Pikmin
Pikmin is the name of a video game series developed by Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, and released exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube platform. The series features two video games; Pikmin and Pikmin 2. The first video game starred Captain Olimar solely, while the second game also incorporated Louie, a co-worker who can be used in conjunction with Captain Olimar in order to command two groups of Pikmin at once. It is interesting to note that the names "Olimar" and "Louie" are based on Mario and Luigi, which are also developed by Shigeru Miyamoto. The name "Olimar" is a partial anagram of Mario in English (though it has an extra L), while in Japanese it's a perfect anagram since "Orima" is spelled using the katakana for "O" (オ), "ri" (リ), and "ma" (マ), (although it adds an extra dash making it オリマー ("Orimah"). "Louie" is, like "Luigi", a name derived from the German "Ludwig". It should be noted than in some translated versions of Pikmin, the name is translated into the equivalent of "Louie" in that language - for example, in the Spanish translation of Pikmin 2, he is called "Luís".
According to an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, the original plans for Pikmin were to be a game where one could watch the development of two human beings. That game's working title was "Adam and Eve". Eventually, this idea was found to be far too uninteractive and thus Pikmin were introduced as well as the other concepts found in the game, and most of the original plans were scrapped.
Game play
The games feature small, multi-colored creatures known as Pikmin. Pikmin are tiny, brightly-colored and intelligent creatures. A stalk protrudes from their head, topped by a symbol of rank: a leaf, bud, or a flower. The hero of the games, Captain Olimar, with his partner in the second game, Louie, commands the Pikmin in battle with the larger creatures residing on the planet. The advantage of Pikmin usually comes in numbers, as a single Pikmin can easily be defeated by a larger foe. The Pikmin stand little chance without a commander.
Pikmin grow, like plants, from sprouts in the ground. Before a Pikmin can grow, a seed must be first planted. Seeds usually come from the insertion of objects called pellets, into a Pikmin storage device known as an Onion. It can store an unlimited amount of Pikmin. The pellets are acquired when an enemy is successfully defeated, or obtained from flowers known as Pellet Posies. When an enemy dies, it releases the pellets which can then be carried back to the Onion by a group of Pikmin The amount of Pikmin needed to carry the pellet back depends on the size of the pellet, and this number appears on the pellet itself. The Onion then releases Pikmin seeds into the ground below, which then take about 10 seconds to mature into full-fledged Pikmin that can be picked from the ground by Captain Olimar. The carcasses of enimies can also be picked up and brought to the onion to be turned into seeds. The Onion can also be used to store the pikmin for the night when the day is over, for if they are left out at night they are devoured by stray Bulborbs and other creatures.
Several colors of pikmin exist in the games, each with their own special abilities. For example, red pikmin can withstand extreme heat and deal the most damage, while yellow pikmin are lighter and can be thrown higher. Also, they can carry and throw Bomb rocks, or, in the second game, withstand electricity. Blue pikmin are the only color of Pikmin which can swim. Red, yellow, and blue pikmin are found in the first and second games while purple and white pikmin are found in the latter game only. White pikmin are immune to poison, poison enimies when eaten, can find treasure buried beneath the earth, and are the fastest pikmin. Purple pikmin are ten times as strong as regular pikmin, are ten times as heavy, and can stun or even flatten nearby enemies when they land on the ground, however are the slowest pikmin.
The games take place on a fictional planet that is not given a name, but which bears a striking resemblance to a version of Earth. Garbage and other human waste is strewn throughout the areas in the games, and in Pikmin 2 many of these objects are brand name products (such as Duracell batteries and old 7-Up bottlecaps) to highten the connection. The landscapes are said to be inspired by gardens belonging to the developer of the games, Shigeru Miyamoto.
Captain Olimar and Louie are both from the fictional planet Hocotate, which is named after the address of Nintendo’s Japan headquarters. They also both work for a company called The Hocotate Freight Company, which, in the second game, is in a state of bankruptcy, which is the reason Olimar and Louie are forced to return to the pikmin planet, as they must collect objects to sell and restore their employer's financial well-being.
Whether or not the alien planet Olimar initially landed on is actually Earth, it has been confirmed that the Pikmin series characters are indeed on a very tiny scale; for example, Captain Olimar is only about the size of a quarter (or in Japan, a 100 yen piece), and the Pikmin themselves are even smaller.
Characters
Captain Olimar
Captain Olimar is the main character in the Pikmin series, and is the only playable character in the first Pikmin game. He is joined by Louie in the second game. In the game he is identified as the top employee of Hocotate Freight Company. He has a wife and children, and communicates with them whenever he can.he is also the leader of the pikmin army.
Louie
Louie, introduced in the second Pikmin game, is a co-worker of Olimar. He joined Olimar in the second game to try to help collect funds for the Hocotate Freight Company on the mysterious Pikmin planet. Louie is employed at Hocotate Freight. According to the game's opening movie, the reason for Hocotate Freight's debt is due to Louie losing a shipment of carrots (called "Pikpik carrots," a favorite food on Hocotate) while transporting them.
Louie is slightly skinnier and taller than Olimar (said of his counterpart) and also wears a mostly yellow suit, except with blue gloves and boot soles. Louie has a small amount of yellow hair, as well as a silver wire coming out of his space helmet.
The President of Hocotate Freight
The President, introduced in the second game alongside Louie, runs the long-haul shipping company that employs both Olimar and Louie. He sends the two on their mission to the Pikmin planet after the Ship at Hocotate Freight discovers the value of the treasure on the planet in order to erase the company debt. While Olimar and Louie do their job, the President keeps in contact and flees debt collectors. Once the debt is paid, he takes up Louie's position and goes with Olimar to collect more treasure.
The President is larger than Olimar and wears a mostly black suit with some gold. He has one loopy black hair and a wirey mustache and a wire identical to Louie's on his helmet. He is one of the few characters whose eyes are visible most of the time. When calling Pikmin, he uses more of a horn than a whistle like Olimar and Louie. The President has a fascination with money.
He is known only by the name "The President of Hocotate Freight". When switching to him as a playable character in Pikmin 2 after collecting 10,000 Pokos, he says, "Shyacho," which means "President" in Japanese.
The Ship
In Pikmin 2, Olimar's ship, the Dolphin, is replaced by a larger, unnamed ship after the Dolphin is sold by the President. The Ship is notably different because it talks, has a personality, and has two seats. The Ship can store all the treasure on the planet, calculating their value and giving them names. The nose of the Ship also disengages to fly with Olimar and Louie into the many caves to hold treasure where they can't reach the Ship- however, it can only take the treasure to the Ship by riding up one of the geysers, or else it must abandon all the treasure and escape. The Ship has many other abilities, such as detecting geographical features and bodily functions. It detests collecting dead bugs and the treasure from them.
It is interesting to note that Dolphin was the project name of the Nintendo Gamecube prior to its release.
Pikmin
Pikmin are small, brightly colored creatures who stand only an inch tall. The Pikmin games all revolve around Olimar's strategic manipulation of these creatures, who, for an unknown reason, follow his or Louie's every command. It is because of this that the Pikmin are extremely useful to Olimar and Louie — they can be used to defend their masters, or they can be used to retrieve large artifacts that could otherwise not be transported. Pikmin are generally very weak, unless they are used in teams, as the Pikmin are excellent at working together. Pikmin speak only strange, foreign squeak noises to each other. Simple commands can, however, be communicated to them by the use of a whistle or any other device capable of producing high-pitched noises. In truth, the species was named "Pikmin" by Olimar since to him, they bear a striking resemblance to the "Pikpik" carrots he likes so much.
Pikmin come in several colors, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. In the original Pikmin, there are three types of Pikmin; red Pikmin, who are better warriors than the rest and can withstand extreme heat, yellow Pikmin, who can be thrown higher than the rest of the Pikmin, as well as carrying the unique ability to throw bomb-rocks. However, in the second game, yellow Pikmin's special ability was changed; they can no longer throw bomb-rocks, as the bomb-rocks are much larger now, and can instead withstand electricity. Blue Pikmin have gills and can therefore walk in water without drowning.
In the second game, two new species of Pikmin were introduced. The first are white Pikmin, who, when ingested by enemies, deliver a fatal poison to the enemy. Additionally, the white Pikmin are immune to poison, can locate buried treasure with their special eyes, and can run faster than other Pikmin. The second species introduced are the purple Pikmin, who are slower than normal Pikmin, but make up for it by having ten times the strength and weight, giving them the ability to pick up much heavier objects and attack and destroy obstacles and other enemies with fewer numbers. Some of the treasures in the game require some purple Pikmin to carry them. A particularly notable one is the so-called "Doomsday Apparatus," which is a dumbbell. It requires 100 purple Pikmin to carry. The purple and white Pikmin are obtained only through the use of underground "Candypop Buds," special flowers which can change the color of Pikmin, and as such do not have any onions of their own. Because of this, purple and white Pikmin are stored in the spaceship at night.
There is also a much rarer type of Pikmin found in Pikmin 2, the Bulbmin, which is a parasitic form of Pikmin that inhabit dwarf red Bulborbs at a young age. Found only in caves, small Bulbmin follow a larger, more developed Bulbmin for protection. The full adult Bulborb's hunger and hunting instincts prove to be too much for the Bulbmin's control to thwart, and because of this, the adult Bulbmin will prey on Pikmin just as a regular Bulborb would, although the small Bulbmin following it will not. However, by defeating the large Bulbmin, the smaller ones following it around will scatter and the player can call them with the whistle. The Bulbmin are good allies, as they are resistant to fire, water, electricity, and poison, though, the only way you can take them above ground with you is to throw them into candypop buds and turn them into regular Pikmin. Otherwise, the Bulbmin just mill around the geyser that shoots you above ground. The bulbmin only appear in two or three caves, and the baby bulbmin only appear if you have less than 100 Pikmin with you when you fall onto the sublevel they're on.
Other characters
Other characters include Olimar's family. They include his wife, who was a loving, tiresome mother, his son, who was an energetic youth with a striped blue shirt and a blue cap, and his daughter. They owned Bulby, a dog who Olimar named the Bulborbs after. While described by Olimar in Pikmin, they communicated with Olimar via space e-mail in Pikmin 2. Also communicating via space e-mail was Louie's grandma, a caring yet senile old woman who wrote about Louie's connection with bugs, and the President's wife, an assertive old woman with a greed similar to her husband's. An extremely minor character simply known as SPAM occasionally e-mails giving messages to the player, he is completely shrouded in shadow so his appearance is unknown.
Settings
Pikmin Planet
In the first Pikmin game, many fans had suspected that the Pikmin homeworld is in fact our own Earth, and Pikmin 2 confirms this beyond any doubt: the treasures salvaged by the Pikmin through the course of the game include batteries, dentures, doll-heads and even old Nintendo console components. Familiar plants like weeds, clovers and dandelions are also observed during the course of the game.
When the game is actually set (in human chronology) is still not well known, the Pikmin planet looks like Earth, relatively unchanged from the present day. It has been suspected that the Pikmin series is set in a far flung future where humanity is gone and new animals have evolved and/or other alien animals have settled on the planet. This is backed up when Olimar claims one of the creatures has a "silicon-based exoskeleton." Silicon-based life is not native to Earth and the Waterwraith, though human-like in appearance is said to be from another dimension. Also several part machine-part animal creatures are encountered during the game, though the machines may be man-made. Also, when leaving the planet, the player can see the outlines of North America and Africa. Two treasures look like a half-globe of Earth, with seven continents the shape of Earth's continents. In Pikmin 2, each of the four playable areas is experiencing a different season, corresponding to the four seasons on Earth. However, the planet, if it is indeed Earth, must be present day, or maybe a few years into the future, as food items are found and they would spoil if they were left there millenia ago, or indeed a few weeks ago.
Hocotate
Asides from the Pikmin Planet, or Earth, the series references and sometimes takes place in the larger setting of interstellar space. In particular, the series references the homeworld of Olimar, Louie, and other characters, Hocotate. Hocotate is essentially a world whose society and biology mirrors that of present-day Earth, albeit on a very small level. For example, animals, such as dogs and birds, plants, such as onions and carrots, and objects, such as streetlights and bridges, all exist, except are proportional to the quarter-sized humanoid inhabitants. Other charted planets exist in this society, as Olimar travels to them. While in Pikmin this background is only described by Olimar, Pikmin 2 shows Hocotate and other planets in cut-scenes. Hocotate is portrayed as a desert-like, rocky planet with two perpendicular planetary rings.
The Hocotate Freight Company is a fictional interstellar transportation company in the Pikmin Series. The company is headquartered on the also fictional planet Hocotate. Both Captain Olimar and Louie are employed by the Hocotate Freight Company. At the beginning of Pikmin 2, the company was over 10,000 "Pokos" (Hocotate's currency) in debt, and thus sent Captain Olimar and Louie to retrieve artifacts to sell from the Pikmin planet in an attempt to get the company out of its then state of bankruptcy.
See also
External links
- Pikmin at Nintendo.com (Game information for the first Pikmin game)
- Pikmin 2 at Nintendo.com (Game information for the second Pikmin game)
- Pikmin.com
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