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)

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

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 truely great revolution of a game.

The Good
Rarely does a video game come along that has such an unusual, fresh style of gameplay that, until then, was hardly ever touched upon. Well, meet Pikmin, an presumably obscure game that you are shocked to see that the creators of Mario made. If you thought that, you would be wrong.

The story of Pikmin, at first, seems like the typical "main character is in certain doom" type of story. But wait. There appears to be a bulb of some sort. What could it be? You walk up to it and BANG! It pops out of the ground, turns red, sprouts legs, and produces a seed. And, deep in your mind, you think, "What the hell just happened?". Well, you just started a new species...called Pikmin.

The game play is like none I have seen to often. Basically, you must gather objects into the "Onion" (Pikmin Mother Ship) and place objects such as Pellets and dead insects into it to make more Pikmin... and more... and more... and even more until you have a picnic's worth of Pikmin! Once you've done this, you can gather the parts of the ship you crash landed, getting one step closer to getting home each time. This type of gameplay, in one word, is: unique.

The music sounds almost as if it came straight from a Pixar short film. Not that that's a bad thing. In fact, if you think about it, the Pikmin themselves seem like Pixar film characters. If Pikmin gets a movie, it HAS to be made by Pixar. No one else. And it should NOT be live action.

The Bad
Even though this game is truely inspirational, there are a few problems. For one, and this almost never happens on a GameCube, the frame rate is AWFUL!!! I think the reason for this could be because of the motion blur when you use the camera.

There is also something really strange with the whistle. It seems like when you blow it, it takes Pikmin a second or two to respond. Wait... THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE PROBLEM IS!!!!

The Bottom Line
Even though it has some very, very annoying things with it, it is still a truely innovative piece of work. I hope that ,some day, Nintendo, Sega, Valve, or any company comes out with a game within the decade that truely feels like no other and is unique in all ways. Until then...sigh.

GameCube · by Deleted (197) · 2010

[ 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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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.