Back in the early days of the Wii, Nintendo re-released a bunch of Gamecube games with “new” (read: tacked on) motion controls in order to quickly capitalize on the success of their new system. I didn’t mind; after all, the Gamecube had some great games that a lot of people missed out on because of the relative commercial unpopularity of the tiny purple box. One of these Wii ports was the original Pikmin, which was one of the few games to actually work better with the Wii-mote than it did with a GCN controller. Fans expected that a port of Pikmin 2 would come soon after and… well, it did. Except for us Americans.
I’m not sure why Nintendo of America never brought over the Pikmin 2 port over to American shores — perhaps previous Gamecube ports didn’t sell well enough to justify it, or, maybe NoA was just being dumb (see also: the amount of time it took them to send Xenoblade our way). While Japan and Europe got the Wii version of Pikmin 2 relatively soon after the release of the original game, Americans had to track down the original GCN version if they wanted more Pikmin. The demand was so high that for a few years, a complete copy of Pikmin 2 was going for substantially more than it’s original price of $50 on eBay.
Thankfully (or regretfully, if you’re trying to sell a copy on eBay right now,) Nintendo World Report is saying that the long awaited Wii port is finally making it’s way to American shores this June, 3 years after it was released in Europe and Japan. The news apparently comes from leaked scans of the latest issue of Nintendo Power.
The story of Pikmin 2 is just one of the many instances of core gamer neglect that Nintendo of America has been guilty of over the past few years, but regardless, if you’ve never played Pikmin 2 (and you should, it’s much, much better than the original) then this seems like a good opportunity to familiarize yourself with Captain Olimar and crew before Pikmin 3 is unveiled for the WiiU at this year’s upcoming E3.
P.S. Since Nintendo of America is suddenly releasing all the games that neglected fans have been begging for, would it really hurt if they gave us Pandora’s Tower while they’re at it?
