Pikmin Official Trailer (2001, Nintendo)
16Pikmin (ピクミン Pikumin?) is a real-time strategy video game developed and published by Nintendo for the GameCube video game console in 2001. It was created and designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, and is the first game in the Pikmin series. The player controls Captain Olimar, an astronaut who crash lands on a mysterious planet. Olimar soon befriends creatures he calls "pikmin", and utilizes their abilities to collect the missing parts of his spaceship he lost during the crash. The player has 30 days to recover the pieces and repair the ship. Both Olimar and the Pikmin are approximately one inch in height.
The game was both a critical and commercial success. The game has spawned two sequels, Pikmin 2 (2004) for the GameCube and Pikmin 3 (2013) for the Wii U. In 2009, Pikmin was re-released for the Wii as part of the New Play Control! series.
In Pikmin, the main protagonist is Captain Olimar, a tiny extraterrestrial from the planet Hocotate. The story starts when Olimar is taking an intergalactic vacation in outer space. However, during his flight, a comet hits his spaceship, the S.S. Dolphin (a reference to the GameCube's codename, "Project Dolphin"), which is then pulled into the gravity field of an uncharted planet. Parts of the spaceship fall off as it plummets to the ground and crashes.
When he regains consciousness, Olimar finds out that the planet's atmosphere contains high levels of oxygen—an element deadly to his people—and he can stay on the planet for only 30 days before his life support system stops functioning. Olimar must retrieve many of the spaceship parts so he can rebuild his spaceship and return to Hocotate. Although Olimar initially states in his journal entries that he needs all 30 parts, as the game moves on it is hinted at that some parts might not be actually necessary to lift off, and, indeed, one can win the game without the said parts.
To help Olimar are indigenous creatures called Pikmin, which are nearly extinct and unable to survive in the environment without his leadership when he arrives. As this element of symbiosis develops, Olimar discovers parts of his ship and travels across the Pikmin Planet, which is assumed to be Earth, albeit with fictional fauna. The game has three endings depending upon how successful the player was in recovering the ship parts.
Upon being revealed at E3 2001, Pikmin garnered positive reception. IGN praised it for its uniqueness and its stunning graphics, with only a few negative points such as a poor camera. It was awarded the title of "Best Puzzle/Trivia/Parlor Game" from the Game Critics Awards, beating out ChuChu Rocket! for the Game Boy Advance. It was also runner-up for "Most Original Game", losing out to Majestic.
Since its release for the Nintendo GameCube, Pikmin has received positive reception. It holds an average score of 89/100 and 86.71% from Metacritic and GameRankings respectively.[13][15] It was given the award for interactivity from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Pikmin has received significant praise for its graphics, in particular the design of the surrounding environment. Gaming Age editor Craig Majaski described Pikmin as both stunning and having a detailed environment. As of March 31, 2002, Pikmin has sold over one million copies.
The Wii re-release of Pikmin was not as well-received as the GameCube version, though it still had mostly positive reception; it holds an average score of 77/100 and 79.13% from Metacritic and Game Rankings respectively.