Happy Birthday, Shigeru Miyamoto. The creator of Mario, Zelda, Pikmin and many more games we love turned 61 today.

The first Pikmin 3 paid DLC mission pack will be available today for $1.99. A game update will also show the top global scores for each level in the game. Hooray for high scores!

Now playing

With Pikmin 3 releasing today, now's as good a time as any to catch up on the history and trivia behind this series—including its origins as a GameCube tech demo, its influence on Super Mario Galaxy, and the fact Nintendo crossbred a new flower variety (Bacopa Cabana) to promote it. [Did You Know Gaming?]

"The truth is we were doing prototype tests of Pikmin for the DS and 3DS, but it turned into unit management with only the touch pen, and no matter what it just didn't seem like Pikmin." Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto to 4Gamer, on their early plans to develop Pikmin 3 for handhelds instead of the Wii U. [via ONM]

Advertisement