Over twenty years ago, Nintendo introduced two things that would both become cultural phenomenon – The Nintendo GameCube and Pikmin
Pikmin is a strategy game that quickly won over the hearts of all who played it and would go on to spawn a successful franchise, now on its fourth mainline edition.
The game introduced players to Captain Olimar, a spaceman marooned after a meteor hit his rocket ship. The planet that Captain Olimar finds himself on is filled with colourful plant-like beings called Pikmin, who he quickly befriends.
And with only 30 odd days of oxygen remaining, Captain Olimar calls upon these lemming-like Pikmin to help him explore the unknown planet in an attempt to repair his spaceship and return home.
It’s a strangely simple game that’s charm lies in how tricky it was to master. Thanks to Nintendo, players who missed out on playing Pikmin in the days of the Game Cube can now dive into the Pikmin 1+2 bundle on their Nintendo Switch.
If, like me, you only really know of Pikmin by name but are unsure of what the actual game is about, here’s the debrief:
You are placed in command of Pikmin, little alien creatures that are individually weak on their own but strong as a unit. Armies of up to 100 of these little Pikmin can be built up, and players will spend their time commanding these armies to unlock and explore various maps.
Each colour of Pikmin has its unique skills and abilities for players to take advantage of. Blue Pikmin can swim, Purple Pikmin are as strong as ten regular Pikemand, and Red Pikmin are fire-resistant.
During the game, players will uncover a plethora of different Pikmin and challenges to overcome using them. However, Pikmin are as easy to accidentally kill as they are to control, so players need to constantly be vigilant and weigh up the allure of reward with the life cost of their Pikmin.
The core mechanic that sets Pikmin 1 aside is the game’s day/night cycle. During the day, players play as usual, but when night hits, the planet becomes far more hostile and troublesome to navigate and explore – not that the game even gives you a chance to try.
Essentially, this means that there is an ever-ticking time limit of 15 odd minutes available to players to build up their Pikmin armies and explore before having to race back to the ship because if the sun sets and everyone isn’t safely tucked in, everyone dies – end of story.
Now I’m not going to lie; playing Pikmin 1 was a challenge, to say the least. Not only does this game feel every bit as dated as it is, but also doesn’t include any updates to at least try to make the game feel more fluid in any way.
The game also has a very restrictive time limit which, instead of adding to the strategic challenge of the game, makes the entire experience feel much more clunky and frustrating, especially dealing with the input lag when you have just seconds left on the clock.
One of the best parts of Pikmin 2 is that the game did away with the tiresome 30-day limit and added in a second captain as well – something that helps with multitasking and makes the game feel fluid and like a well-oiled machine.
And even though the relentless time pressure is nearly non-existent in this title, the game is still challenging. Instead of racing against the clock, players can go underground and face the monsters that hide beneath.
Pikmin can’t be spawned while exploring the sublevels, so resource management becomes real, especially when the underground bosses and traps are strong enough to wipe out a Pikmin army in seconds.
Faults aside due to lazy porting, Pikmin 2’s charm lies in the game’s personality. The Pikmin all feel alive, whether watching them occasionally trip and fall, listening to their little screams when you let them die in battle or hearing them randomly hum to themselves.
The Pikmin in Pikmin 2 feel alive down to their very core. It’s hard not to find yourself more than a little upset when your Pikmin army dies and the cruelty of life as a Pikmin is put so fully on display.
It’s no use pretending that I didn’t fall in love with the Pikmin franchise after playing the first two games on my Nintendo Switch for the first time. There’s a lot to love about this wacky game, and I enjoyed this twist on the strategy gaming genre far more than I thought I would.
However, the ports could be better, and both games look and feel their age. Playing the titles in handheld mode helps to minimise the flaws, as the smaller screen size is more forgiving in that regard. However, it’s still disappointing that such great games are so dated on the newer technology.
It also doesn’t feel like much love went into porting these titles. For example, there are motion controllers, but unlike when the games were released on Wii and gave players free rein, this time, the motion controllers are limited to only calling and throwing Pikmin and suffer from rather irksome levels of input delay.
The bundle is also rather pricy at R1,099 for both games when you consider how little has been improved in this release. If nostalgia isn’t your driving force, ignoring these two titles and jumping into the franchise with the newly released Pikmin 4 would be better because this is a game best enjoyed without the damper of feeling dated.
