The mission? To collect all the missing parts of his ship by commanding up to a hundred tiny ant-like creatures. You take charge of Captain Olimar, whose plane crash lands on a mysterious planet. At its core, Pikmin is a real time strategy game, mixed with puzzle-solving elements. Perhaps the biggest challenge faced by the Pikmin series is just explaining what the game actually is. The seed of this idea clearly translated well to a potential RTS-style project, and sure enough, Miyamoto has since confirmed that those wanting to play the Mario 128 demo - with all these units on-screen - had already essentially played it, in the form of Pikmin 2. The idea of so many characters manipulated by the GameCube's analogue sticks didn't explicitly find its way into any actual Mario-branded game. However, the use of object physics, the ability to calculate more actions on-screen and the higher polygon count possible on then next-gen hardware was remarkable to behold at the time. Seeing 128 iterations of Mario running around was a great visual example of the Gamecube's processing power, but it wasn't a fully-formed game by any means. The tech behind Pikmin's rendering of so many individual units on-screen was, of course, originally made famous with the Super Mario 128 demo - a tech showcase for the Nintendo Gamecube as seen at the Spaceworld 2000 event. So how does Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 on Switch ultimately stack up to the 20 GameCube originals? And how does performance hold up - bearing in mind this appears to partly run through emulation on Switch? You get both GameCube classics, presented at a higher resolution, with a few extra tweaks to sweeten the deal - such as upgraded cut-scenes. This package of Pikmin games does more or less exactly what it says on the tin. It's not described as a remaster and it's certainly not a remake, merely an 'HD version' and understanding this is key to measuring our expectations going in. Pikmin 4 of course has just hit shelves - but for those keen to explore the origins of the series, Nintendo has you covered with the release of Pikmin 1 and 2 on Switch. There's never been a better time to get into the Pikmin series.

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