Pikmin: Wide World/Development

Pikmin: Wide World has seen many changes during development, as it is a very expansive and detailed Pikmin game concept. This article exists to document most of the involved changes.

Earliest conception
The very idea of Pikmin: Wide World, although not named at the time, was conceived in 2017. The plot of the fangame, as well as practically all of its content, was nonexistent. Only a list of its areas existed, alongside a few fan-made enemy concepts that were unrelated to the game at the time. Pikmin: Wide World was only meaningfully expanded upon in 2020 when its article was created on Pikmin Fanon. Initially, all of its content was presented on a single page, and so its article was by far the largest article on the wiki for a time, reaching close to ten thousand bytes in size until its content was split into other pages. Although the game's plot and contents changed as time went on and some details of both have changed, the differences are not worth mentioning specifically beyond that some details were changed, added, or removed, and many location names, and enemy names, both literal and scientific, and families were altered.

Pikmin: Wide World was originally going to be an open-world game that allowed players to explore a vast, cohesive landscape with smooth transitions between areas, being able to traverse much of PNF-404 in a single in-game day. Additionally, immediately from its conception, Pikmin: Wide World was going to include almost all of the content from, , , and , and even content from , including enemies, vegetation, gameplay mechanics, features, and more. Pikmin: Wide World was also to expand upon already-existing features and mechanics as well as introduce new ones. Captain Olimar and Shacho, as well as Louie, who was to be found on PNF-404 at some point, were the only three playable characters at the time. Multiple landing sites existed per area, but neighboring areas could be navigated to and explored because of the game's open-world nature. The game featured eight areas compared to the six areas present in the final game. The following list contains details of any changes during development if any were made:
 * Balmy Highlands remarkably didn't change much in concept or at all in name since the beginning, and was always the first area.
 * Arid Oasis was originally going to be a hot, dry desert instead of a coastal area. These changes were made to increase the area's visual appeal and to better suit the tropical wildlife living there.
 * Frigid Tundra originally didn't feature a subterranean section.
 * Humid Tropics was originally the game's tropical, coastal area until Arid Oasis later took its place.
 * Ancient Metalworks originally had an entirely separate area under it.
 * Colossal Hollow existence was heavily inspired by . Although similarities to it still exist, they are majorly overshadowed by differences, although both are still subterranean areas. It was also one of two areas to have a name change later in development, having been named Mycelial Sepulcher prior.
 * Subterranean Complex was a sprawling, subterranean industrial area situated under Ancient Metalworks and named after . It was eventually removed in favor of having conventional caves in Ancient Metalworks.
 * The Endless Sea was a massive ocean surrounding the entirety of the playable area, to serve as a boundary. Many creatures could be found on its sandy shores and in its clear blue waters, and a steep dropoff combined with an invisible barrier prevented the player from exploring too far out into the water. Before that, there were massive swarms of aquatic wildlife that would emerge from the depths and ferociously devour any leaders and Pikmin that dared explore too far out. The earliest concepts involved a massive, shadowy fish devouring entire armies of Pikmin that didn't keep close to the shallows, which was reused for the game's sequel. When the concept of Pikmin: Wide World being an open-world game was scrapped, this area later became Sprawling Swamp, which was the second of the two areas to be renamed later in development.

As mentioned above, a small list of enemies also existed. Although completely unrelated to Pikmin: Wide World at the time, the fangame did ultimately feature a few enemies and one boss from that list, which are: the Gilded Seedbagger, Skitterflake, Honeypot Skeeterskate, Hopping Clamclamp, and Tombcarver Mawdad.

Notable changes
Many changes to the game's assets were made, and they are all listed here, grouped by similarities but in no particular order:
 * Pikmin: Wide World was originally for the, rather than the.
 * The debt was originally, but was changed over time, and is now.
 * One notably ridiculous detail that was changed about Pikmin: Wide World story was that Olimar somehow managed to build the Dolphin Lander during his rather short time on Hocotate before he had to return to PNF-404. This was later changed so that Olimar's son, Sagittarius, engineered it in his father's absence and everyone in the family helped him complete it by the time Olimar returned.
 * The different difficulties didn't always exist.
 * There were plans to create a defined, complicated list of treasures in Pikmin: Wide World, although it never came to be in favor of just having generic, nondescript treasures. They all have names, but they are not mentioned anywhere on Pikmin Fanon. Treasures are much like they were in Pikmin 2, although many variants of treasures were included.
 * Battle Mode was originally named Two-Player Battle, then Multiplayer Battle, before finally being named Battle Mode. As only Olimar, Shacho, and Louie were the only playable characters at the time, two players could only choose two of the three leaders to play as during a match. As the game expanded, namely with the addition of Marie, four players could play together, each playing as a different leader.
 * Challenge Mode has perhaps the most changes of any game mode. Only twelve stages were available initially, and six more were unlocked when all previous stages were completed with at least a white flower or silver medal. Six more stages were unlocked afterward when the previous eighteen stages were completed with at least a pink flower or gold medal, and the final six were unlocked by getting at least a pink flower or platinum medal on every previous stage. There used to be condensed "trial" stages based on the six existing areas in story mode, one trial for each area. Boss fights used to be in their own section, separate from the standard stages; additionally, clearing a Battle Bosses! stage with a purple flower or platinum medal would unlock the remixed variant of a given boss fight in a column to the right of the original fights. Platinum benchmark medals were removed due to their redundancy.
 * Sparklium dust that was contained within enemies originally had to be extracted from their corpses, which meant that both pokos and sparklium would be gained from bringing a body to the Dolphin Lander. This was changed so defeated enemies yielded raw sparklium dust outright, which could be collected using Sparklium Jars.
 * Random number generation, or RNG, was planned to affect the sizes of enemies and fruits, in turn affecting how much they weighed and how much rewards they yielded when collected. Smaller remains and fruits yielded fewer rewards than larger ones.
 * Olimar's capture by the Plasm Wraith in Ancient Metalworks was originally triggered by defeating the Studded Greater Beeb, when it was still above ground, rather than the Robust Bulbot. The Greater Studded Beeb later became the boss of Robot Workshop, where it is fought alongside the Bladed Greater Beeb on its final sublevel.
 * Marie was created so that four leaders existed, and so there was at least one playable female character. Moreover, she was originally intended to be found on the surface rather than in Dim Greenhouse, although it was always planned for her to be trapped in a web.
 * Captain Hunnigan was created alongside other related game elements to expand upon Marie's backstory of how she ended up stranded on PNF-404.
 * The Hocotate ship was originally going to be the ship used by Olimar and Shacho to reach PNF-404 before the Dolphin Lander took its role. The Hocotate ship was then renamed the Freight Voyager and became a mentioned character. It would have retained its golden hull, as seen by repaying the debt in Pikmin 2, and its pompous and quirky personality. Pikmin: Wide World originally explained that, while in Pikmin 3 the Freight Voyager was seen wrecked in the Quaggled Mireclops's arena, the two ships are not the same, as the Freight Voyager seen in Pikmin 3 is instead "the spare one Shacho trusted the two employees would not destroy".
 * , introduced in, is considered only partially canonical to Pikmin: Wide World. Specifically, only Olimar's Assignment is, while Olimar's Comeback is not. After the staff credits of Pikmin 3 and its rerelease, a flaming object is shown plummeting from the sky, and the Pikmin run in the direction of its impact site to investigate. This flaming object, canonically to Pikmin 3 Deluxe, is the pod Olimar and Louie use to reach PNF-404 to collect the pieces of the Hocotate ship that were scattered around the planet. Canonically to Pikmin: Wide World, the flaming object is instead the S.S. Dreamstride entering PNF-404's atmosphere.
 * Golden fruits were to appear in almost every game mode as golden variants of fruits that functioned as treasures rather than fruits. Since then, they appeared only in Bottomless Abyss. Golden Grenades are the only one of the golden fruits to appear elsewhere, exclusively in Battle Mode.
 * Data fragments were upgrades that unlocked a new area the day after they were collected. They were micro SD cards that were spat out by the major boss of an area upon its defeat. Because Balmy Highlands was the starting area, it lacked a respective data fragment. Data fragments were scrapped in favor of a particular leader reflecting on themself or their actions while they gaze out a window of the Dolphin Lander as it orbits PNF-404 at night, eventually seeing a potential new area to land in the following day. In order, the data fragments and their purpose were:
 * Dirty Data Fragment: unlocked access to Arid Oasis.
 * Grit-Infested Data Fragment: unlocked access to Frigid Tundra.
 * Preserved Data Fragment: unlocked access to Ancient Metalworks.
 * Rusted Data Fragment: unlocked access to Mycelial Sepulcher (Colossal Hollow's former name).
 * Weathered Data Fragment: unlocked access to Endless Sea (Sprawling Swamp's former name).
 * Weather is a major gameplay element in Pikmin: Wide World. It was thought that Arid Oasis would be affected by sandstorms instead of rain, but the idea was eventually decided against as the location was based around a beach, not an actual desert, and as such, it should have occasional rain.
 * Every boss used to have a unique introduction cutscene planned for it. However, this changed to just the major bosses of areas and caves having an introduction cutscene, which was then changed again so only the game's most important bosses and secret bosses had one. This was later changed once more to include first encounters with bosses on the final sublevels of caves.
 * Purple Pikmin and White Pikmin originally didn't have their respective Onions and were stored in the Dolphin Lander's PikHold. Both Onions have to be saved from peril, and obtaining them was optional but well worth the effort. Since then, both Onions are discovered as the story progresses.
 * Red Pikmin were originally to be discovered aboveground in Frigid Tundra. This was changed so that they were discovered in Snowy Recess and changed again finally to Lonely Quarry. Nonetheless, it's always been planned that Red Pikmin were found in Frigid Tundra in one way or another.
 * Yellow Bulbmin were originally to appear in Balmy Highlands as the parasitic Pikmin counterpart of the Yellow Bulborb, but their inclusion was accidentally scrapped at an unknown point in time. Adult and juvenile Yellow Bulbmin would have behaved identically to Red Bulbmin, but the adults would have periodically slept, occasionally stirring much like ordinary Yellow Bulborbs do, and the juveniles would have characteristically uncomfortably wandered about a group they were part of.
 * All Parasitic Pikmin hosts used to be able to carry objects as easily as other Pikmin. This was changed as the body structure of many hosts wouldn't make them carry or drag objects very practical. However, all was not lost, as some can still move objects where they need to.
 * Black nectar originally was not present. When it was included, it was originally a harmful substance that slowed leaders that walked through it and reduced the maturity stages of Pikmin that drank it. Its function was eventually changed dramatically in that it could be used like a spray that deterred most enemies and served as an effective fungicide that was instantly lethal to ordinary mushrooms and sporovids alike. An additional purpose of black nectar is that it is the only way to purify Mushroom Pikmin and revert them to their normal forms.
 * Ultra-bitter spray originally had the same functionality as it did in Pikmin 2, where it was used to petrify enemies. However, ultra-bitter spray could also be used on enemies, leaders, and even Pikmin, and only petrified the portion of them that was hit by the spray, rather than the entire being. Eventually, ultra-bitter spray was changed so that most enemies would refuse to swallow Pikmin or chew leaders it was sprayed on, needing to be reapplied after being spat out, contacting liquid, or enough time had passed.
 * Ultra-toxic spray originally did not appear either, being added after some time in the game's development.
 * Burgeoning Spiderworts were originally the only spiderworts to appear, until Spiny Spiderworts and Sunset Spiderworts were introduced. They would have been able to grow any type of berry if not for the other two spiderworts.
 * The Toasty Breadbug and Giant Toasty Breadbug were originally going to appear but were eventually replaced with the Buttery Breadbug and Giant Buttery Breadbug.
 * The Ancient Bulblax was originally the final boss, as a callback to the final boss of Pikmin 1, a massive Emperor Bulblax. Canonically to Pikmin: Wide World, the Ancient Bulblax is that very same bulblax, and this is confirmed in Olimar's notes about the creature. Eventually, the Ancient Bulblax became a secret boss found in Balmy Highlands, its original location.
 * The Grimacing Cremblub replaced the Ancient Bulblax as the final boss. It was originally located in Balmy Highlands before it was moved to Destiny Cavern, the final cave. Its original location is referenced in its Challenge Mode stage remix, as it takes place in the Ancient Bulblax's arena in Balmy Highlands.
 * The Titan Dweevil originally had its four weapons, which were the, , , and , and each of the four weapons had a variety of appearances. This concept was scrapped in favor of the Titan Dweevil simply being able to utilize those hazards itself.
 * The Quaggled Mireclops originally was not going to appear. Its inclusion, even as a secret boss, was to truly feature every enemy appearing in the official Pikmin games at the time.
 * The last official enemy added to Pikmin: Wide World was the Glassed Wollywog, and the last fanon enemy added was the Incandescent Beeb.
 * The last enemies to be removed were the Frozen Goolix, Arctic Clamclamp, Swarming Burrow-nit Larva, Coral Meerslug, and Subterranean Whiskerpillar, all for redundancy. The Peacap Puffstalk was also removed for a time until it was readded.
 * Spiked pinecones, an obstacle appearing in Hey! Pikmin, were originally to appear until they were succeeded by sweetgum pods, which function similarly.

Gallery
The following are older designs for some of Pikmin: Wide World content. They are mostly enemies, except for Green Pikmin, but all of them are edited from material in the official games, mostly icons.