Are we pikmin?


Pikmin is such a great game because I can’t think of many other games where you send soldiers to their death whom you’re so emotionally attached to. Obviously there are tons of RTS where you control an army but I’m not as invested in their survival.
It probably has something to do with the player character physically being on the ground with the pikmin, throwing them to their demise. In most RTSes you’re a faceless overlord commanding the troops from up on high.
Ah, XCOM, two squares away, using an RPG, 96% chance to hit the alien, shoot, miss, take out the team mate with only an eye poking out from behind a wall because he was caught in the explosion when the rocket hit the corner. Use the rest of your movement to take a step back to reduce your odds of death, alien walks up and guts you.
Typical combat sequence. Loved that game.
In 3rd Gen, “Pokémon” would often be abbreviated as “pkmn”, so you’re not far off
I was in my 20s, long before having children, and I was yelling at them like toddlers, too.
My friend at the time was plying and accidentally called a whole pack of blue Pikmin through a wall of fire, killing all of them, and he just paused the game and said, “I’m a bad father.”
Pikmin is a crash course in what it’s like to have dependents.
I picked up Pikmin (Gamecube) when my first child was an infant, so my parenting skills were always intertwined with those little idiots.