The Nintendo Switch has become the defacto home for Pikmin in short order. It took a long time for any entries in the series to be released on it, with Pikmin 3 heading over from the Wii U in a deluxe variant three and a half years after the system’s launch. While players had Pikmin 4 as a dangling carrot, that game felt like a pipe dream and it seemed like a lot of hope was lost for the series' future alongside a lack of keeping its past alive. Thankfully, the June 18, 2025 Nintendo Direct showcased a digital (and later physical) release of the first two games meaning that within a one month span until Pikmin 4, the Switch went from having one playable Pikmin game to soon having every mainline entry playable not only on a single platform, but on the go as well.
Having the first two entries in the series on the Switch feels perfect because they’ve always been games that worked wonderfully in pick up and play sessions or in longer sessions if you wanted to do a deeper-dive into them. In a lot of ways, the console’s hybrid nature is perfect because it’s easy to just knock out a single day’s mission work or even do a couple of days if you’re feeling like spending a bit more time in the world. If you’re taking your time to find everything hidden in the world, it’s fun to just kick back and void objectives sometimes and get lost in the game because it very much feels like you’re fairly small in relation to much larger pieces of the environment. The sense of scale is reminiscent of Disney’s “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” film and later theme park attraction where you felt microscopic in a theoretical real-world environment.
Captain Olimar’s adventures are as much fun now as they were in 2001 and in some ways, they’re actually more fun because there aren’t a ton of Pikmin-likes on the market beyond The Wild at Heart and Tinykin and it’s very much an RTS for someone who doesn’t have much experience with the genre and has a user-friendly approach to the genre. Olimar’s never-ending quest to get back home feels so quaint and his chipper attitude is refreshing to see after so many years of bitter, jaded protagonists. In his first adventure, he’s crashed onto a planet and befriends a whole species to attempt to get home and in the sequel, he gets sent back after his bosses realize all he can do for the company now with the Pikmin by his side. No matter what’s thrown his way, he takes it all in stride and it feels like a game from a bygone era in a great way in that regard.
The sequel kept the core formula alive from the first game, but changed the premise up by adding more kinds of Pikmin. Having three to work with in the first game kept it simple, while adding two more types for the follow-up allowed the puzzles to get more elaborate. The gameplay loop is similar across both titles, but the second game has more puzzle variety and is more rewarding, while the first game is easier to get the hang of and conquer. The first game does have a time limit of thirty in-game days or about fifteen hours, but most players won’t need that much time and you can save so frequently that it’s never a problem to just go back and redo ten minutes of core progress after struggling to find a solution for a bit.
Pikmin 1+2 on the Switch are the definitive version of the games control-wise right now – with improvements being possible if they ever do a full-on remaster. These games were originally on the GameCube, so regular controller support feels natural for them, but they also got New Play Control versions on the Wii with Wii remote functionality that gave you pointer controls. Those felt natural for a game like this and were one of the few value-priced ways to enjoy the games over the years. The Switch version offers up the best of both worlds with the regular controls being remapped easily on the Pro controller/Joy-Cons alongside pointer-style controls being kept in with gyro controls for aiming the Pikmin. It’s the best-controlling version of either GC-era entry yet and even has HD Rumble support baked in to help further enhance the experience.
From a technical perspective, both games run better than they ever have with full native widescreen support. Anyone who has dabbled in widescreen hacks over the years knows how wonky HUD elements can look in a game that isn’t meant to have 16:9 and work has been put in to make every part of the in-game HUD and the regular menus look natural. Nothing is oddly-stretched, nothing looks incorrect to the eye and both games run at 1080p on TV and 720p in portable mode with rock-solid framerates. Textures for things like text on the numbered switches for letting you know how many Pikmin are needed to move objects being much cleaner than it was on the GC or the Wii.
Now, not every aspect of the game has been visually improved. The environmental textures are largely unchanged and are easily the worst part of the experience because they’re such a smeary mess. The grass looks melted on top of the world as does snow, which just shows up smeared into rocks and doesn’t show up above the object it’s on in any way. It’s not altogether surprising that this is the case as these are just HD ports and not remasters, but the increase in resolution and clarity of the game as a whole through modern displays isn’t kind to something originally meant to be viewed on CRT, which would hide some of the flaws.
As a remaster, it’s an excellent incarnation of Nintendo’s definitive RTS series and the retention of the pointer controls is a pleasant surprise. It would have been easy, especially for a remaster and not a full-on remake to omit them, but they were kept in and enable more precision on-field. As stealth releases, they feel finely-polished and shine a bright light on how great the series is while also making it easy to yearn for a remake since the titles' textures are showing their age a bit and it would be neat to see Nintendo take a crack at these ala the Super Mario RPG remake where you keep the core art style intact and just upgrade all the visuals to a then-modern standard.
