In Pikmin, the main protagonist is Captain Olimar, a tiny extraterrestrial from the planet Hocotate. The story starts when Olimar is taking an intergalactic vacation in outer space. However, during his flight, a comet hits his spaceship, the S.S. Dolphin (a reference to the GameCube’s codename, “Project Dolphin” and how ironic the best GameCube emulator in the world), which is then pulled into the gravity field of an uncharted planet. Parts of the spaceship fall off as it plummets to the ground and crashes.
When he regains consciousness, Olimar finds out that the planet’s atmosphere contains high levels of oxygen—an element deadly to his people—and he can stay on the planet for only 30 days before his life support system stops functioning. Olimar must retrieve many of the spaceship parts so he can rebuild his spaceship and return to Hocotate. Although Olimar initially states in his journal entries that he needs all 30 parts, as the game moves on it is hinted at that some parts might not be actually necessary to lift off, and, indeed, one can win the game without the said parts.
To help Olimar are indigenous creatures called Pikmin, which are nearly extinct and unable to survive in the environment without his leadership when he arrives. As this element of symbiosis develops, Olimar discovers parts of his ship and travels across the Pikmin Planet, which is assumed to be Earth, albeit with fictional fauna. The game has three endings depending upon how successful the player was in recovering the ship parts.
Gameplay
This is one of the best games we’ve played in the Oculus so far! Yes the frame rate is terrible and yes it is buggy as hell, but it is also lots of fun. Because of the nice colors and simple gameplay you don’t need an extreme high frame rate or extreme graphics. Let’s hope that the team at Oculus will also understand that; a good and fun game is a far more better experience than a pixel powered game. Pikmin does proof that. It’s to bad the emulator doesn’t let you record video’s with good quality. The game gets a bit sloppy while recording. But if you have an Oculus, you have to try this one.
