Pikmin (GameCube)

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Description

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.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Alternate Titles

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

Part of the Following Groups

• New Play Control! series
• Nintendo Player's Choice releases
• Pikmin series

User Reviews

A great title to start off your GameCube collection	bowser724 (29)	unrated
Another Homerun from the master Shigeru Miyamoto!!	Oblio (108)
Colorful Puzzle/strategy Hybrid that Must be Played!	Weston Wedding (63)
A truely great revolution of a game.	Bob the Stickman (299)

Critic Reviews

GameSpy	Dec 16, 2001		90
GamersMark	Dec 15, 2001	9 out of 10	90
Gamesmania.de	Jun 14, 2002	89 out of 100	89
4Players.de	Jun 22, 2002	88 out of 100	88
Game Informer Magazine	Jan, 2002	8.5 out of 10	85
Nintendo Difference	Jun 17, 2002	17 out of 20	85
Gaming Target	Jan 23, 2002	8.2 out of 10	82
Silicon-Fusion.com	Jun 20, 2002		80
Adrenaline Vault, The (AVault)	Feb 28, 2002		80
Edge	Nov 29, 2001	7 out of 10	70

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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

Related Web 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)