What is Hey! Pikmin?

Hey! Pikmin launched for the Nintendo 3DS in July 2017, developed by Arzest, and it translates Pikmin sideways. Olimar, crashed again, must gather thirty thousand Sparklium, the games fuel currency, from treasures across side scrolling stages. He walks and jetpacks at ground level himself this time, whistling Pikmin from the wild and throwing them with the touch screen to defeat creatures, haul objects, and open paths.

The translation is cleverer than it first looks. The Pikmin types keep their immunities and jobs, red for fire, yellow for electricity and high throws, blue for water, rock for smashing, winged for carrying Olimar across gaps, but the strategy becomes level design: which Pikmin you bring through a door, in what number, decides which treasures are reachable, and finishing a stage with every Pikmin alive feeds the Pikmin Park, a gentle reserve where spare Pikmin gather more Sparklium between missions.

It reviewed as a pleasant minor entry, and its place in the series is exactly that: a handheld footnote between Pikmin 3 and 4 that kept the characters alive on the 3DS, introduced younger players with a forgiving structure, and launched alongside a new Olimar amiibo, one of the nicer figures in the Pikmin range.

For collectors, Hey! Pikmin is the cheap completeness piece with a twist: late 3DS releases in the West had modest print runs, complete copies are drifting up, and the Japanese edition, Hey! Pikmin under the same name with Japanese box art, pairs with the amiibo for a tidy spin off shelf. It will never anchor a Pikmin collection, but a collection without it is missing the series only two dimensional chapter.