Interstellar alphabet

Since this subject has no official name, the name "Interstellar alphabet" is conjectural.

Throughout Pikmin 3 and Pikmin 4, there are pieces of text written in an interstellar alphabet. This alphabet is a symbol substitution cipher – characters in this alphabet can be mapped to Latin letters, and with that, a direct English message can be obtained.

Because most players do not know the cipher, sometimes the content of the text is secretive and special. For instance, on the area selection menu in Pikmin 3, when the player selects an area, some mysterious text will appear on the top-left, with what appears to be comments from the developers. The information behind some texts does not seem to match up with reality, indicating that it was true in prerelease versions.

Character map

Each character in the interstellar alphabet can be mapped to one or two English letters. There are only characters for the 26 English letters plus an extra, unknown one. This unknown character only appears on the Mission Mode menu and Bingo Battle menu in Pikmin 3, and does not appear in Pikmin 3 Deluxe. While its meaning cannot be decided from the context alone, it's possible that it's some kind of placeholder character, considering the same symbol (〓) is used to indicate missing characters in Japanese.

These characters were initially obtained from the font file in Pikmin 3's game data.

By interstellar alphabet character

Interstellar alphabet	Latin script		Interstellar alphabet	Latin script		Interstellar alphabet	Latin script
	A or F			B or J			C or O
	D or Q			E			G
	H			I or Y			K or Z
	L			M or X			N
	P			R or V			S
	T			U			W
	Unknown

By Latin letter

Latin script	Interstellar alphabet		Latin script	Interstellar alphabet		Latin script	Interstellar alphabet
A			B			C
D			E			F
G			H			I
J			K			L
M			N			O
P			Q			R
S			T			U
V			W			X
Y			Z			Unknown

Text instances in Pikmin 3

The following is a list of instances in which text in the interstellar alphabet appears in Pikmin 3, and their translations.

Instance	Image	Interstellar alphabet text	English text	Notes
Area selection menu – general			Date food Land point Space ship Drake Designer of the space ship Alphs grandfather	Top-right corner. For every area, this appears below it, and on the pop-up that appears when the Wii Remote's cursor is aimed at it. Bottom-left corner. Bottom-left corner. Bottom-left corner.
Area selection menu – Tropical Wilds selected