Pikmin

A different flavor of real time strategy

You probably know of Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario and the Legend of Zelda. There’s also another younger creation of his you may or may not know of, Pikmin.

Pikmin is a series of video games focused on the titular Pikmin, tiny plant like creatures who come in different colors with different abilities. It currently consists of three main installments (with a fourth on the way), two spin-off games, and a set of three animated shorts directed by Miyamoto himself.

The animated shorts are currently on youtube for free, so they’re the easiest entry point for the series. Of the three ‘Occupational Hazards’ feels closest to the games in tone and plot.

Of course as a video game franchise the main video games are the best example of what the series is about.

In the mainline entries you play as spaceship captains who command the Pikmin to fight enemies and gather items vital to your character’s overall mission, which varies in each game. Time management is key, as you only have so much time for each in-game day before night falls. Once the day ends you automatically retreat into orbit with your Pikmin.

Pikmin 1 and 3 only allow for a limited number of days to complete the game, if time runs out it’s game over. The first game has a hard limit of thirty days, while in the third game your time limit depends on how much fruit you’re able to gather for food. Pikmin 2 is the odd one out in having no day limit, letting you take as long as you want.

The core mechanics generally remain the same between games. Each item has a minimum amount of Pikmin needed to carry it, once there’s enough Pikmin they will begin bringing it back to base. If the day ends before the item reaches its destination you have to abandon it and pick it back up the next day.

Combat in Pikmin mainly involves throwing Pikmin onto enemies, and then whistling to call them back to your side before the enemy can counterattack and kill them. Losing Pikmin is inevitable, unless you’re making a point of doing a playthrough with no casualties. However, once an enemy is killed you can carry their body back to the Pikmin spaceship to create more Pikmin.

In all games multitasking is key to success, you want to get as much done in one day as possible. The second and third games further emphasize this by giving you multiple characters to control, so you can send groups of Pikmin to opposite ends of the map. It feels satisfying when you have multiple projects going on at once.

Each of the three games has an updated release on a later console. The first two games on the Gamecube received ‘New Play Control’ editions for the Wii with added motion controls. Pikmin 3 on the other hand was rereleased on the Switch as Pikmin 3 Deluxe, with new content added to make up for not having the Gamepad features of the Wii U original.

In some ways I consider the Deluxe edition of the third game to be a sort of Pikmin 3.5, since it has both a new side story mode, the introduction of main story co-op, and different difficultly settings for the main story. All of which are things I hope appear in Pikmin 4 and get expanded on.

The two spin-offs are rather different from the main games and each other. Hey Pikmin is the only one I haven’t played, which is a 2D platformer on the 3DS. There’s not much else I’m qualified to say about it without hands on experience, Pikmin has such a distinct way of playing that I wasn’t keen on seeing it as a genre Nintendo has done a hundred times before. Although I did pick up the amiibo figure released alongside Hey Pikmin.

Pikmin Bloom on the other hand is a phone game in the style of Pokémon Go, except with a greater focus on walking. There isn’t as much ‘game’ to Pikmin Bloom, you simply walk around to sprout Pikmin, send out Pikmin to gather items, and using Pikmin enough lets them put on cute little outfits based on where you found their seed.

Ironically the fact that Pikmin Bloom doesn’t have as much meat to it as Pokémon Go is why I like it better. It doesn’t demand any attention while actually walking, just before and sometime after. As a game it’s weak, but for a fun little distraction and excuse to put Pikmin in silly outfits it fulfills its purpose well.

While not a story heavy franchise, characterization is a stronger element than it seems. At the end of each day in the mainline games you see a journal entry or letter written by a character. The second and third games have encyclopedias on items and enemies written by the characters that lets their personality shine through, especially when you compare how they describe the same object or enemy.

It’s also made clear that the planet of the Pikmin is Earth, with Pikmin 2 being the least subtle due to featuring a variety of real world items. However the Pikmin and space captains are all about only an inch tall. Mundane objects become large treasures in this series.

Another thing I like about the series is how unapologetically weird the Pikmin are. The Onions are something between a plant and spaceship, spitting out Pikmin seeds and knowing to follow the spaceships into orbit over the planet. The Pikmin are mysterious yet so central to the games that it’s easy to forget how they blur the lines between plant, animal, and machine.

If you know me well enough then you know I also can’t talk about a Nintendo game without mentioning how it fits into the company’s output as a whole. Pikmin may be a lesser known series, but Nintendo has always made an effort to promote it. The flower on the head of the Pikmin has even been made into a real flower, the chaenostoma cordatum.

Captain Olimar, protagonist of the first two games, has appeared as a playable character in the Super Smash Bros series since Brawl, with Alph, one of the captains from the third game, joining as an alternate ‘costume’ for Olimar in Wii U and 3DS. With them is a variety of other content representing the series, including two stages to fight on.

Beyond Smash Bros Pikmin was also the basis for an attraction in Nintendo Land, a launch title for the Wii U themed around different Nintendo games. Of the cameos the Pikmin have made, their most notable by far is in the theme park Super Nintendo World, where little models of Pikmin can be seen throughout. Pikmin is the only non-Mario franchise game to be represented in the theme park as of this writing.

With Pikmin 4 coming out this year I hope it maintains the quality of the series and continues to add on to it. There’s nothing else quite like Pikmin.