Pikwin

Pikmin 3 has clearly been a title of great personal importance to Shigeru Miyamoto, a point highlighted by the recent Tokyo International Film Festival première of three short films that the legendary game designer has overseen. These animated shorts allowed Miyamoto-san to step away from games and work on a fresh project, though he's been keen to emphasize the similarities between game and animation work.

It's been common knowledge that these short films would be available in some from on the eShop, though the recent Nintendo Direct broadcasts have revealed that they're available now on the Wii U and 3DS eShop stores. Called Pikmin Short Movies HD and 3D on each system, the content is the same aside from the HD quality on Wii U and stereoscopic 3D on the 3DS. The package includes three short animations that amount to around 20 minutes in total, in addition to Shigeru Miyamoto's Flipnote Studio storyboards from the creation process; the collection has to be bought separately on Wii U or 3DS, costing $4.99 / £4.49 each. Available now, the official descriptions for the three short movies are below.

In "The Night Juicer", we see Captain Olimar preparing his favourite drink, in "Treasure in a Bottle" the Pikmin encounter a most peculiar treasure, and in the grand spectacle of "Occupational Hazards", we watch as the Pikmin deal with some very perilous working conditions on a building site.

In addition, a Pikmin 3 demo is now available on the Wii U eShop in Europe and North America, with save data transferable into the full game.

Are you tempted to pick up Pikmin Short Movies on Wii U or 3DS, or perhaps try the Pikmin 3 demo?