As widely adopted as Unreal Engine always has been among game developers throughout the industry, you very rarely see Nintendo’s first party titles being developed using the engine- though there are exceptions to every rule. And the exception to this one is rather bizarre.
Pikmin 4, as it turns out, has been built on Unreal Engine (though it’s unclear which version of the engine was used). The same has been confirmed via information included on the back of the game’s download cards, which have now become available at Japanese retail (spotted and shared by @Genki_JPN on Twitter).
Notably, this isn’t the first Nintendo title to have used Unreal Engine. The 2019 Nintendo Switch platformer Yoshi’s Crafted World was also built using Epic Games’ development toolset, though while that was developed by third party studio Good Feel, Pikmin 4 is a fully internally developed game.
Pikmin 4 is out on July 21 for the Nintendo Switch.