Video: Digital Foundry's Technical Analysis Of Pikmin 1+2 On Switch

I'm not from or living in an English speaking country so thankfully this doesn't affect me. But what the heck is up with the edited translation in the English language versions? And no, this was not a change introduced with the Wii ports or anything, this is new.

They hold up amazingly. Decided to do 2 on the steam deck though (yes I own the originals) .. mainly because I wanted the branded collectibles. Probably seems silly but makes a difference to me.

I re-played all of the three first games in preparation for 4. I loved Pikmin 1. It's almost a perfect game. Short and sweet.

Pikmin 2, not so much. They took away the game's main strength, the time-management, and replaced it with a very unforgiving dungeon crawl. It's much longer than the first game, but feels very padded out with random dungeons that go on way too long. Some of them have 15 or more floors! They reward very slow, patient play because you can't afford to lose any pikmin. Just not the strength of the series.

Pikmin 3, it's again great. I feel like the level design isn't quite as tight as in Pikmin 1 - they're much bigger but are more disjointed with multiple areas and tunnel systems.

So far, Pikmin 1 is my favorite. I have Pikmin 4 downloaded and will try later today!

@RobynAlecksys

No offence chief but I'd say it is more people like you who are the problem.

You immediately turned it into a console war thing in your comment which makes you sound very insecure.

And before you try and accuse me of Xbox bias please look at my comment history and see how I have not been impressed with Microsoft's actions of late.

@wollywoo I actually prefer pikmin 2 BECAUSE they got rid of the 30 day time limit because it was a bit suffocating and I prefer games that let me play at my own pace.
But pikmin 1 was good based on what I played of the wii port but that’s my opinion.

@RobynAlecksys All they do is compare resolution and frame rates of games, what’s so offensive about it if enthusiasts like these videos.

@JONOFTHEJONS Some of the facts they share may be inconvenient.
People might even develop opinions based on those facts!

I'm sure us Switch gamers are huge sticklers for frame rate and resolution.

Maybe Nintendo figures Pikmin 4 won't sell well and decided to hastily slap the old ones on there to make a bit more cash.

@MythTgr

They would still mod their Switches and run their games free on emulation even if Nintendo icluded 100% of all games they've ever released on the NSO. They could always find another excuse

@wollywoo this is exactly how I rate them. I do replay Pikmin 1 every year.

@MythTgr Why let you RENT gc games via your expensive NSO subscription when they can sell them to you at full price? Gotta milk their loyal fans as much as they can.

I hardly ever herd any distaste for pikmin 2 until that 1 youtuber made a video on it. Its not as challenging or archaic as it made it out to be. It’s the fan favorite of the series

@TheBigK Let's wait until official sales numbers for Pikmin 4 are revealed before we make those assumptions.

@theModestMouse And yet I'd still rather pay full price for actual ownership of the games, especially when those games are some of my favourites of all time. (No, I'm not subscribed to NSO.)

@wollywoo I thought Pikmin 1 would be stressful because of its time limit, and Pikmin 2 would be just right. Ironically, 2 ended up being the more stressful one, with its seemingly endless dungeons. Good game, but the second half gets bogged down at times.

I ended up loving 1, and it was also less stressful... except for the last bit, when I suddenly realized that I could still finish within the time limit on my first run, if I did those last few days perfectly! (This is after playing almost the whole game while not always knowing where to go, and not being especially careful with my time management. I suddenly had to tighten up for the last stretch!)

it's an interesting decision to do such bare bones remasters.

One of the reasons why I've not got Pikmin 4 yet is that I want to play 1 and 2 as well, but don't want to go from 4 with all the quality of life features, to the GameCube games.

I replayed 1 + 2 on the Switch and thought the games held up very well. I played the originals on the GameCube and loved them. It’s nice to play them on a modern console. They look great and are still fun. The first game is my favorite in the series.

Ready to pick these up physically so I can finally play them. I got into 3 not too long ago, but want to go back to the first games. Back when these dropped on GC, I was at that age (16ish) where I felt I was “too cool” / “too old” for them. Teenagers are stupid. lol

I finally beat Pikmin 1 on the switch (with the 60fps cheat, sue me), and it's really good if not basic compared to the others. Pikmin 2 I completed a few years back, and I preferred it to this one if I'm being honest. not because of the time limit, but because it didn't grab me as much as 2 or ESPECIALLY 3 did, but hey, now I can finally play 4!

@MythTgr I hope there will be more GameCube ports but just in terms of data it wouldn't work to have them as an NSO app. NES cartridges held up to 1 MB, Sega Genesis 5 MB, SNES 6MB Game Boy Color 8 MB, Game Boy Advance 32 MB, N64 64 MB. GameCube discs held 1.46 GB which is small compared to their PS2 and Xbox contemporaries but still probably too big to be handled the same was as the systems included with NSO. Right now the N64 NSO app with 23 games is 1.1 GB, a comparable GameCube NSO app would be a massive space filler. Add in the fact that game design philosophies haven't really changed that much since the GameCube era and it just makes more sense for Nintendo to release ports instead of an NSO app.

@Uncle_Franklin Same here. I can easily purchase them digitally or play them on Dolphin but I’d rather wait for the physical release so I can play them in HD on my living room TV… and I just prefer physical media when possible.

I have a lot of games in my backlog to play in the meantime but I find it really weird to release the physical remasters two months after 4.

I don't REALLY care if these run at 30 fps as long as it's stable. I've played the GC versions and they ran fine. The Only reason why I didn't buy the Wii ports of Pikimin 1&2 was that:

1.I could play the GC ver. of 1&2 on the Wii GC backwards compatibility.

2. The GC versions themselves were already cheap at the time when the Wii ports were out. So it didn't makes sense for me to waste spending $40 on the Wii ports of the same games.

I'll pick the Switch physical release around Christmas or so.

Are Pikmin 1 + 2 Switch version easier to play than the Gamecube version for newbie players ?

"Objective of Pikmin is to gather spaceship parts and fruit within 30 days."
....Ummmm...

@DanijoEX
Pikmin Gamecube & Wii games are really expensive here in Indonesia considering they are very rare games and very very few Indonesian peoples have interest with Pikmin games.

@Anti-Matter It's the same case here in the US just with the case of price. It's also the only reason why i'm getting the Switch release of Pikmin 1&2.

I'm just not dropping $200+ for Pikimin 2 whether it's the GC or Wii version.

@steely_pete Surprised this isn't getting discussed more. Nintendo english localization team sanitized the dialogue and made the humor more 'cultural appropriate'. Has me worried for future remasters. Don't alter the script for sensitive snowflakes who represent a vocal minority and probably won't even buy the game anyway.

Look, I am just happy I can access the game on a Nintendo system without having to search on Ebay and dust off my Gamecube.

Do I wish the ports were better? Sure but honestly I can accept a lower effort port if the cost match. $40 USD sounds fair for the collection based on the feedback so far.

Either way, know I definitely want the physical copies so can get over my regret during the Gamecube era when I for some reason, didnt buy Pikmin 1 & 2. Might just wait a little longer and find it used or wait for a sale, like Pikmin 3.

@steely_pete @AlexanderDaniels You’re kidding me. I haven’t watched this DF analysis yet but does it go into the dialogue changes you referenced? I’m getting so tired of woke NOA up in Seattle “fixing” things to appease culture activists.
Mario Golf: Super Rush. “Mario hit that one into the rough. Can THEY get it onto the green still.” So we can’t assume Mario’s gender any more, NOA?! This translation team in Seattle are a canker sore on the great Japanese parent company.
Remember, folks. NOA is just a marketing firm and distributor. Nothing more.

@mereel You do realize the usage of they was likely their attempt to record less lines, right? That's not being woke, that's just cutting corners. You're the only person I've met upset about that.

@mereel I haven't watched the DF video yet. Here's one of many examples of script change. A side by side comparison of a treasure description from original version to switch port. No context is needed once you read for yourself.

https://twitter.com/iuntue/status/1673089489126785027?t=MYVj7jTzfuWXSn68Ur9bWg&s=19

Looking forward to getting these eventually. Love having multiple entries of a series on one console.

@JONOFTHEJONS I guess because they then compare frame rates, resolution etc across platforms (of Multiplatform games) causing people to argue tit for tat ''mine is better than yours''

@AlexanderDaniels
I'm glad they changed this example of dialogue. These poor gags have been used so many times it's boring, outdated and simply not funny anymore.
But that's just my opinion.

How do they get away with releasing bare bones ports of 20 year old games running at 30 fps? These games should run at 60 fps.

@MythTgr

That's the reason why I have retroarch on my series x. Get to play any gamecube games I want, and most run fantastic.
(If nintendo would release them on switch and allowed us to buy them, I gladly would!)

@Fake-news I'm one for not wanting past media being censored for being products of their time. I'd rather Nintendo follow Capcoms example of their recent-released Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection and add a disclaimer warning players about culturally insensitive content to appease the "modern sensibilities" of people who can't get over the fact that not everything is made to reflect their worldview-- instead of being disingenuous by changing original scripts of two decade old games and claiming they're simply returning classics in HD.

As far as I'm aware, this is only an English issue and the other languages seems intact. That's quite telling.

@JoakimZ
It's this or nothing. And since it's good enough for most, customers aren't gonna complain too much even if they think things could be better.

@mereel

Wish they localized the english translations to somewhere outside west coast-US. Soon, we wont even be able to recruit kidsoldiers in Fire Emblem and Valkyria Chronicles.

@JoakimZ

I think it's because it runs on emulation, either Switch cant emulate Gamecube-games in both HD and higher framerates, or it would take too much work to get the game logic to function in higher framerate, if the original code is hardwired to update at 30. Remember, emulated games like Shenmue on PS4 is also stuck at 30. Pretty common among official emulated ports on consoles.

@Greatluigi

I've always thought that they should have kept designing the games around a timer and included a mode that turns it off for the people who prefer to play without. Then everyone would be happy.

@RobynAlecksys They don't have a bias.
When the Xbox 360 was running games better than PS3, they pointed that out - and were called Xbox biased by Playstation fans.

When the PS4 was running games better than Xbox One, they pointed that out - and were called Playstation biased by Xbox fans.

Now, the Series X is more powerful than PS5 and thus runs most games better than it, which they of course cover, but sometimes we've actually seen better performance on PS5 versions, and they have shown these examples too.

The cutscenes in Pikmin 2 are most likely NOT upscaled with AI for the Switch release.
In 2004 it was already common practice to render out films at a much higher resolution than they would be displayed at on the target device, so they were easier to use in promotion material.

Considering this, Nintendo has likely had high quality versions of these sequences lying around ever since production of Pikmin 2, and could shove them into the HD rerelease with little effort needed.

everyone expected Pikimin 1/2 on Switch to be like Metroid Prime Remastered, not simply HD ports

@Orpheus79V love the whole biased comment even when it's trying to claim its not. We're actually seeing equal performance across both systems, with only unique cases for performance better on one than the other (although that is usually PS5). "More powerful" is very narrow-minded as well, the console has 1 extra Teraflop but we're at a power level on both devices that's so high that it doesn't really matter in practice (plus the PS5 storage method makes the overall loading experience faster on the platform).

@MythTgr sadly we can’t inject games into Mario all stars or pikmin since only the graphics of the games are emulated and the rest is ported. Also even on a modded switch, most gamecube games can’t run at full speed even if the switch is fully overclocked

Thanks to DF, I realized how much nicer the game could look, and once again went with the legally dubious option. Thank again DF!

Not only that, It sickens me to learn that some of the game's original (already pretty tame) humor was scrubbed out.