The Pikmin series is like a downward slope to me. The very first game is such a unique thing, and no other game afterwards tries to recapture the feeling in either the story or explorable world. Pikmin 1 is a desolate lonely game that keeps you on edge for the entirety of its runtime. There were times where I rushed through the first half of this game just so I could have time to relax and explore the Distant Spring. By doing that I was rewarded with an optional boss encounter. The creatures are great. The music is great. The gameplay is simple but endlessly replayable. No other game does it better.

The secret behind Pikmin’s success was not that it somehow outclassed classic real-time strategy franchises, but rather that it was never competing with them to begin with. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, he came up with the idea for Pikmin one day when he observed a group of ants carrying leaves together into their nest. Miyamoto then imagined a game focused on cooperation rather than competition; he asked, “Why can’t everyone just move together in the same direction, carrying things as a team?” Nintendo EAD’s design philosophy went along with this line of reasoning, melding design mechanics from different genres to create an entirely new yet familiar experience. As a result, instead of competing against other players in Pikmin akin to classic RTS games, Pikmin forces players to explore and compete with the very environment itself by introducing puzzle-exploration and survival mechanics. It made sense in the end; after all, real-time strategy is concerned with minimizing time spent to get a competitive edge over opponents, and what better way to translate this than to force players to master their understanding over the terrain itself, managing and optimizing the one resource which governs them all?

Perhaps Nintendo’s greatest challenge was figuring out how to translate a genre considered by many to be niche and technical to an intuitive yet layered game, and even more so, translating classic actions from a mouse and keyboard allowing for such complexity to a suite of simplified controls using a gamepad. Coming from the other side as someone who played Starcraft as a kid and didn’t get into Pikmin until recently however, I’m surprised at how well EAD’s tackled this endeavor. Classic RTS games focus upon base-building and resource gathering through the micromanagement of units. Pikmin’s take upon this is to introduce a dichotomy between the player character Captain Olimar, who is incapable of doing anything by himself but can issue commands to the units only he can create by plucking out of the soil, and the Pikmin, who are essentially brainless but represent the units that must do everything. The player as Olimar must be present to figure out exactly how to best traverse and exploit the environment around him (replacing the base-building with management/prioritization puzzles) while the Pikmin provide bodies to construct, move, and attack the world around them. However, the Pikmin’s AI is fairly limited and as a result, Pikmin will sit around helplessly once they finish their actions and often get distracted by nearby objects while moving around, which is where the micromanagement kicks in. Therefore, the player has to decide how to best build up their supply of Pikmin to allocate tasks to surmount bottlenecks while exploring and opening the world, all while working against the limited thirty-day timer throughout the game’s five areas.

A part of me expected to really struggle with the gamepad while playing Pikmin, but the available actions on offer allow for a surprising degree of control despite the simplification. For instance, consider Olimar’s whistle; as a substitute for dragging and clicking to select units on PC, the whistle on the GameCube lets Olimar quickly rally groups of clustered units. Holding down B for longer allows the player to increase the size of the whistle’s AOE, which allows the player to better control and target how many Pikmin to rally in any cluster (hence, the analog of clicking and dragging to select boxes of units on mouse and keyboard). The Swarm command is another interesting translation. The obvious use is to allow Olimar to quickly move nearby Pikmin by directing them with the C-stick versus needing to aim and throw them by positioning and rotating Olimar himself. However, because it can be used to shift the position of Pikmin with respect to Olimar, it can also be used to swap the Pikmin on-deck for throwing (since Olimar will always throw the Pikmin closest to him) without needing to dismiss and re-rally separated Pikmin colors, and most importantly, it allows you to directly control the group of Pikmin following Olimar while moving Olimar himself. This second application allows the player to kite the Pikmin around telegraphed enemy attacks, and properly funnel them so the Pikmin aren’t getting as easily stuck behind walls or falling off ledges/bridges into hazards. That said, noticeable control limitations do exist. Olimar cannot pivot to move the reticle without changing his position with respect to the Pikmin around him, which can make aiming in place annoying if the Pikmin types you need to throw aren’t close enough to be moved next to Olimar with Swarm. Additionally, there is no way for Olimar to simultaneously and directly control multiple separated groups of Pikmin, which does make allocating tasks a bit slower. However, given that the tasks themselves usually don’t necessitate more than one Pikmin type at a time, this limitation is understandable, especially since the sequels would tackle this challenge with more expansive controls and multiple playable characters on the field.

Pikmin’s base model as a result is a fantastic translation of an abstract design philosophy, but I can’t help but wonder if the original could have been pushed further. Don’t misunderstand me: I absolutely take pride in mastering a game by learning all about its inner workings and pushing its mechanics to the limits simply by following a few intuitive genre principles. As such, I wish that the game was a bit harder in order to really force me to squeeze every bit of time from the game’s solid premise. For example, combat is often optional in Pikmin given how many full-grown Bulborbs are found sleeping, but given that most enemies don’t respawn within the next day after killing them and I can bring their carcasses back to base to more than replenish my Pikmin supply, combat is almost always in my favor, especially since certain enemies will spawn more mobs if they aren’t defeated. If circumstances existed where it would be unfavorable to engage (such as losing a significant number of Pikmin every time, or having so little time left that engaging would waste time), then I feel that this would add an additional layer of decision-making of deciding when to sneak past sleeping Bulborbs rather than just wiping out as many foes as I could as soon as possible. In a similar sense, I felt that certain design elements such as the Candypop Buds for switching Pikmin colors were a bit underutilized; outside of one environmental puzzle, I never had to use the Candypop Buds, mainly because I had so many remaining Pikmin and time to never justify their usage. I’ll concede here that Pikmin’s one-day Challenge Mode does at least provide a score attack sandbox where I’m forced to take my Pikmin stock and remaining time into higher consideration, but it’s missing the connectivity of the main story mode where my earlier actions would greatly affect how I planned later days in a run, particularly in making judgement calls on which days to spend at each site and which days I dedicate towards building up my Pikmin numbers versus hauling in ship parts. Regardless, I found myself completing the main game with all parts in just twenty days on my first run with minimal resets, and I’d love to try a harder difficulty mode with a stricter time limit and tougher Pikmin margins to really force me to better conserve my working force and dedicate more time to restocking my supply.

Gripes aside, I’m glad that my friends finally convinced me to try out Pikmin, not just to better appreciate RTS games as a whole but to also gain an appreciation of how different genre mechanics can work in tandem to intuitively convey concepts without spelling everything out to the player. It’s classic Nintendo at their core, and while I had my reservations coming in as a fan of older RTS franchises, they’ve managed to convince me once again that the best hook is not simply offering something that’s visibly better, but rather offering something that’s visibly different. I still think that there’s improvement to be had, but given how much I’ve enjoyed the first game, I can’t wait to see what they have to offer from iterating upon their memorable beginnings.

i never made it to the end as a kid. past that, i don't think i even collected more than one treasure in the second zone. i mean i was in a perpetual cycle of days 1-3, heartbroken at the sight/sound of one of my little friends dying and losing their soul to the atmosphere. it was just so much easier to play pokemon/mario where i didn't feel guilty when my videogame friends died. as an adult, the first pikmin game was a fun and quick game that was a perfect slice of game for me. the moment i started to feel like i had gathered everything that this game wanted to tell, it was just about over.

as a child, any boss that wasn't a bulborb was monstrous. but, replaying this later in my adult years, i LOVED discovering each new boss and seeing how kooky they were. i also felt so smart when I figured out how to solve a puzzle/get a bunch done in a day/beat a weird looking boss! siding with all the pikmin lovers that the ost and charm are here. haven't played other games in the series yet but super excited to jump in!

The only Pikmin game I've played prior to this was 3 on the Wiiu and I remember having a lot of fun with it. It was interesting to see where it all originated from. The graphics are a bit outdated but it doesn't look bad, I actually quite appreciate the old aesthetic and the controls seem modern, overall the game aged well for being over 20 years old.

Although the Pikmin don't speak, the game does a wonderful job of humanizing them, I felt horrible whenever a single one would die and would try my best to save as many as I can. The game like 3, is super creative, I can't imagine thinking of a game where a petit fella crash lands with his ship parts scattered and in order to get them back, you form an alliance with an army of little flower people which you then throw at enemies who's corpses are then brought back to their onion bulb ship in order to multiply, wow. The Japanese have done it once again.

The game doesn't hold your hand at all which I like. There were enemies like the final boss or the floating frogs who would wipe out a third of your Pikmin in one attack, I can't imagine doing a run where I lose zero of them but I know it can be done. Normally I am not a fan of in game timers but the 30 days and general day cycle is very generous, I believe I found all 30 parts in 17 days. One small flaw is that the puzzles involving Pikmin were quite simple, there wasn't much strategy needed for any of them which is something I hope to see more of when I play the second and fourth one.

After this experience I look forward to playing the rest of them.

I’m SHOCKED and AMAZED that nearly everything that made Pikmin 3 so good was already implemented in the first game! I was really expecting a game that was janky and hard to work with, but no! It has aged phenomenally well!

That’s not to say it’s easy, good grief, it’s nightmarishly hard! I can’t imagine playing this game as a kid because I NEVER would have beaten it within the 30 day time limit. Hell, I almost didn’t this time! (And don’t get me started on that final boss that took me well over an hour to beat and ate all of my Pikmin) I loved the challenge though, this was a tremendously fun game! That makes two in a row now! Pikmin 2 is next!