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North America

Pikmin

by Mike Sklens - December 15, 2001, 8:29 am EST

Mike S has survived 10 days on the mysterious planet, see how he's doing and what he thinks of Pikmin!

It’s a bit sad to say but I bought Pikmin based on hype and blind faith. The hype being, of course, all the amazing stuff people are saying about this game. And the faith is the fact that the game was created by Shigeru Miyamoto, and he has never let me down.

I’m currently 10 days into the game and already have 12 parts, which I think means I’m doing good because the parts remaining is less than the number of days needed to get them all. This game is everything that everyone has said about it. It’s fun, addictive, and really quirky. The Pikmin are downright adorable. In fact they’re so cute that I have ceased to call them “Pikmin” and have given them my own nickname, which is “little dudes.” That’s exactly what they are, they’re tiny and they hang around and they’re cool, so that’s why I call them “little dudes.”

Pikmin is deceptively simple. It presents itself as a simple little puzzle or strategy game but in fact it’s really deep and there is a LOT to be learned if you want to get off the “mysterious planet” in time. The controls are also simple and intuitive. I just with there was one more control, the ability to make your whistle call attract only a certain color of Pikmin (they could have done this with the D-Pad). It can get quite frustrating when you ONLY want to call the blue Pikmin. Sure, you can separate them into groups by color and then whistle only to a certain group but more often than not, a red or yellow Pikmin will get mixed in there somehow.

The gameplay is excellent. There is so much strategy in this title. You cannot simply just get stuff done. Getting something done often requires some planning as to how you will do it and which Pikmin you will need to accomplish the task at hand. That makes this game so much better. If it could be easily beaten by just using a horde of Pikmin, it would be boring.

On the topic of small things to note I have only a few. First, the graphics are very clean. But it is true that if you do zoom in the textures can, in some situations, look a bit blurry. Also, the music: It’s simple and I like it. Some say that it’s too simple. I say to them, why should every game push the sound to its max? Pikmin works very well with its simple music and sound, and I think that making them complex would draw away from the game as a whole. So it appears that in the end, the hype and blind faith really paid off because Pikmin is an excellent game and I can’t wait to get back to playing more of it.

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GC

Game Profile

Pikmin Box Art

Genre Strategy
Developer Nintendo
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: Pikmin
Release Dec 02, 2001
PublisherNintendo
RatingEveryone
jpn: Pikmin
Release Oct 26, 2001
PublisherNintendo
RatingAll Ages
eu: Pikmin
Release Jun 14, 2002
PublisherNintendo
Rating3+

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