Pikmin

aka: New Play Control: Pikmin
Moby ID: 5674
GameCube Specs
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Description official descriptions

After crashing on a strange unexplored planet, Captain Olimar must gather the thirty missing parts of his space ship, before his life support runs out in thirty days and he succumbs to the planet hostile atmosphere. Luckily the Pikmin, a plant/insect life form native to the planet, are there to help him. Olimar must gather and lead the Pikmin in this real time strategy game to collect the missing pieces of his ship while combating the planet's strange and sometimes hostile flora and fauna.

The Pikmin come in three varieties with each a special ability. Red Pikmin are immune to fire while blue Pikmin are able to swim and yellow Pikmin can be thrown far. Aside from the story mode there is a Challenge Mode that is unlocked after all the types of Pikmin are discovered in the story mode. The goal in this mode is to grow as many Pikmin as possible in a single day.

Spellings

  • ピクミン - Japanese spelling
  • 皮克敏 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (GameCube version)

97 People (90 developers, 7 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 80 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 100 ratings with 4 reviews)

Another Homerun from the master Shigeru Miyamoto!!

The Good
What an amazingly refreshing game! Shigeru Miyamoto, the Game Master, came up with one of the most unique, imaginative games ever.
The worlds are huge, the graphics are lush, colorful and surprisingly realistic. The main character, Olimar, who is about the size of a quarter is funny and quirky, but the real stars of the show are the PIKMIN! Not only are they cute as buttons, they are the most amazing little creatures to grace a video game!
What is good about this game? Simply everything. There are amazing puzzles to solve, deadly creatures to battle and all kinds of real-estate to explore.
The puzzles are fiendishly hard, not impossible or hopeless, but very, very well constructed.
The pikmin are not only cute, but fun to control, and have amazing skills. Each colour having it’s own unique attribute.
Every new “treasure” that Olimar finds with the help of his loyal Pikmin, is a nice surprise. This game has an overall fun feel. It is an exciting place to be and explore.
The control of the characters is amazing! Not only is it easy, but you control Olimar and the Pikmin simultaneously, and it is ergo-dynamically friendly too! No stretching of fingers across the controller or elaborate button combos. It is an elegant design, you can see Master Miyamoto’s fingerprints all over it!

The Bad
The biggest problem, which EVERYONE HATED, was the time limit! It is such a shame that they put this horrible limit into the gameplay. It is really distracting and gets a wee bit annoying also. It isn't a major factor in your ability to play, but if you don't acquire X number of parts for your ship then you lose. It makes you tend to focus on the parts and rewards, instead of exploration and discovery, which is the most fun. You always feel the need to hustle. You can’t relax and play the game at your leisure.

The Bottom Line
This is already a classic and a must have in a collection. It has hours and hours of fun playtime and is hypnotic in it’s world and story. If you are a lover of puzzle solving and strategy, you will LOVE this title! You get completely pulled into Olimar’s plight and his “world”. Parents do not have to worry as this is mild violence with no gore or blood. Some of the creatures are scary, but nothing too bad. But it is a very intricate puzzle solving game, and some of the youngsters won’t understand the concepts or ideas. This is a wonderful, wonderful game!

GameCube · by Oblio (97) · 2006

A great title to start off your GameCube collection

The Good
This game has awesome graphics! They obviously knew the potential of GameCube even when they first released it and this game in 2001. The shadows, lighting, plants, grass, and everything are so lifelike! The gameplay is also very good. You play Captain Olimar, and he has landed on a poisonous planet and his only hope to survive are Pikmin. I liked how your crowd of Pikmin follows you around and get so excited. I also like the different colors of Pikmin and the different things they can do.

The Bad
It only gives you 30 days to complete the game, though. And each day is about 10 minutes long. That's 300 minutes. 5 hours. That's all you get. Sometimes the Pikmin get stuck behind walls and stop following you if you have a big group. Then the game complains at you for not getting your last few Pikmin into their ship, the Onion.

The Bottom Line
I would say buy this game if you like Shigeru Miyamoto's games, like the Mario games. This game can be compared to Warcraft in the sense that you command a huge battalion of little guys that are brainless and only do what you tell them. Buy it if you like cute games that are strategic war simulations. Enough said. Peace out.

GameCube · by bowser724 (27) · 2004

Colorful Puzzle/strategy Hybrid that Must be Played!

The Good
The gameplay is, for the most part, very fun and always rewarding. You have the daylight hours to help Olimar lead his Pikmin to ship parts waiting to be reclaimed, and in some maps you can get several parts in a single day. At the end of the day, you fly up into the sky with your Pikmin to avoid the dangerous creatures who like to eat you. A couple of the maps even give you a chance to retrieve several ship parts in a single day, which makes the part-per-day schedule more manageable. The Pikmin are very responsive to your controls and will follow your every command. Sometimes they'll get distracted by something and start to do things on their own, but this normally doesn't occur in dangerous situations and helps make the Pikmin seem alive.

The sound for the game is a perfect fit. The Pikmin make high pitched little noises of joy then you pluck them out of the ground, or little "hut hut hut hut" noises as they lug a ship part back to your ship. The music changes based on the presence of enemies, as well, so you've got audio queues to tell if you're about to be pounced on by a flying beetle or a boss creature of some kind.

The frustration you'll feel from ruining your progress in a day (and early on, you'll be able to manage to ruin a whole day's work very easily) is outweighed by the attachment you can begin to form with Olimar. Olimar is given a distinct personality, and you will frequently see him musing about his pending doom or longing to see the faces of his kids again. These extra little details make the world real enough that you can't walk away from the game until you've make sure Captain Olimar is safe, and if you get behind schedule you actually become concerned for the tiny alien.

The Bad
Frustration can set in when you need to manipulate the simple control scheme to do complex things. Some types of Pikmin are suited to specific tasks, and trying to pick specific types can be difficult when you have an army of 100 running around. This can mean you end up killing all of them off, and if you mess up that bad towards the end of a day you have no choice but to restart and try again. The maps beg to be explored, as well, but the time limit doesn't allow the option. If you spend too much time wandering around and having fun with your Pikmin, you can get too far behind schedule to win.

Anyone who has played a Lemmings game will also be familiar with a Pikmin's complete lack of self preservation. It's important for a player to get used to keeping his mass of Pikmin where they want them, because these little creatures won't hesitate to destroy themselves in all kinds of ways.

The Bottom Line
It's easy to initially assume on at first glance that Pikmin is a simple game aimed at children. On a closer look, like many other Nintendo titles, that first impression is wrong. Hidden beneath the colorful and simple looks is a game that can be as challenging and frustrating as any puzzle or strategy game, and Pikmin is a hybrid of both. The mix means a lot of fun along the way, though!

This game should be recommended to anyone who owns a GameCube. Anyone who is even remotely a fan of Nintendo has to play through this instant classic at least once, although beating it would be very challenging for the youngest players. Heck, if you collect games at all, this belongs in your collection.

GameCube · by Weston Wedding (61) · 2006

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The GameCube version of Pikmin appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Disc

At the start of a day the game dumps the information for that day onto the GameCube's internal memory. Therefore the game-disc can be removed without interrupting gameplay until the day ends.

References

  • Captain Olimar's spaceship is named Dolphin. "Dolphin" was Nintendo's project name for the GameCube.
  • If you break down the name of Captain Olimar into component Japanese letters, o-ri-ma, you'll notice it is "Mario" backwards.

Awards

  • Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences
    • 2001 - Innovation in Console Gaming Award
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – Ga,eCube Game of the Year

Information also contributed by Jiguryo, Opipeuter Inconnivus and Sciere

Analytics

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Pikmin 4
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Mario Power Tennis
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Star Control Collection
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Related Sites +

  • Critical Gaming Pikmin Course
    The Critical-Gaming Network's first course in their series on Pikmin, a particular focus being paid to RTS design and dynamics (May, 2009).
  • Nintendo
    Publishers and owners of the Pikmin franchise, Nintendo.
  • Pikmin.com
    Official Pikmin website

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 5674
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Andrew Grasmeder.

Wii U added by Matthias GĂźnl. Wii added by Opipeuter. Nintendo Switch added by pandora18.

Additional contributors: Kartanym, Unicorn Lynx, monkeyislandgirl, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, Deleted.

Game added January 30, 2002. Last modified January 27, 2024.