Pikmin[a][b] is a 2001 real-time strategy puzzle video game developed and published by Nintendo for the GameCube.

The game's story focuses on an alien pilot, Captain Olimar, who crash lands on a mysterious planet and must make use of a native species called "Pikmin" to find his ship's missing parts in order to escape within 30 days.

Players take control of Olimar and direct the different varieties of Pikmin to explore the game's various levels, overcoming obstacles and hostile creatures, in order to find and recover the missing ship parts.

The main goal in the game is to retrieve ship parts by using the three varieties of Pikmin available in different combinations.

Captain Olimar discovers multi-colored plant-animal hybrids that willingly follow his orders and help him recover the parts.

Objects that can be carried vary between ship parts, enemy carcasses and pellets, which are brought back to a base camp established in the current zone, containing Olimar's ship and apparati representative of each kind of Pikmin called Onions, the latter which can convert carcasses and pellets to Pikmin seeds.

At such time, Olimar will write a daily update to his ship log, which may be affected by events on that particular day, reflect on his efforts to escape, or provide useful gameplay hints.

In Pikmin, the main protagonist is Captain Olimar, a tiny, one-inch tall[6] humanoid extraterrestrial from the planet Hocotate.

To help Olimar are indigenous creatures called Pikmin, which are nearly extinct and unable to survive in the environment without direct leadership.

As this element of symbiosis develops, Olimar discovers parts of the Dolphin and travels across the Pikmin Planet, which is assumed to be Earth, albeit with fictional fauna and far after the extinction of humans.

If thirty days pass with all 25 required ship parts collected but not the 5 optional parts, Olimar is forced to hastily escape the planet before his life support system ceases function, leaving the Pikmin to fend for themselves, but Olimar nonetheless successfully escapes the planet.

Hino explains: I still can clearly recall the first time that I saw multiple Pikmin working together to carry a big opponent.

Until then, we had been struggling to find the direction that this game should have, but when these "carry" actions were completed, we were able to determine the future of Pikmin.

[26] Brian McTaggart of the Houston Chronicle praised it for its graphics, gameplay, and originality, but criticized it for being short.

[29] The Wii re-release of Pikmin was not as well-received as the GameCube version, though it still had mostly positive reception; it holds an average score of 77/100 from Metacritic.

He compared it to Super Mario 3D All-Stars, where many of the graphical updates consist of upscaling as opposed to a more detailed reworking of the game's textures.

Following the release of "Ai no Uta" by Strawberry Flower, an image song related to Pikmin, its sales recovered slightly to about 22,000 copies in a week.

It was released on December 25, 2008, in Japan,[1] February 6, 2009, in Europe and March 9, 2009, in North America (original version only).

Pikmin uses the Wii Remote, and requires the player to point and click on the screen to do various tasks instead of manually moving a cursor with a control stick.

[36] In an interview, director Shigefumi Hino stated that besides adding motion controls, they wanted to include the ability to go back to saves they have made in the past, allowing players to replay all 30 days one by one in order to improve.