Trivia / Pikmin (2001)

• Blooper: The description in the Nintendo eShop originally mentioned that Olimar only has thirty days worth of oxygen, which is a gas that's poisonous to him. This mistake was caught and fixed a few hours later.
  Meet Captain Olimar and a capable cast of red, blue, and yellow Pikmin on a dire mission across a larger-than-life planet. Olimar must guide his loveably-leafy companions through obstacles, in battle, and when collecting his missing ship parts. Your oxygen will only last 30 days, but the Pikmin provide a glimmer of hope that you may make it home.
• Defictionalization: The flower Chaenostoma cordatum (better known as Bacopa cordata), a flower that resembles the white flower on fully bloomed Pikmin's heads, was originally cultivated in partnership with Nintendo to promote the game.
• Dummied Out:
  • The game contains quite a few unused elements in its code, including bizarre things like models of Mario and a Goomba and a rock-like enemy that spits out smaller rocks, as well as a moon texture (which is unused as you are never allowed to play after sundown).
  • The game's files contain an almost fully functional PC version of the game that was most likely used for debugging purposes.
  • Olimar has a journal entry for when he collects all the ship pieces, but since the game ends as soon as the last one is collected, it never appears during gameplay.
    I have finally recovered all 30 parts of my ship and succeeded in escaping this strange world! To think, all the times I almost gave up hope... On the now distant surface, the brave Pikmin that aided me in my perilous quest are running about as if I had never come. Will our paths ever cross again...?
    At any rate, I can finally return to my home world. I feel relief, of course, but also a certain sadness. I can't exactly say... Perhaps, I am just thinking of the long journey through space that still lies before me. This time, I shall set my ship's navigation system so that I encounter no more meteors, and I shall enjoy a long relaxing sleep. I shan't forget you, Pikmin!
  • There are Texture files of all Pikmin types holding Bomb Rocks, indicating that all Pikmin were going to originally be able to do so, instead of just Yellow Pikmin in the final game. Every Pikmin would later be able to carry Bomb Rocks in Pikmin 3.
• God Never Said That: It is widely stated that Pikmin began as an offshoot of the Mario 128 demo for the Nintendo GameCube, due to Shigeru Miyamoto saying in a 2007 Game Developers Conference keynote speech that the demo became Pikmin. However, he only meant this figuratively, in that Pikmin showcases many of the features seen in the demo; the game had already been in development for years, having started planning in the early days of the Nintendo 64, and the main creative team was unaware of the tech demo.
• Moved to the Next Console: Pikmin was originally planned between the transition of the SNES and Nintendo 64, was worked on as a Nintendo 64 game for several years, then development moved over to the Nintendo GameCube in order to capitalize on the hardware being able to render a lot of characters at once.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • Back during the early days of the franchise when Pikmin 1 was still new and dumping ROMs online and looking at the code was still in the very early stages, there were hundreds upon hundreds of supposed cheats that would net you colors of Pikmin that weren't in the game. The most infamous was a possible "Rainbow" Pikmin, who were either striped with multiple colors, changed color at random, or had red, blue, and yellow on their body in some way. The only thing most of the rumors shared was that they had all the other Pikmin's facial features and possessed all Pikmin powers too. Exactly how you were supposed to get them, however, varied from source to source, from beating the game in an impossible amount of days which would unlock a New Game Plus you can use them in, to one source that said you had to throw Yellow Pikmin holding bomb rocks into the spring at the Impact Site then immediately end the day as soon as they hit, and the Rainbow Pikmin would be there the very next day. They were all fake, but this hasn't stopped people from wanting actual Rainbow Pikmin in a future game, even if it ends up being a Bragging Rights Reward.
  • There was an old "glitch" rumor that you could get the Beady Long Legs out of its arena in one and taking it to where the Libra is causes it to crash the game. Not only is this impossible^note The BLL is programmed with two "spheres" around it; if the smaller sphere around it goes out of the larger one, its A.I. immediately defaults to taking it back into the center of the arena but hacking the game to have it go out of bounds to where the Libra and abyss are simply causes it to de-spawn if it goes too far into it.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The game started out as a game called "Adam and Eve" which focused on their lives. The game was set in a prehistoric environment (mammoths and all) where you would watch the life of two characters unfold and eventually the amount of characters would expand. You were originally in a "God" role, mainly watching the characters and making them either fight or giving them love. The idea was scrapped because they couldn't figure out an objective for the game. The one aspect from that stage to survive into the finished game were the Bulborbs, which were originally meant to be the aforementioned "mammoths", before being retooled into predatory enemies.
  • Originally, Pikmin didn't have a protagonist and the characters were weapons shot by the player. Eventually the Pikmin were changed into being more like companions and tools, and Olimar was created.
  • The Pikmin themselves had several design changes. They were first around the size of a house cat, but were made smaller later in development. The original design was completely black with no facial features. Later on, they were changed to be pastel colors, but the final product uses just red, blue and yellow. The Pikmin were originally meant to be different shapes (fat, tall, short, thin, etc.) and they each had their own life meters, but it was deemed too complicated, so they opted for one size of Pikmin in three different colors. The idea of Pikmin with different body shapes was eventually brought back, as the variants of Pikmin introduced in later games all have distinct body shapes and heights in addition to unique colors.
  • During conception, there were plans on making Pikmin have a much more somber and mysterious tone, as a way of making it stand out from other Nintendo franchises that were bright and vibrant at the time. Specific inspirations including Tim Burton and European films like Fantastic Planet.
  • Strawberries were originally supposed to be used as twenty pellets in Pikmin 1, but for whatever reason they were replaced with the literal twenty pellets of the finished game. Their model would later be reused in Pikmin 2 as one of the various treasures on the planet, and re-reused in Pikmin 3 as one of the kinds of collectible fruit.
  • Originally more than 100 Pikmin could be on the field, but this was changed due to the limitations of the GameCube.
  • Yellows weren't originally the only ones to carry bomb rocks in the first game. Red and Blue Pikmin could have carried them too, and Yellows would have had their electric immunity they had from Pikmin 2 onwards. However, problems with getting electric hazards to work right and time restraints forced the development team to abandon electric hazards until the sequel, and in order to give Yellows a purpose, they were made the only Pikmin who could carry bomb rocks. In Pikmin 3 all types can now carry bomb rocks, while Pikmin 4 has them being thrown by the player character.
  • In the first game, achieving the bad ending would trigger a new gameplay mode where the player controlled Olimar's ghost and played through his memories, but was ultimately scrapped.

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