judging by New Play Control! Pikmin 2, Yellow Wollywogs and Wogpoles were meant to be called Yellow Wollyhops and Wolpoles, respectively; this never happened, however, as the enemy reel was never updated.

Box art

• 

  Japanese box art.

• 

  Korean box art.

External links

• Official North American New Play Control! Pikmin website
• Official European New Play Control! Pikmin website
• Official Japanese Wii de Asobu Pikmin website
• Video demo