What are Pikmin 3 and Pikmin 3 Deluxe?

Pikmin 3 launched for the Wii U in July 2013, nearly a decade after Pikmin 2. Three explorers from the planet Koppai, Alph, Brittany, and Captain Charlie, crash on PNF-404 while hunting fruit to seed their starving world. The campaign runs on juice: every days harvest feeds the crew, so fruit is both treasure and timer, a gentler clock than Olimars oxygen, tuned by three captains dividing the map between them.

New Pikmin reshaped the puzzles. Rock Pikmin shatter crystals and armour, Winged Pikmin carry cargo over water and lift gates, and the returning types gained polish. The Wii U GamePad served as a map and command screen, an early second screen strategy experiment, and the games orchards and river valleys remain some of the most beautiful miniature nature Nintendo has ever rendered, all dew, bark, and late afternoon light.

The Wii U audience was small, so Pikmin 3 Deluxe on Switch in October 2020 became most players version. Deluxe added a side story with Olimar and Louie, co-op through the main campaign, difficulty options, the Piklopedia, and every piece of Wii U downloadable content. It outsold the original comfortably and set up Pikmin 4, proof that the series Switch timing mattered as much as its content.

For collectors the pair documents a rescue: the Wii U original, scarcer and tied to a short lived console, beside Deluxe, the mass edition. Japanese guides exist for both, the Wii U books documenting downloadable content that Deluxe folded in, and a complete Pikmin 3 shelf deliberately holds both, the overlooked first printing and the edition that saved it.