see deal Pikmin 3 - Nintendo Wii U $59.99 on Gamestop

It's been nearly eight years since Pikmin 2 came out for the GameCube. Five years since Shigeru Miyamoto teased a sequel. Four years since the sequel was actually confirmed and one year since he revealed that the project had shifted from Wii to Wii U at E3 2011. Altogether, that's one considerable stretch of time that we've been sitting around and waiting for Pikmin 3

The Species Expands

A Choice of Control

Pikmin 3 + NFC

Multiplayer

Bringing the Planet to Life

Nintendo hasn't offered the public much advance information on first-party games coming to Wii U, but in the last days before E3 2012, let's work with what we know and try to predict what Captain Olimar's next adventure might contain.The safest bet for what Pikmin 3 will bring to the table is an expansion of the Pikmin plant soldier species. It's basically a given – the first Pikmin introduced us to the primary color trio of Red, Blue and Yellow characters, then Pikmin 2 brought us the first appearance of the White and Purple varieties. So you've got to think that the third game will open up the crayon box one more time and pick at least a couple more hues for new off-shoots of this growing breed.Let's see some Orange Pikmin that are faster runners, making them more efficient at harvesting resources. Or Brown Pikmin that can burrow into the dirt and attack foes from underneath. Or Green Pikmin! These little guys are based on plants, and there's no Green variety yet? They could be a healer class that gives a supportive health boost to other Pikmin within a certain proximity (since these guys all die so quickly and easily.)Again, this is the safest bet – if Nintendo has come up with any new gameplay mechanics whatsoever in the last eight years, you can be assured that new Pikmin colors will be assigned to use them.The only problem with packing in even more types of Pikmin is that it becomes tougher to keep them all organized. Nintendo has a great opportunity to address this issue by including support for the stylus and the Wii U controller's new touch screen.Scribbling circles around groups of Pikmin on the display in your hands could help select and sort your squads quickly, even in the middle of hectic battles with hungry Bulborbs. The buttons on either side of the tablet could then be mapped with the same scheme used back on the GameCube. For variety's sake, Nintendo could also give us the choice to use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk control scheme from New Play Control! Pikmin and next month's Nintendo Selects: Pikmin 2.There may very well be more little soldiers to keep up with than ever before, but with thoughtful controls we should be able to manage them better than ever.Speaking of the Wii U tablet, there's another of its features that seems like a perfect fit for the Pikmin franchise – the built-in NFC capability. If you've played Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure or watched Ubisoft's concept trailer for Rayman Legends, you'll know where we're going next – using physical Pikmin figurines to summon fresh soldiers on demand.Nintendo could package a small statuette of each color of Pikmin with the game – or sell them separately in stores. When you find yourself stuck 12 levels deep inside a dungeon with a seriously depleted number of minions you could set a statue on top of the controller and see little seeds fall from the sky on the TV screen, ready to be plucked up and added to your army as soon as they land in the soil. Using such divine assistance would need to be balanced somehow – endless usages would break the game's balance – but it could be a nifty new part of the Pikmin experience.And hey, when you weren't playing the game, those same cute statues could adorn your desk.Nintendo's Wii U will have to come out of the gates with a full, impressive suite of online multiplayer capabilities if it wants to catch up to what Sony and Microsoft have already offered for years. So we'd put good money on the idea the Pikmin 3 will expand the series' multiplayer. Pikmin 2, if you recall, got the ball rolling with its inclusion of both competitive and cooperative two-player modes – you and a friend could battle each other as Olimar and Louie, each with his own Pikmin force, or you could work together to complete cave-exploring challenges.Pikmin 3 could broaden both types of multiplayer. On the competitive side of things, the ability to connect with distant opponents through Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection could give rise to a new RTS battling audience for the company. (Pikmin isn't exactly Starcraft, but it could definitely establish its own niche.) And the possibilities for Olimar/Louie co-op lead us back to the unique tablet controller again – sharing real estate on the TV via split-screen could be a thing of the past if one player got the big display while the other went to work on the handheld touch screen.Last on our list is the game's visuals. Nintendo is under a lot of pressure to prove themselves with Wii U graphically. While last year's handful of video-loop tech demos started to open our eyes to what the company can craft in true HD, it'll be the burden of major titles like Pikmin 3 to present a living, breathing, active game world that will make us feel absolutely anxious to explore.The company could continue to push for more realism – rendering our Earth as seen from Olimar's miniature eyes with even more detail than before. But Pikmin 3 might also be the time to take the series in a slightly different, potentially more impressive direction. Have you seen the classic Pikmin promotional art, where the characters are clay models? That kind of texture and detail in the individual troops could be extraordinary when 100 of them are swarming the screen at once.And Nintendo is welcome to increase the number of simultaneous on-screen Pikmin beyond the 100 mark, too. 200, 500 or even 1,000 plant warriors marching at once could be truly jaw-dropping.

Those five predictions encompass most of what we can imagine for Wii U's Pikmin 3. But Nintendo's imagination – eight years since the last sequel shipped and at least four years since serious development began on this new installment – will likely eclipse the scope of our own. We can't wait to see what the game will actually be like. Luckily, we won't have to much longer. Pikmin 3 will certainly be one of Nintendo's most prominent titles at this year's E3, beginning in just one week.

Image credit to The Video Game Memorabilia Museum for the photograph of the little Blue Pikmin figurines.