Pikmin 1 Retrospective

Post Synopsis This write-up will discuss Pikmin 1 both as a product of its time (2001) and its general quality as a game removed from that context. It will be broken down into four sections listed below. * I. Introduction * II. A Marriage of Story and Mechanics * III. General Gameplay Overview * IV. Closing I. Introduction Pikmin 1 first released in 2001 as a close-to launch title for the Nintendo GameCube, arriving just two weeks after the console's launch in North America and just in time for the holidays – it was not only a great showcase for the hardware it was built on but also a unique take on the RTS genre and a successful adaptation of the genre to a console's controller. Every Nintendo console has had either a Mario or Zelda launch title since the 1990s except the GameCube, with the SNES, Nintendo 64, Wii, Wii U, and Switch all meeting this criteria. While it could be argued that Luigi's Mansion instead fit this role, it was Pikmin that Shigeru Miyamoto called "the next Mario," likening the new IP to his greatest creation. While Pikmin's sales were well below expectations (1.60 million) and perhaps didn't take off in the way Miyamoto had hoped, the game was still a success critically speaking and was exactly the kind of next-gen experience you'd want from a new console. Pikmin achieved this next-gen feel in more ways than one: the number of Pikmin on screen and their advanced AI was previously unseen on consoles, the graphical jump was immense in the early days of gaming and there was no mistaking Pikmin for a Nintendo 64 game, and the GameCube controller's added buttons and C-Stick were all utilized, with the C-Stick being a particularly interesting implementation since it was used to directly control your squad of Pikmin. Most importantly, Pikmin felt different to all the other games on the market, particularly on consoles. While these novelties may be lost on an audience 20 years later, the game itself still remains a thoroughly unique and engaging experience. II. A Marriage of Story and Mechanics Overview of the Story and Time Mechanic Pikmin's story opens up immediately with Captain Olimar crash-landing on an alien planet whose atmosphere carries high levels of oxygen, which is poisonous to Olimar’s species, the Hocotates. Olimar soon forms an almost instinctual bond with small plant-like creatures he calls Pikmin that inhabit the planet: commanding them, growing their population, and using them to find his missing ship parts. The ship parts fulfill a more tangible purpose than collectibles in other games – you actually see the various parts being fitted to the ship once they're returned, and each one’s purpose is documented by Olimar. Olimar's life support systems are only functional for 30 days, and so the player has 30 in-game days to gather the missing 30 ship parts, with each day comprising 13 minutes of in-game time. Whether or not he succeeds is determined by the player's ability to fulfill this goal, with an ending cut-scene playing out based on whether or not this goal has been achieved. There is also one other good-but-not-the-best ending for collecting 25 specific parts (with the other 5 specific parts not being required for the ship’s operational functions) – this can be inferred from Olimar’s logs where he mentions he doesn’t need all the parts to take off. If Olimar loses all his health in battle or loses all his Pikmin, he will retreat to his ship, ending the day prematurely – meaning, there are long-term consequences for falling in battle, as it indirectly eats into your overall time remaining. Similarly, losing Pikmin in battle or not gathering them together before nightfall has a similar consequence, as it may necessitate needing to farm more Pikmin, since large numbers of Pikmin are required to tackle many obstacles in the game. Time is the ultimate resource in Pikmin, and every action ties into it in some way. The Good and Bad Endings Oftentimes games with good and bad endings are unclear about what conditions need to be met to reach the desired ending, or sometimes the actions for reaching the desired ending feel trivial. Of course, there are games with more nuance than just “good and bad,” but of the ones that do fall more into this black and white bucket, Pikmin’s system of days and parts and how they tie into the story makes it one of the clearest to understand: get all the parts within 30 days and you get the good ending, fail to get all the parts and you get the bad ending. It’s great then that the game is very forthright in explaining the day counter and keeping it in the player’s mind. Even if you skip reading all of Olimar’s logs and your eyes don’t catch the bolded messaging around this mechanic, the HUD still spells out the importance of the days: the day counter takes up about as much space as Olimar’s health meter and is on screen at all times, reinforcing its importance. Players can pace themselves knowing they’re on track to complete the game with the best ending so long as they gather at least one part per day. Days can also be replayed so as long as the player hasn't advanced to the following day, so there is some leniency to the system if you're willing to sacrifice up to 13 minutes of progress in exchange for a more efficient redo of a day. The game can be completed in as little as six days - I've personally done it in nine days, which makes for a good challenge run for those looking to really challenge themselves without having to resort to insane speedrun strategies. A first-time player is unlikely to finish the game that quickly obviously, but it demonstrates that the game only requires a moderate level of efficiency to see its good ending. Other Story Elements Pikmin tells a more personal and less conventional tale than what's typically seen in the medium: there's no villain like in most video games, it’s simply a story of man versus nature. The predators that stand in the way of you and your ship parts are more acting on some primitive, animalistic instinct rather than targeted malice towards Olimar. For the most part, the creatures that inhabit the world don’t hunt down Olimar unless they feel their turf is being invaded. These days open-world games have realistic ecosystems where animals hunt and move about the world organically - Pikmin isn't at that level of course, but for its time it felt like a lived-in world with naturalistic environments and a living, breathing ecosystem that Olimar was simply trying to find his way around. Another subtle but intriguing narrative element is that the world Olimar explores is actually a futuristic Earth where humans aren’t around anymore – or at least not in the places explored in the game – and the wildlife has mutated and/or evolved. There are clues hidden around the environments that hint to this, like a cardboard box or a glass bottle, and Olimar mentions the oxygen on the planet is toxic to his kind when he first crash-lands. The game never outright tells you it’s Earth – Earth is probably just another planet to the space-faring Olimar after-all - it's small environmental clues and Olimar's documentation that simply hints to it. If you somehow weren't convinced though, Pikmin 2 all but outright confirms this is a futuristic Earth through its many human trinkets, the most notable being a globe of Earth. As mentioned earlier, Olimar is a Hocotate, which is basically a cartoony-looking human. As it turns out they are also very small, probably measuring just a few centimeters tall, as evidenced by the gigantic cardboard box that serves as Olimar’s first roadblock. This makes you see the world in a new light – the relatively large frogs, spiders, and other creatures Olimar fights are in actuality no bigger than the ones you'd see in real life – you are seeing simply seeing the world through the eyes of a tiny alien explorer. Perhaps we’ll get to fight a human in Pikmin 4. III. General Gameplay Overview Core Gameplay Pikmin is to RTSs as Splatoon is to FPSs – it’s a different take on the genre - both aesthetically and gameplay-wise - but a lot of the genre conventions are still there: building an army, distinct units, combat, etc. Its most glaring deviation from the genre is the perspective: you control a playable character – this changes things considerably, since getting from one point of the map to another is limited by your character’s perspective and travel speed, but in turn it provides a more intimate player experience, as you now feel like you're in a character in that world, rather than a formless being piloted from the sky. It’s also a great way to adapt the genre to a controller, since historically RTSs on consoles have failed to provide intuitive controls for consoles. It is always commendable when a team bucks genre conventions and finds something that works even better for their game. As alluring as the prospect of having dozens of differently colored Pikmin types was as a kid, I now appreciate the functional simplicity of having “only” three separate types of Pikmin, each with two unique abilities: red Pikmin are fireproof and have 1.5x attack power of the other Pikmin, yellow Pikmin can be thrown farther and further and can also pick up and throw bomb rocks, and blue Pikmin can survive in water and save drowning red and yellow Pikmin. The game requires using the type-based strengths to overcome certain obstacles, so only having three types limits the micro-management. And Pikmin still share a lot of the same abilities regardless of color: they can all build bridges and tear down wooden walls, carry objects back to base, fight enemies, etc. The game does a great job of making use of each Pikmin types' respective abilities while not going overboard with type-based obstacles for their own sake. Pikmin’s most glaring flaw is your limited ability to manage your Pikmin’s behavior. For example, if a group of reds is carrying something through a path that features multiple fire hazards, a disbanded group of yellows or blues will join in regardless of the threat it poses to them – there’s no action command to tell them to sit in place where they are. Another issue arises from disbanding Pikmin – the process in the game involves disbanding all Pikmin types and then encircling your desired color with your whistle. This isn’t as seamless as, say, pressing the disband button in conjunction with a directional input on the D-Pad to select your desired Pikmin color-type, while disbanding all other colors. Future games did improve on this front (though it’s still not perfect), and this is probably the biggest frustration coming back to the original. The Time Mechanic’s Effect on Gameplay Most RTSs apply pressure by an enemy faction building up their forces and making their way to attack the player over time. Pikmin 1 doesn’t have any sort of enemy faction, and for the most part, the wildlife keeps to their own turf, with the player initiating most combat encounters. Pikmin 1 instead applies pressure to the player’s actions by a more literal ticking clock: a lot of the tasks in the game are simple on their own but require management of multiple squads in order to get everything done in a timely fashion. Without this mechanic in place, there’s nothing stopping you from using your entire squad on a bridge and standing idly by as you wait for your Pikmin to finish. But since time is such a precious resource in Pikmin, sitting idly by for more than a few seconds feels like wasting resources. In this hypothetical scenario, it would instead be better to have some of your Pikmin work on the bridge while you find another task for the remaining Pikmin to engage with, later circling back with the bridge group once they’ve completed their work to reach the side they were building towards. It forces players to approach levels with efficiency in mind and also carefully balance multiple squads. Replayability Pikmin is highly replayable due to its open level structure – you have a lot of freedom in deciding what ship parts you want to go after at any given time. Outside of the opening moments, the game never feels like it's on-rails or pushing you to tackle levels in one specific direction. Story moments are also mostly log entries written by Olimar, so they can easily be skipped through on repeat playthroughs. In addition, some tasks can be approached in more ways than one, adding more flavor to future playthroughs: using yellows’ ability to be thrown higher than the other two Pikmin types to get around some obstacles, or bringing bomb rocks from one end of the map to another to kill enemies or break down wooden walls faster, for example. The game also records your high score after completing the game, which includes your days/ship parts count, and the number of Pikmin grown and killed in battle. This is the game's way of probing players into a replay, with the indication of a high score table effectively telling players they can improve. Completing the game in a fewer number of days is compelling even if you don't like speedruns, since you can simply reset days if you feel your performance wasn't adequate for what you were trying to achieve for the day. Put another way, you can set back the clock 13 minutes and try again without penalty. If that's not your thing, there's also a Challenge Mode that tests your ability to grow as many Pikmin as possible, although this mode just recycles the story mode's levels. Future Pikmin games would become more robust in terms of side content. IV. Closing More than it just being a great game to play, Pikmin 1 was also a remarkable showcase for the hardware and controller of the GameCube, as well as being a unique experience that looked and played differently from other RTSs on the market. Given all these qualities, plus the fact that it was made by Nintendo, it seems like Pikmin as a series should've be destined for more - that said, the series has still produced a fair number of sequels and spinoffs compared to Nintendo's other B series, and the series does have some avid fans. This is reflected in the indie space, as a fair number of games coming out are now said to be inspired by Pikmin (The Wild At Heart, Dap, Worship, etc.). Since the core series has been mostly dormant for close to a decade now, it's especially welcome to have games model themselves after Pikmin. It may not wow modern audiences the same way it did 20 years ago, but even today it's a game well worth playing until the sun goes down. submitted by /u/Underwhere_Overthere [link] [comments]
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