YMMV / Pikmin (2001)

• Anti-Climax Boss: While the Smoky Progg can easily lay waste to an army of Pikmin if fought normally, by setting up a large pile of bomb rocks and detonating them when it's in range, it's possible to one-shot it.
• Breather Level: The Impact Site. You'll have to go there at least once after the tutorial, and it's almost as peaceful as it was when Olimar first crashed down. Sure, if you take too many days, two Optional Bosses show up; however, the first one can't actually kill your Pikmin and the second one is only dangerous to non-Blue Pikmin. The only enemies in the area that can actively kill your Pikmin are the Pearly Clamclamps, which don't move and are easy to take down once you get their timing down. The area is also extremely good for replenishing Pikmin reserves; pellets are everywhere and the pearls the clams drop are worth a whopping fifty Pikmin!
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mushroom Pikmin. More than a few pieces of fan art that involves the race itself has the Mushroom type depicted alongside the others, despite never being controllable. This probably owes to their design, and how they are the only evil species of Pikmin in the series. The closest we'd get to another evil Pikmin species being Bulbmin, which are less malicious and more predatory, and Scornets, who are not Pikmin at all, but rather an Evil Counterpart to them as a whole.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The best ending hints at there being at least fourteen additional Pikmin colors. Of course, it's not like the lack of such a cutscene that shows this would stop anyone from making Pikmin OCs ranging from a simple OC Pikmin to entirely new subspecies of Pikmin.
  • Similarly, there's the bad ending where you have less than 25 ship parts. If Olimar fails to escape the planet, he perishes and is rebirthed as a Pikmin. Many like to imagine Olimar's fate after that. Pikmin 4 ends up taking place in a timeline very similar to this one, though Olimar gets turned into a humanoid Pikmin called a Leafling instead of a Pikmin with his head, and ultimately gets cured from this fate.
  • The Puffstool, primarily due to the Mushroom Pikmin, which are endless sources of stories and theories.
• Good Bad Bugs: Moving the C-Stick in a tight circle while mashing the throw button will cause Olimar to rapid-fire Pikmin. This is useful for getting Pikmin up ledges quickly or latching Pikmin onto enemies that can't be swarmed.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The bad ending, where Olimar dies from his life-support system failing and gets turned into a Pikmin, becomes much worse when the fourth game has the exact same scenario occur due to Moss sneaking aboard the ship and forcing Olimar to turn around, meaning Olimar dying is now canonical to the series.
  • Olimar notes the Interstellar Radio sends out a constant S.O.S. signal, but he has no choice but to continue in his search rather than wait for a rescue party. Turns out in an alternate continuity, Olimar's S.O.S. signal did get picked up by a rescue crew... which led to dozens of other people getting stranded on the planet in the exact same situation as Olimar.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When you dismiss Pikmin in this game they turn pale, which results in Red Pikmin being pink and Blue Pikmin being cyan.
• Nightmare Retardant: As terrifying as the bad ending is, much of it is lessened by the goofy-sounding music that plays during it, as well as the random Red Pikmin in the background that stretches for no reason.
• Polished Port: The Switch version, which contains all of the quality of life upgrades from the Wii version, as well as an upscaled resolution, higher quality textures, a more stable framerate, and the option to play with traditional controls. In addition, the infamous crushing glitch and audio bugs from the Wii version have been fixed, alleviating complaints about the original keeping said bugs in.
• Porting Disaster: The "New Play Control!" Wii version, despite adding the quality of life changes from the second game and having native widescreen, unfortunately suffers from worse performance than the GameCube original. Examples include glitched sound effects in the Japanese, North American, and Australian releases that were not present in the GameCube version (most notably the "squeaking" sounds from Bulborbs and Wollywogs), major bugs from the original not being fixed and actually occurring more frequently, and awkwardly mapping the camera buttons and swarming to the Wii Remote's +Control Pad. Prior to the release of the Switch version, which fixed these issues and is considered a Polished Port as a result, it wasn't unheard of to hear fans prefer the GameCube version.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Bomb rocks. It's no wonder that Yellow Pikmin are often only ever used in to tear down gates and reach other areas where they're required for a ship part, and for the most part considered useless otherwise.
    • Yellows thrown while holding them immediately drop them when whistled back, which ignites the bomb rocks in the process. Similarly, when thrown at an enemy, the Pikmin moves back and then lobs the bomb rock at it, which causes it to explode on contact. Not too bad... except for the fact that the Yellow then immediately tries to run back towards Olimar, often right into the explosion as a result. Similarly, against enemies that actively chase Pikmin, the Yellows continually try to inch away until they eventually get caught on something, and then proceed to either get eaten or drown.
    • The game doesn't keep you locked on a specific Pikmin type regardless of position, instead focusing on Pikmin directly behind Olimar. More often than not, if you don't have a group specifically full of bomb rock holders, this means it's all too easy to either throw a non-bomb rock holder into the explosion when trying to take down a gate or throw one with a bomb rock where other Pikmin are gathered and potentially cause a multitude of casualties.
    • The Wii remake adds its own issue where thrown Pikmin won't drop the bomb rocks they're holding when whistled back. While this sounds good on paper — and, indeed, can make it less cumbersome to move them around — it also makes getting them to drop the things an exercise in tedium. Oh, and it makes defeating the final boss without losing any Pikmin a nightmare. It's not exactly a problem in a casual run of the game, but if you're going for a zero death run, well...
  • Occasionally when Pikmin are walking, they'll trip and fall behind. This forces you wait for a second for them to catch up, wasting precious seconds in the day. It's supposed to be far less common with flowered Pikmin, but even then, it still tends to happen far more frequently than it should. Thankfully, it's less common in the second game and totally removed in the third game.
  • Flowered Pikmin sprouting seeds if you lose too many in battle during the previous day. The idea is that it helps null some of the impact of losing a large amount of Pikmin in battle, but since usually it's only boss creatures that will cause you to lose a substantial amount of Pikmin, and they're often located in extremely out-of-the-way places, it all too frequently means you'll have to put up with being unable to use one hundred Pikmin at once until you go out of your way to collect the Pikmin sprouts in the area, once again wasting precious time during the day. This was removed in the second and third games.
  • Pikmin are attracted by nearly everything within this game. Even if the player doesn't swarm it or throw them at it, they'll go ahead and attack it anyways, such as Pellet Posies (even if they're not fully grown). Rather infamously, if the player accidentally runs over some nectar grass or rocks, the Pikmin will immediately drop what they were doing and go ahead to pluck up some of the sugary fluid, which combined with the nectar-drinking animation taking even more time to finish (and the aforementioned sources often being very close to enemies) will often lead to lots of frantic whistling and a lot of dead Pikmin.
  • Tasks such as building bridges, carrying ship parts, and plucking Pikmin sprouts take an absurd amount of time to finish, leading to many cases of being stuck waiting around for them to finish, wasting precious time of the day. The second and third games would make these tasks significantly faster, as well as adding new Pikmin types that have faster carrying speed.
  • The game as a whole has several bugs and glitches that have earned ire, mostly due to killing Pikmin from sources that are outside the player's control.
    • Sheargrubs and Shearwigs become invincible once they snatch a Pikmin, essentially making it impossible to save that Pikmin and pretty much guaranteeing casualties when fighting large groups of them. Worse, like Wollywogs, even if you deplete their health, they'll still kill the Pikmin anyway if they happened to grab one before their health was completely depleted. This was fixed in the second game.
    • Pikmin often clip through bridges when walking across them, leading to many red and yellow Pikmin drowning when crossing over water. More infamously, going underneath a bridge will cause Pikmin to clip under the ground, fall out of bounds, and die. It's entirely possible to lose a group of 100 Pikmin in under 5 seconds just from going underneath a bridge. This was also fixed in the second game.
    • The crushing glitch. When swarming enemies such as a Bulborb or the Puffstool, there is a very high chance that the enemy will cause several Pikmin to instantly die for no reason, with no chance to save them. This is caused by the enemy's model pushing Pikmin through the ground, causing them to fall out of bounds and die. Needless to say, this ends up being the single biggest problem to players attempting a zero death run, and single-handedly makes Pikmin 1 the hardest game in the series to complete deathless. This was finally fixed in the Switch version, meaning players can enjoy the game without it being nearly as unfair as the original or New Play Control version.
  • The Wii version only allows motion controls and doesn't have any compatibility with the GameCube controller, despite the Wii having ports for that controller. The Switch version rectifies this by having both control schemes.
• Ugly Cute: True to our real world, the Pikmin series doesn't stray away from having some strange creatures, but this doesn't make any of them less endearing. It really helps that at our scale, they would essentially be Fun Size.
  • The Bulborbs are as goofy as they are iconic, with a ladybug-like backside, long eyestalks, and a giant mouth, evocative of some kind of muppet.
  • While an imposing final boss in its own right, the Emperor Bulblax is no less adorable as its brothers and sisters, with a big droopy face and a long slobbering tongue reminiscent of some kind of Bulldog.
  • The Mamuta's asymmetrical body plan, bizarre anatomy, and wide, unblinking eyes gives off an impression to an off-brand plush toy you would buy at a yard sale as a child. It helps that they're one of the friendliest enemies in the game.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The idea of certain parts of the ship being optional, allowing players to finish the game without having all of them, ends up being a bit superfluous despite the emphasis the game puts on it. 25 of the 30 parts are required for the standard ending to begin with, one of the optional parts is dropped by the Final Boss that can only be reached after finding every other part, and the other four aren't inherently harder to get compared to any required part (and aren't noted as optional outside of the End-Game Results Screen). It typically only comes into play if a player is able to get 29/30 parts but can't retrieve the Secret Safe before hitting the day deadline.

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