A group of dedicated Pikmin fans have managed to reconstruct some of Pikmin 3's cut content. It follows a series of passionate moves the fandom has made in recent months, including a grassroots advertising push for Pikmin 4.
Pikmin 3 is widely considered the best in the growing franchise, having been hailed for its visuals, level design, the new Pikmin types introduced, and the evolved gameplay style, although some criticism has been directed at its abrupt conclusion and the lack of the iconic caves from the previous two entries. Still, while it hasn't stopped the community from anticipating its upcoming sequel, it also hasn't stopped them from reminiscing about Pikmin 3 (as well as its Deluxe port) in the weeks leading up to Pikmin 4's release.
It's not uncommon for video games, no matter how complete or critically acclaimed, to have some scrapped content, including other Pikmin games. In Pikmin 3's case, in the original E3 2012 announcement footage, there was a location originally intended to be the sixth main stage in the game and the true finale. It features a group of Captains and Pikmin traveling along a river and throwing each other to destroy a pillar obstacle in order to get across. Neither setpiece was present in the official game, but as of very recently, a group of fans has managed to recreate the area, which has been shown off in a new YouTube documentary uploaded by VantageEmblem.
In the over sixty-minute video, it's explained that this recreation took several months to perfect, and there wasn't too much unearthed data to work with. Besides the original reveal footage from E3 2012, the fans could only find some unused path maps and a few scrapped enemy sprites from Pikmin 3 Deluxe. Still, the finished recreation shown off in the video is worthy of praise. The narrator speculates that the level might have been worked on early in development, before all the game mechanics had been sorted out, and was thus scrapped due to it not having something to suit every major mechanic.
Regardless of the true intentions of the developers, it's always a shame to discover that one's favorite game has some content that didn't make it into the final release. Fortunately, given the increased transparency on game developers' part in recent years, it is often a lot easier to learn why such content was cut, and thanks to the greatly expanded modding community, fans are able to more easily recreate such concepts should the developers decide not to, much like they did here.
Pikmin 3 Deluxe is available for Nintendo Switch.