Coming to this after growing up on Pikmin 2 and 3 was harrowing - Pikmin AI is borderline nonfunctional, their capacity to take any initiative without your direct babysitting is obscene. Every enemy encounter is ruthless, something as mundane as a Bulburb can rinse 9-15 of your troops if you do anything less than completely dogpiling it. There's very specific quirks and annoyances that don't even feel like the result of its time, but intentional choices to make the world feel more hostile and out of your control.

But I liked it for that really. You gotta corral the pikmin around as if they were dawdling ankle-biters and you're a begrudging parental figure. Olimar says as much in one of the travel logs. And as any responsible father should, I took immense pride when my dumb idiot gremlins somehow completed their menial labor without falling in a lake.

The Children Yearn For The Mines.

Charming lil creature em up actually. I wish every Japanese game had a kids & adult mode to determine how much kanji is used in the reading, genuinely the most innovative thing about this game which I never see brought up.

Visually it's easily one of the best games on the Gamecube. The textures are just detailed enough to have a sense of photorealism for the player to feel immersed in a world like our own, while also having quite vibrant colours to make the Pikmin stand apart. Overall a great approach.

I don't have any particularly strong thoughts on most of the music, but I do find it really funny how this song outsold the actual game (going by Japanese sales alone) and how surprisingly (unsurprisingly?) melancholic it is for this game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL2ePovKMtg

Where Pikmin shines is really the gameplay. I was worried at first about the time limit, but even playing fairly suboptimally as I was, I still managed to just barely squeeze by in under 30 days for every item. Not letting the player access the map immediately was a neat way to make the UI diegetic. I wasn't very big on the actual battles in all honesty. A lot of them boiled down to tossing as many Pikmin as possible at certain enemies until they died, and ones like the water boss were easily killed by exclusively using blue Pikmin. The rapid throw of Pikmin was also a bit tight due to requiring a bit of a precise circle with the c-stick. Micromanaging with the bomb rocks and such was a bit of a chore I found. Still, the exploration itself was mostly fun and the time-cycles were well implemented, really got a sense of how tearing apart big gates was a colossal feat for these tiny little creatures.

Overall, the game was a charming little thing to play for a few sessions. It was just the right length to make any grievances mostly forgivable and a satisfying clear. I will probably play the sequels before I die but I wasn't ultra invested to jump straight into Pikmin 2 since I've heard it's extremely long, and skipping entries in series' is for cowards tbh

tldr 7.2584/10 would pickmen as my partners
I subtracted 0.5 stars because I received a copyright complaint from my ISP for pirating it

The Libra and Sagittarius are souvenirs given to Olimar by his two children and are considered mandatory ship parts, yet they seem to be nothing more than two identical jewels on the sides of his ship. By not collecting these parts, you could essentially create a playthrough where Olimar's failure to leave the planet would not be from a lack of a functioning ship, but instead from not being able to live with leaving behind the gifts his children gave him. There's a lot I could say about this game, but this is the thought that sticks out to me the most.

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.

I really enjoyed my time with this game although being the first game in the series it does have some issues that later games do not. The thing that annoyed me the most was the Pikmin's ai, they are really stupid in this game there were so many times when I was moving and I suddenly realise none of my guys are with me because they're either A: plucking grass, B: stuck in a corner or under a bridge, or C: they all killed themselves by either running right into enemies or water. I also wasn't a fan of the time limit, it didn't effect me as I beat the game on day 25 and I don't know anyone who ran out of time but I still would prefer if you could take as much time as you want. Overall despite my complaints it's still a great game.

I've put off playing Pikmin for 22 years.

Timers give me anxiety. Being timed with anything just about makes my heart rate sky rocket. I've been avoiding games like Pikmin for a long time because of this. Majora's Mask, Dead Rising, I've told my friends countless times I'd get around to playing these games, only to inevitably end up feeling deterred from a sudden spike of anxiety.

It's really just all in my head. I fear the anguish caused by failing miserably and having to restart. I psych myself out and over think about how much I need to manage my time efficiently. In my head, I have to do things perfectly on my first time. Part of me knows the game is much easier to manage than I'm making it out to be. Another part of me doesn't seem to get the picture. Pikmin is likely the first game that I've ever played with a timer, and it's one of the reasons why playing these types of games affects me so much. Childhood trauma.

So, I put off Pikmin for 22 years. My GameCube copy from when I was 5 just sitting there, untouched. A reminder of past scars.

On a whim, my friend suggested I should stream it. He's been asking me to stream it for him for years now. I had tried once before in the past, but I had stopped early and feared going back. So I figured, eh, why not? I should stay true to my word.

And a funny thing happened. I made myself stop caring about the failures I'd make, or all the Pikmin I'd lose. Instead, I just went marched forward. If I messed up, I'd mess up. As I played, I became detached from my Pikmin and saw them less as cute little creatures, and more just the video game polygons they actually are. I dehumanized myself and faced the bloodshed.

As a result, hundreds upon hundreds of Pikmin died in tragic (and needlessly stupid) deaths, but here I was, finally viewing the end credits. A man turned monster, sitting upon his throne of dead (pik)men behind him. The weight of my soul is too much to bear.

... In all seriousness, it was just a really fun time. I throughly enjoyed my time with Pikmin 1.

The reality of playing Pikmin is much different from the fantasy in my head. The timer is an ever present source of pressure, yeah, but the amount of time you're given is plentiful. You're able to restart from your last save too, which saves a lot of time compared to a hard reset which took the edge off. As a kid, I had no idea what to do, where to go, and stressed out about finding the ship pieces in time. But I was a 5 year old. I was bound to be bad at a game like this.

Pikmin is a real time strategy game, and what's unique about it is that it's a character centric one. Usually in these types of games, you're controlling massive amounts of characters all at once as a sort of nebulous god. With Pikmin, you're in control of Olimar, and your army of Pikmin follow you automatically.

Pikmin break down into groups of 3: red, yellow, blue. Red are strong and fire resistant, yellow can jump high, throw bombs and carry pieces quicker, and blue can go in water. Blues end up getting the short end of the stick, but every type have their benefits in using. Much of the gameplay revolves around organizing these little dumb bastards and making the carry, kill, swarm, whatever. You also have to be their nanny and make sure they don't get lost from the group if they decide to, I don't know, go play with grass or rocks, or get stuck on a wall, or just decide that they don't really want to follow you for no reason.

The AI for these things can be a bit frustrating, (especially when they get lost the second you're about to take off for the night) but in a way, it's like they have a mind of their own. It's a good balance of just competent enough to not be completely aggravating, but aggravating enough to feel like they don't listen and are just absent minded. I could probably go without the part where Pikmin get caught on walls and having to search around the Walmart looking for my lost son. At least I have a chip in him to track where he is on a map.

Alongside being a real time strategy, Pikmin is also a bit of a puzzle game. Each ship piece requires you to put together how you're going to bring each back, using each element of the 3 types of Pikmin at your disposal. This could mean having reds carry the pieces through fire, having yellows throw bombs to take down walls or to reach high enough places to obtain a piece, blues going through water, or all of them fighting for their lives against a monster dumb enough to eat a ship part.

This game can be brutal. Enemies love eating Pikmin, and they get greedy if you're not careful. The lifecycle to this planet have Pikmin on the lower end of the foodchain, so almost everything eat them. The ones that don't have a habit of eating them end up being bullies as well,whether that be picking them up and tossing them in the ground, or just pumbling them into the ground. Some creatures even like stealing your stuff, like the breadbugs. This ecosystem is strange, and you always feel like an underdog.

Yet, despite the oppressive difficulty and ever dreaded clock, the atmosphere is serene and peaceful. The sun blooms during the day, and these grassy sandboxes paint the world to be gentle and calm outside of it's cut throat environment. Water pools and moves with as much realism as the 6th generation lunchbox can handle. Damp caves bring about a gloomy atmosphere, yet teems with light and life. Rusted cans and objects stick out of the ground, implying we're merely the size of an ant on a much larger planet. That planet might very well be our planet, morphed and mutated into something without humanity. And yet, the music remains peaceful and hopeful. There's not a lot of areas to this game, but they make the most out of them.

The ending is a short puzzle using all the Pikmin's abilities, only to then reach a giant boss who absolutely demolishes your troops. It's one of the most brutal encounters in the game, right next to the Wollywogs. Those damned jerk offs love slapping down on your Pikmin and crushing them. They don't even eat them! They just love crushing things to death! And at the end, Olimar finally gets to return home, thanking the Pikmin for their service and leaving them behind. They now can fend for themselves with their new found confidence, and with time, I bet they could become on top of the food chain.

This game has been quite a journey. Although it's short, it's definitely taught me a lot. Don't think you'll be perfect the first time you do something. Allow yourself to make mistakes. Don't overthink it and just have fun. Dehumanize yourself and face the bloodshed.

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.

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!

for some reasons ive never played pikmin in the entirety of my life and i know that would sound weird and it probably is weird because this game was right up to my alley its charming it has an addicting gameplay loop and theres some super cute babies just roaming around the map i love them pikmins are adorable

pikmin is some real time strategy game and I'm really weirded out by the fact that I enjoyed it since I'm stupid as a rock and strategy is not really something I vibe with maybe use the word impulsiveness so yeah

olimar got to this planet and crashed his ship and finds a new lifeforms and the 2 things he thinks is "damn they look like some carrot brand on my planet . delicious" and "I shall throw them" which is pretty funny if you ask me

pikmin are super cute and they follow olimar to be used to do lots of things like killing enemies and getting stuff using they cooperative strength you will see 0/30 on objects so you will know how many you need them and also they come in different kinds for different situations theres red pikmins which are the standard ones but also are strong against fire yellow pikmins can be thrown l higher and can take bombs and blue pikmins which can go underwater so you got a wide array of strategise to do with these babies

main goal is taking back olimars 30 ship components lost throughout the planet and specifically in 4 + 1 levels using pikmins in a 30 days deadline

the levels are super sweet and memorable and have some great somber ambient music to boot so there's something too and actually have a lot of stuff going on so you have to properly distribute pikmins throughout the levels for time management

you got some idk 30 mins ? of daytime and then you gotta get back to the ship because the night is scary or whatever

and thats it people that's the gameplay loop incredible I know but if I tell you that they laced this with drugs I'm sorry it was quite addictive if you ask me I was always like "one more day……. just one more" and controlling pikmins really is a frenzy yknow they got some wacky AI and using them isn't even that fun you get to divide them in groups if you want to select a SPECIFIC pikmin to throw yellow pikmins with bomb explode at random because they're stupid sometimes while following you they'll get stuck or just drawn or just follow an enemy and try to battle with them until they get swallowed you get a lot of pikmins to begin with because every enemy carcass can be turned into pikmin seeds that may become pikmin flowers if you leave them growing and there's a lot of I have no idea how they're called but I call them pikmin money l the ones with the colored numbers like 5 10 20 and so on ok so like this chaotic nature of pikmins is kinda fun if you ask me they really feel like living things they get distracted and sometimes want to play and sometimes they make mistake because they're stupid and cute thats the truth and I like this aspect of the game if you ask me

umh I mean the end there's not much more about it apart from the gameplay loop I told you about the final boss the one you get to fight after getting all the 30 parts is kinda shit mainly because the battle system is already shit so if you put a whole ass guy that swallows pikmin whole of course you're gonna have a bad time but apart from that

great game

i also enjoy olimars diary entries at the end of the day where he talks about some things that he discovers which are actually gameplay tips like "oh I discovered that the beetles who run if you throw pikmins on top of them they spew nectar" which are always a good things to know and also his personal thoughts about pikmins that absolutely fucking kill me like "were pikmins aggressive because I came here . they seem to be trying to get on top of the natural order with my help. am I the one being used" that's fucking funny olimar youre funny

oh also I played with the 4k textures really looked gorgeous

I was reading about how this game was born out of a tech demo to show off the Gamecube’s capabilities, it got me missing the days when the jump to next gen meant developers doing wild and imaginative things mechanically that couldn’t have been done before, not just prettier graphics. Simple and direct, it delivers a quick burst of it’s unique gameplay loop and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. It does suffer from a bit of jank though, the Pikmin AI can frankly be completely braindead at times with them getting stuck on walls and corners at the best of times, and diving into lakes to their deaths en mass at the worst. I definitely spoiled myself a bit by playing Pikmin 3 first with all it’s quality of life. Still, this series’ uniquely serene yet hectic gameplay loop is one of a kind, and holds up even in it’s most basic form.

Pikmin to me is like the perfect kind of confert food gaming. As a time management strategy games I feel like a good chunk of the game is managing the Pikmins crappy AI rather then a real challenge but once you get used to it it's not that big of a deal. I feel like while Pikmin 3 really does do everything better this game does it's still something to come back to just for the undeniable nintendo charm that I personally feel is lacking from a lot of their more recent games. (god I hope Pikmin 4 is good) Pikmin 1 is just oozing with so much charm and just like other Nintendo games of that era it's also pretty replayable even with just the single campaign mode and a few challenge modes. Too me that's a mark of quality that even thought your game is lacking in overall context it dosn't matter because the core game is just so much fun you wanna replay it over and over again.

In other news I wish I had a pet Bulborb so fucking badly. I don't care if their the apex predator for out lovable group of plant based parasites I want one now. I could keep em in like a warm terrarium and like sprinkle pikmin into the tank like fish food. Come on Nintendo just give me one, I know you have the money to start a cross splicing gene farm for fictional characters; just give em to me now. where else are you putting all that Switch money because it's definitely not in the games or hardware!!!! (I didn't sleep all night so I'm very tired rn)

I think the modern gamer has a tendency to outright dismiss a game's larger worth as a piece of art if it doesn't match a specific ideal of gameplay and presentation. Pikmin is not exactly what I'd consider a pretty game in all respects (there are certainly a few aspects that were technically impressive at the time though), and its gameplay experience seems purposefully tumultuous as much it attempts to simplify the RTS formula down in the typical Miyamoto fashion. But Pikmin is still a beautiful piece of art all the same, is it not?

I first played Pikmin in my teens, and I think it might've been the first game to teach me two things about games as a medium: that friction (and consequences) within a gameplay experience can be meaningful and compelling in its own right, and that a game can be more than the sum of its parts. It's actually kind of cool that the Pikmin AI will sometimes not listen or do something absolutely stupid; the things that modern gamers find annoying are part of what made Pikmin special.

Sure, Pikmin 2 is filled to the brim with content, and Pikmin 3 is a more realized and polished mechanical experience (I am not disparaging either of those games, I love them as well), but Pikmin has the most heart both in how its mechanics force you to think about your time and resources, and in how its narrative is more personal and dire. The bad, neutral, and good endings of Pikmin all stick with you.

Pikmin taught me that failure is okay, at least in the abstract gameplay sense. Olimar may have perished or even just returns home with no fanfare, but the player has another chance to do it better the next time. It's not a particularly hard game, but I do think it's an oft misunderstood game, so I just wanted to give this incredible little game the love it deserves.

Pretty curious to try Pikmin 2. I cleared Pikmin 3 years ago (which was my first Pikmin game), and remember liking it although it didn't leave a particularly deep impression.

My overall impression is this game feels a little underbaked - which makes sense because it was released one month after the GameCube launched, so it probably got rescoped at some point.

It's hard to know how much to criticize the Pikmin AI, the finicky controls. Part of that adds to its charm and I think when you see that kind of problem in a game, it's also evidence that the game is designing in a new space. Only uninteresting games have no 'problems', except for the problem of being uninteresting.

The main issue is that the combat felt a bit at odds with the enemy variety presented. Pikmin would die by the dozens, or the boss would lose half its health in 10 seconds, and I had no real sense of what I ought to be doing better.

I like the game length - nice and short, memorable levels you remember. More games should be like this! That being said, some of the level design felt like straightforward puzzles that just took time and planning to execute. Like converting blue pikmin to red to get an item through fire - idk, I think there's a more interesting puzzle direction than that. IIRC Pikmin 3 had some interesting puzzles but it's been a while.

If this game were released now I'd probably give it a 3 but it was Nintendo trying to 'casualize' RTS games, after the jump to 3D, and they really did propose some interesting solutions to making a casual RTS for controllers, so yeah it's hard to fault it too much.

Pikmin 1 is, I think, the quintessential title for showing what the attitude was like on the Gamecube. It was an underpowered, slept on console that got to focus on developing new IPs and playing with unique modes of gameplay and interaction rather than playing into the new war for fidelity being played by its new competitor the Xbox or the new incarnation of its old rival the PS2. Pikmin is a hail mary franchise of a little space man who has to beat the entire game in a month or die horribly after crashlanding using little carrot people to navigate a hostile world. It rides this line between comfortable, soothing even and dangerous and unknowable. The locations are memorable, specific and textured. The Pikmin themselves are a charming delight and reassurance in the world. It's a package that, as an elevator pitch, would be a hard sell but sticks its landing multiple times over. Shouts out to Pikmin.

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.

"Here I am, stranded on a toxic planet, fighting to survive, and yet I'm intrigued...I must research this fascinating creature!"

The first Pikmin game is so pure in it's design. The man had a vision and they let him cook. It gains so much in its simplicity. The levels are open and beautiful and have so much variety in their challenges utilizing the core three pikmin. The 30 day time limit provides a really comfortable amount of time to accomplish your goals but also creates a very visceral end point and deadline. The arcade feel with the short run time and multiple different leaderboards promotes replays. Even the terrible little pikmin who get caught on the tiniest of corners - what should annoy me only endears me more. I loved reaching my destination only to turn around and realize 5 or 10 of my guys got left behind under some bridge. I'd think "what are they stupid.....oh well yeah I guess they kind of are"

Pikmin is such a one of a kind game. Olimar is just this tiny tiny dude who overcomes fear and isolation with curiosity. The world is equal parts dangerous and beautiful. The man does not know if he is ever going to see his wife and kids again but he can't worry about that cause the blue pikmin just tilted its head to the side a little bit. My dog does the same exact shit.

After having not beaten Pikmin as a child because Puffstool turned all of my darling boys into violent delinquents who beat me up and got eaten, and then I decided "that's enough" and never came back to it, going back to play it is a fascinating task. What I'm presented with is essentially a simplified RTS where you simply drag one of your three units to the proper location for them to be useful, fulfill their function, and then repeat across a map before a time limit runs out. But sometimes they get caught on geometry or drown for no reason, because they have no idea what a bridge is and choose to dive into lethal amounts of water instead of following safety regulations that they themselves established. And it's here where Pikmin is at its weakest - its environmental puzzles are fairly rudimentary, the Pikmin themselves are clumsy, your actual throw is clumsy because it's tied to your walk so sometimes you'll just toss boys directly into the mouth of a lil' dwarf bulborb, and the actual matter of traversal is solved as simply as "did you make all the bridges and bomb the walls that are in your way?" Or just by throwing boys at the problem, typically nothing - enemies or puzzles - knows what to do when you throw Pikmin on its backside.

But it's that element - the enemies - that brings Pikmin to life. Due to the combination of the constant time limit and the fact that you have such limited resources - and they're ALIVE and make sad noises when they die and it's your fault like 70% of the time - every encounter with a new enemy type is a nerve-racking experience. You need to properly discern their behavior before they end up killing the battalion of boys you brought with you, and often times, ANY form of aggression ends up being an incredibly scary prospect! Things can turn from bad to absolutely untennable in Pikmin with just a single move, and god help you if more than one enemy is coming at you! Bosses, likewise, become a wager on how quickly you can figure out their gimmick before they wipe your squad and make you completely ineffectual. And this level of anxiety, trying to prevent things from going from bad to worse and failing constantly, is the heart of what makes Pikmin such an engaging experience. When you finally learn an enemy's patterns and manage to take 'em down no problem, using them as fuel for the fire, THAT'S the best of the game.

Ultimately, Pikmin isn't quite sure what it wants to be at this stage. It's an ultimately survivalist narrative with fantastic characterization for Olimar as this bumbling salaryman who's easily scammed but earnestly fascinated by the world around him, but it's presented as a score attack game where you wanna get better to have awesome speedruns with minimal losses. It wants to pressure you with a constant time limit, but there's true beauty in its world to appreciate. It wants you to be able to multitask between squads for ideal set-ups, but the learning process of enemies is the most fun part about the game! Ultimately, I think that Pikmin needed to grow from this first title - and I know in the future it did grow out from what this game set out to do - but I appreciate the unique little adventure all the same. It's clunky, but oddly accessible; if it didn't end up as an entire series, it'd be this fascinatingly unique cult classic! As-is... it's kind of that within its own series, anyway! A fun time to learn, but I eagerly await what future games hold for this series!