A friend said this is like gen 1 pokemon in how janky it gets.
And yeah, its REALLY janky, but in a very funny and charming way.
Start of a series I love, and even then its incredible and has aged very well.
If you think you can make it without pikmin dying.
Aha.
Ahaha.
Ahahahahahahahahahahaha.
I hope you enjoy your last moments of sanity.

(Review for the GameCube version, and thus the jank I complain about is probably something I voluntarily played with)

Pikmin is a game that's boring, until it's not. You go from thinking that the Pikmin are dumb and don't listen, the day cycle is pointless and just wastes time, and the world is some boring forest or whatever, to realizing that the Pikmin are the best minions in gaming, the day cycle is absolutely brilliant and allows for so much strategy on every playthough, and that the setting is genuinely stunning, and perfectly contrasts with the game's somewhat nihilistic tendencies. While there is some jank, being able to reset any day nearly eliminates it, and leaves behind one of the most replayable and relaxing experiences I've ever had.

9/10
Game #7 of 2024, January 24th

Trivia Time!

While you may know that Pikmin began as "Super Mario 128", a tech demo created to see how many AI-driven NPCs could run concurrently on the GameCube, you may not be aware that the change to 6 different colored tiny character models was a subsidized colorblindness test funded by the Japanese government.

Growing concerns of widespread colorblindness (and its close link to リグマー Disease) caused the Japanese Secretary of Health, Labour, and Welfare to reach out to Nintendo, requesting that colors such as Quant, Hoxozo, and Blorgle be added to a game in which telling colored characters apart would be crucial. Pikmin Director Shigefumi Hino devised the plan to include those three colors alongside the three hues which they are most often mistaken for: Red, Yellow, and Blue.

After much playtesting, it became apparent that over 95% of players only saw three colors of Pikmin, so rather than leaving the game unplayable for them, the total of individual roles of Pikmin was halved from 6 to 3, combining their abilities (fireproof Quant Pikmin and attack-buffed Red, for example). However, in accordance with the Japanese Cabinet's direction, each Pikmin rendered in-game would have a 50/50 chance of being Red or Quant, Yellow or Hoxozo, and Blue or Blorgle, respectively.

Are you able to tell Quant Pikmin from Red? Let us know if the comments below!

Stay tuned for more Trivia Time segments in the near future!

Watched @trihex play this for the first time and he was sucking ass (first time lol). So that made me want to fire up this Gamecube classic.

Coming back to this, the unique gameplay and world makes this a compelling package. Who knew that the man behind Mario could make a great RTS for beginners. As scary the survival aspect was, especially as a kid, it makes one be more co-dependent on and grateful for your pikmin army who WILL die somehow (mostly with the bosses). Better git gud or the pikmin ghost sfx will haunt you.

One of the most lovely nature-focused atmospheres in any game I've played. While the 30 day timer does stress me out, it made for very unique gameplay where I don't really know if there is anything like it in the series. I love the feeling of the "race to the finish" gameplay and it makes this game feel incredibly fast paced. The final trial, while short, was a pretty cool puzzle that felt like a good conclusion to the journey. My only gripe with the game is mainly the pikmin AI, it got INCREDIBLY frustrating at some points, especially during the forest navel. Most of the time though, the AI is at least functional enough. Anyways, I'm really glad I checked out this entry in the series and I can't wait to play 2 and 3!

Was in a Pikmin mood and decided to replay Pikmin 1, this game is so fun and replayable, trying to go faster and faster on replay is so appealing for a game like this. I think generally this game's just really well designed, the way the game incetavises multitasking without being TOO punishing, fun secret bosses that didn't really need to be there but are welcome. The story is really charming being told exclusivley through the daily jorunal logs is really fun and charms you to Olimar as a character which incentivises you to play faster. Of any Pikmin games it's why I think this is my favorite structure wise, it's so satisfying putting the ship together because you see that tangible progress. One thing I miss about this game compared to future installments is how fucking brutal bosses were, one bad move and you could lose like half your squad, I have some small grips with the Pikmin AI, they go off on their own a bit too much for my liking and it was VERY common for them to just get stuck on walls. But those are mostly just nitpicks to an otherwise really solid first entry.

Pikmin is a fascinating game. You have three different kinds of little guys, who act identically but can each do unique things, and with them you must collect items in large, open levels. This seems simple but it is extremely effective: thanks to the day/night cycle and your limited amount of days to win, you can never afford to waste any time, but you can also never afford to rush: even a single mistake can lose you dozens of Pikmin and a whole lot of progress. This is stressful, but it does end up doing a great job at getting you to feel a sense of urgency. Pikmin never actually asks too much of you, but it incessantly demands your full effort anyways. It's no surprise that the newest game makes a point to focus on the concept of "dandori", essentially the ability to effectively execute the tasks you're given: that need to play well, to minmax every day, to multitask, to play well, is etched into every single one of Pikmin's mechanics with a rare degree of effectiveness.

What really gets me to love Pikmin though is how well those mechanics mesh with the world and themes of the game. There's an underlying somberness to much of the experience: Olimar's logs are relatively light-hearted most of the time, but they're still the words of a man who understands he may end up dying in this odd world without ever seeing his family again, and at the same time he still has a lot of appreciation and interest in its mysteries. This sort of... uneasy awe is at the center of all of Pikmin's main locations; it's like a memory of a good vacation, or a semi-lucid dream, as much as you might want to, you understand you can never stay there. There's an inherent duality to the experience, both thematical and mechanical, and it leads to an ambiguous, ethereal feel.

I could go on longer- I could talk about the sense of a real, breathing ecosystem in each of the levels, about how the real main challenge of every level is the balancing act of prioritization of tasks and navigation of the level, rather than the tasks themselves in a vacuum, or about the fact that the Pikmin are just autonomous enough to make their very existence an interesting moral quandary, but maybe I've already looked too far into the Nintendo game where you chuck armies of cute little critters at goofy-looking enemies. Still, I do feel that it is one of the rare Nintendo games with a strong thematic core- Super Metroid, Majora's Mask, Metroid Prime, maybe a few others, and this one. It's no surprise that just as they all are among my favorites, so is Pikmin now, too.

Pikmin is a creative and charming GameCube title, if a little janky at times. Recovering new ship parts is satisfying, complete with multiple (3) endings, depending on how many the player recovers in the 30 in-game day time limit. Games with an overarching time limit are rarely done well, but Pikmin 1 is a rare successful example, as the deadline is lenient but does still feel present for first-time players.

Captain Olimar is surprisingly funny, his journal entries after each day adding a great deal of personality to the game, especially impressive considering he's the only character with dialogue at all. The Pikmin themselves do heavy lifting in more ways than one, little things like randomly tripping and humming together go a long way to make them feel alive (not to mention the annoyance of them stopping to slurp up any nectar they find.) The sheer despair of losing a large group of Pikmin at once is devastating, from accidentally walking them into the water, to a bomb rock gone wrong, a day in Pikmin can become a tragedy in an instant.

Emotional highs and lows aside, the real problems with Pikmin stem from a lack of volume. I beat this game in 2 days after it released on the switch, getting all 30 ship parts. This of course wasn't my first time playing, but it's hard to feel like this game isn't too short. There's five areas to explore, but the first is mostly a tutorial with just two ship parts, and the last is exclusive to the final boss with only one ship part. That leaves the remaining 27 and the bulk of the game spread across just three main locations. Only three types of Pikmin further drive home the point that the first entry here is a little lacking in content. This is completely understandable for the first game in a series trying out new gameplay concepts, but over 20 years later it's comparing increasingly unfavorable to later Pikmin entries on volume alone.

Still, I can't bring myself to give Pikmin a low rating. It's too much of a vibe, a pleasant and unique game. Enemy designs are memorable, Bulborbs are iconic and prime meme material. The environments feel alive, and the different types of Pikmin are fun to use to solve puzzles, which is ultimately what matters. Just wish there was a little more here.

3.0/5.0

Pikmin was a series I always ignored because I was confident I wouldn’t enjoy it for being RTS, a genre that never caught my interest. But one day I decided to give the first game a shot and got completely enamored by it. After playing and replaying all games in the franchise, I can safely say the first game is my favorite out of them all. There are three aspects that make it the best one for me: its replay value, the atmosphere, and the fact it has the best areas in the series. It was a wise idea starting with this one, because just like the situation Olimar found himself in, I was experiencing something completely new and unknown.

I felt completely immersed in its world, learning by trial and error how to interact with the elements in each area (because unlike the other games in the series, this one barely has any tutorials, you gotta learn most things by yourself), finding and observing creatures I had no idea how they behaved, getting used to the nuanced controls... It was a genuinely fascinating experience, heightened by the 30 day time limit that definitely pressured me on my first run, in which I didn’t even manage to get all ship parts in time!

Exploring each area was an adventure filled with wonder and anxiety. The tranquility of The Forest of Hope, the darkness of The Forest Navel, the deceiving serenity of The Distant Spring... No other Pikmin game offers this strong feeling of isolation, of being lost on an unknown planet without knowing what awaits you at every corner. Olimar’s reflexive diary entries drive that feeling even further, adding a surprising amount of depth to this character, to the point he’s one of the most well fleshed out Nintendo protagonists. The Distant Spring theme is the one that best represents the unique atmosphere of this game: serene, mysterious, and melancholic.

The game’s short length and its objective to collect the ship parts make it extremely replayable. It’s a nice challenge trying to get all parts in the fewest days possible to try and beat your old record, which is helped by how fun the areas are to explore on repeated playthroughs, creating strategies and finding out the most optimal routes. Nothing beats the adrenaline rush and satisfaction of carrying a ship part to the ship at the very last second during the end of day countdown.

I played it the first time in 2023 and I’ve beaten the game 3 times already and I’m sure I’ll try to beat it every year in a single sitting, like I do with Star Fox 64 and Super Mario 64, both of which are some of favorite games of all time, a title that Pikmin 1 is without a doubt worthy of now as well.