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)
• "New Play Control: Pikmin" -- Wii title
• "ピクミン" -- Japanese spelling

Part of the Following Groups

• Console Generation Exclusives: GameCube
• 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 (297)

Critic Reviews

GamesFirst!	Jan 15, 2002		100
IGN	Dec 03, 2001	9.1 out of 10	91
GamesCollection	Mar 18, 2009	9 out of 10	90
GameSpot	Dec 05, 2001	8.9 out of 10	89
Armchair Empire, The	Jan 17, 2002	8.8 out of 10	88
Nintendo Spin	Apr 25, 2004	8.5 out of 10	85
Game Revolution	Dec, 2001	B+	83
Gaming Target	Jan 23, 2002	8.2 out of 10	82
Silicon-Fusion.com	Jun 20, 2002		80
GamersMark	Jan 02, 2002	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)