Mission Mode menu

The Mission Mode menu in is a menu that provides access to the game's Mission Mode.

Mission type selection screen
This menu is shown upon selecting Mission Mode from the title screen, and shows 3 main buttons, corresponding to the 3 types of mission: Collect Treasure!, Battle Enemies!, and Defeat Bosses!. (In the Wii U version, if no boss has been defeated in Story Mode, the Defeat Bosses! button will not appear.) These buttons are large circles, colored yellow, green, and blue respectively. Inside the circles are various items representing each mode, and these are picked randomly.

The Collect Treasure! button shows 3 main items, along with 3 individual nuggets around these items. The item in the top of the button is either a Sunseed Berry or a Golden Sunseed. The item in the lower left is eiher an Insect Condo or a pile of Nuggets. The item in the lower right is either a Cupid's Grenade or a Golden Grenade. All items rotate rapidly.

The Battle Enemies! button shows 3 animated enemies in a triangle, with the enemies chosen from specific arrangements, which are:
 * A Bulborb, Yellow Spectralids, and Dwarf Bulborb
 * A Yellow Wollywog, Yellow Spectralids, and Dwarf Bulborb
 * A Whiptongue Bulborb, White Spectralids, and Male Sheargrub
 * A Swooping Snitchbug, Red Spectralids, and Female Sheargrub

The Defeat Bosses! button shows a single animated image of the latest boss the player has defeated in Story Mode. If the player has completed the game, this will always be the Plasm Wraith.

Stage selection screen
This menu allows the player to select a stage to play on. The content of the menu is different depending on the type of mission selected in the previous menu, but the functionality is still the same. All the stages are shown as rounded squares in a grid.

In Pikmin 3
There are 15 squares in the Collect Treasure! and Battle Enemies! menus, arranged in a rectangle 5 squares wide by 3 squares high. missions that are yet to be unlocked or bought still appear, but cannot be selected, and before updates adding DLC were released, only the 5 or 10 stages in Collect Treasure! and Battle Enemies! currently available were shown. After getting any medal on stages 1-5, stages 6-10 are unlocked, and after getting any medal on all 10 stages, stages 11-15 are unlocked. The top left corner of each square displays the highest medal the player has received in both solo and co-op for each stage. In the Defeat Bosses! menu, since there are only 6 stages, they are arranged in a single row, and the medal icons also appear. Initially, 5 boxes are shown, and as the player defeats each boss for the first time, the mission for the boss will become selectable. Upon defeating the final boss, the 6th box will be added.

In Pikmin 3 Deluxe
There are multiple differences from the Wii U version. The game includes all of the previously released DLC from the Wii U version. The present-like icon no longer appears on a DLC course after acquiring it, as does the prompt to purchase it when not done so alredy, they need to be unlocked in this version, a lock-like icon appears instead. Unlike the original Wii U version, only 10 stages in Collect Treasure! and Battle Enemies! are shown initially, gradually increasing in size the more stages that are unlocked. The Collect Treasure! and Battle Enemies! modes have a tweaked unlock progression, because of the above change, all the unlockables in said modes from the Wii U version available from the start, and completing one stage, regardless of medals, unlocks 5 stages from the first and second Wii U DLC pack, depending on which mode the player plays in, Unless the demo has been completed, which unlocked stages 6-10. Once all of those are beaten, stages from the third DLC pack from the Wii U version are unlocked. It is no longer possible to be unable to play Defeat Bosses! early on in the game, as fully playing it does not require fighting every boss. The Nintendo eShop button at the top right comer was removed, along with the back button on the botom right and the Leaderboards. A new feture has been added, which allows a player to see a Pikmin's abilities, all of which are reused from the Pikmin tutorial text. Additionally, a new, large rectangular box appears below the level boxes, containing the mission name and the time limit for the currently highlighted stage. The corner buttons from the previous menu are still present in this menu, along with the title, which says the name of the mission type, and a subtitle which says "Select a stage."

Mission information screen
Upon selecting a mission, this screen will appear. It is unique for each mission, but contains the same general layout for each one. On the left side will be the stage name, a video montage of scenes from the stage, and icons for the highest medal the player has received in solo and co-op. The right side contains a table with the stage's number, its time limit, the types of Pikmin and Candypop Buds available, and the exact high score in solo and co-op. This high score reads "0" if the stage was never beaten, except in the European version of the Wii U release of Pikmin 3, where it reads "Empty".

If the player enters a mission that features a type of Pikmin they have not yet seen in Story Mode, a brief dialog will show up explaining how that Pikmin type works. This dialog counts as an introduction, so it will not show up for this Pikmin type again.

Trivia

 * In Pikmin 3, If the button to switch between 1-player and 2-player is selected while the game is in GamePad-only mode, a popup will appear saying "Using TV. Please switch on the TV.", with the options "Cancel" and "OK". Selecting "OK" will take the game out of GamePad-only mode and then show the controller selection menu. When the game is set to 2-player mode, switching to GamePad-only mode is not possible.
 * In the background of the stage selection screen and the mission information screen are translucent images of the same fruits or enemies that appear in the buttons of the mission type selection screen.