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Retail Radar: Pikmin sprouting on 3DS

UK retailer Zavvi now accepting preorders for a handheld version of Nintendo's garden-set real-time strategy series.

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At the 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Shigeru Miyamoto told a room full of press that Nintendo was working on a new installment of Pikmin. While the assumption at the time was that such a project would be in development for the Wii, a retailer listing today suggests the franchise is heading to the 3DS instead.

Olimar may have a return trip to Earth planned.
Olimar may have a return trip to Earth planned.

UK retailer Zavvi has a product page up on its website for Pikmin on the 3DS. Unfortunately, there's very little substance to the listing itself. There's no product description or box art, and the March 18 release date assigned to it is questionable, considering that the system itself won't arrive in the UK until March 25. The date is especially unlikely given that Nintendo today held press events in Amsterdam and New York to reveal its launch plans but didn't even include a mention of Pikmin in its launch window lineups.

[UPDATE]: Nintendo responded to GameSpot's request for comment, saying, "We have nothing to announce at this time."

Originally released in 2001 as a GameCube exclusive, Pikmin is a console-friendly take on real-time strategy games featuring a stranded alien enlisting the local flora to comb a garden environment for various pieces of his crashed ship. The game saw a sequel in 2004, and both installments wound up being included in Nintendo's New Play Control line of GameCube games redesigned for the Wii's motion-sensing controller. However, the New Play Control version of Pikmin 2 has yet to be released in North America.

For more on the series, check out GameSpot's reviews of Pikmin and Pikmin 2.

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