Pikmin

"Hey, I like onions too!"

Would you entrust your life to tiny little flower-men? I don’t know if I would, but poor Captain Olimar has no other choice. You see, his ship was hit by a meteor, and crash-landed on an uninhabited planet, or so he thought. His ship was in disrepair, and the life-support systems in his space-suit would only last him 30 days(the oxygen on this planet is poisons)! Fortunately, after a quick survey of his surroundings, Olimar stumbles across a strange pod, that magically turns into a tall, spider-like space-ship with a large flower on the top of it. The pod reminds him of his favorite vegetable from his home planet(Hocotate) that is called an onion, so that’s what he names it. This onion spits out a single seed. After a while, the seed sprouts a leaf, and strangely floats back and forth, without the aid of wind. Olimar decides to pick this plant, and to his surprise, it is actually a creature! Pulling the creature out of the ground doesn’t appear to have done any harm to it, and it starts to blindly follow him around. The creature reminds him of his favorite brand of carrot, so he decides to name them ‘Pikmin’. Olimar decides to try to throw the Pikmin at a flower with a pellet on it. The Pikmin destroys the flower, and after Olimar guides him to it, the Pikmin carries the pellet to the strange onion. After sucking up the pellet, the onion spits out two more Pikmin seeds! Amazing! This is just the beginning of your adventure on this mysterious planet. You might just be able to get off.

Captain Olimar only has 30 days to complete the repairs on his space-ship, and there are 30 parts missing. The first day is pretty much a tutorial, where you are able to get your engine. This enables you to go to different area’s across the planet, but not the ability to fly off. You pretty much have to get one piece of the space-ship every day to get off. If you don’t.. well.. it’s not pretty what happens.

The sun meter at the top of the screen tells you how much of the day is left, and the counter on the top-right of the screen tells you what day it is. The damage to Olimar’s space-suit (done by the local baddies) is shown in the bottom-left corner, the number of Pikmin is to the right of that. Further to the right is the number of Pikmin in the field (the one’s you’ve picked), and to the farthest right is your total number of Pikmin.

When you find a ship-part, you can press A next to it to learn more about it. The most important thing to learn about any of the spaceship parts is how many Pikmin are necessary to lift them. As soon as you have enough Pikmin, you can tell them to lift the ship-part (or whatever is near them, if it’s not a ship part) by moving around the C stick.

Pikmin can do a whole lot of things. They can fight enemies, break down walls, build bridges, carry things, and move obstacles. Moving the C stick will make them decide for themselves what to do, but by picking one up, moving the cursor over an object, and throwing them, you’re basically giving them direct orders on what to do. This way, they won’t do something you regret they did.

Making more Pikmin is easy. Simply tell a Pikmin to pick up a pellet with the C stick or by throwing them, and they’ll carry them back to the onion by themselves. The number on the pellet is the number of Pikmin required to lift it. Also, Pikmin can carry things like dead enemies back to their pods to make more seeds. The more Pikmin you have carrying an object, the faster they’ll carry it.

Pikmin grow in a small cycle. They start out as a seed, and then grow a leaf. If you leave them in the ground a little bit longer, they’ll grow a bud where the leaf was. If you leave them in the ground even longer than that, they’ll grow a flower. Flower Pikmin are very fast compared to bud and leaf Pikmin. If you pick a Pikmin (hehe) when it’s just a leaf, though, don’t discourage. You can still get them to have a flower by finding them a source of nutrients.

There are 3 different types of Pikmin and their onions: red, blue and yellow. Red Pikmin can stand high temperatures and are very strong. Blue Pikmin can go in the water without drowning. Finally, yellow Pikmin can handle what are called ‘bomb-rocks’. Bomb-rocks can be used to destroy an obstacle. They can also be thrown in the air really high.

After you have progressed in the game somewhat, challenge mode will open up. In this mode, you are challenged to grow the most Pikmin in just one day. The top 5 will go on a high-score list.

I was really amazed at the fact that there was never any slow-down in this game for me. You can have up to 100 Pikmin with you at a time, and yet the game never slowed down, even during intense fighting with some of the local ruffians.

One of the area’s where I’ve had problems is the camera. Olimar runs around fairly quickly and is pretty agile, so it would of been nice of you could lock the camera on him. Since you can’t do this, you have to rotate the camera to a spot behind Olimar with the L button whenever you need to turn the camera. You can zoom in with the R button, an you can change the camera’s angle with Z.

For a game that came out in 2001, the graphics are reasonably good. The Pikmin, the creatures, the spaceship, Olimar.. They all look nice. Of course, there isn’t anything distinguishing one Pikmin from another, but that’s expected. There aren’t that many different types of enemies here, though. Olimar is very small (by the way, there’s a pretty funny scale showing us how tall Olimar and Pikmin are compared to a Gamecube disc, memory card, and controller. Turns out that Olimar is actually only about the size of a quarter, and Pikmin are even smaller! The controller pretty much dwarfs both of them.) There’s a nice amount of detail put into the backgrounds and environments, and the objects are pretty nice as well. Overall, a good job.

The music seems nice at first, but it got kind of old after a while. The song that plays at the crash site sounds kind of like a children’s song, without the lyrics. I did like the song at the title screen though, even though it’s kind of generic. It’s sort of a jungle-themed song, without much variety. Some of the later stages have some cool music though, so I’d still have to say that the music in Pikmin fits it pretty well.

I don’t have any gripes with the sounds whatsoever. Pikmin make a popping noise when you pick them, and sort of let out a happy scream or cheer. The sound of 100 feel tapping along as they follow you sounded appropriate as well. I’m not sure, but I think that the Pikmin attack a few things by biting them rather than hitting them, which is sort of funny. The whistle that blows when you’re gathering up your Pikmin sounds realistic, and the horn that blows when you command them with the C stick is right on.

I really didn’t feel like playing Pikmin completely through twice. There are at least 2 endings though. Those are the one’s that I got. I got the ending for finding all 30 parts in the time limit, and the ending when you fail to(you don’t have to start over to get this ending of course, just wait out the 30 days without finding all of the necessary parts). They were both pretty entertaining, but after getting those 2 endings, I felt fulfilled, and moved on to something else.

I’d probably buy Pikmin. It’s really not a game you could beat in one or two sittings, because it is actually somewhat hard to get all of the ship’s parts. I had to consult a F.A.Q. a few times, actually. Since the game is around 2 years old, I can’t image it’s still very expensive. Give Pikmin a try, it’s defiantly different.

Foot-Notes:

-Captain Olimar crash landed on a mysterious planet. His only hope of getting off are tiny little plant people that he has called Pikmin.

-You are given 30 in-game days to find the 30 parts your ship needs. If you don’t, you aren’t leaving.

-The camera could of used a bit of tweaking.

-Pikmin are very versatile, they can do many different things for you.

-The graphics are pretty nice, considering they’re 2 years old.

-The music is cool in the later stages, but kind of annoying at the first area you arrive at.

-Realistic sound effects are found everywhere in the game.

-Even though there is more than one ending, you might not want to play through the game more than once.

-Go ahead and buy Pikmin, it’s definitely different and refreshing in a world of rehashes.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/30/03, Updated 06/30/03