In Pikmin, one of Nintendo’s more recent Intellectual Properties, one is taken on a seemingly charming journey across space and distant planets in a truly superb experience that can be most similarly likened with the RTS genre. On the surface this tale is about a castaway explorer who, with the help of alien friends, manages to find his way back to his home planet. One cannot help but notice that the title is charming, colourful, and bright. However, the game has much darker and insidious undertones that, whether knowingly or not, Nintendo has worked into their series metaphorically. Perhaps if Capcom was as sneaky as Nintendo, Resident Evil 5 would have caused the gaming community a great deal less headaches.

Our ‘hero’, the castaway Captain Olimar of the Hocotate Freight Company, crash-lands on a distant planet whilst exploring outer space. Olimar seeks to return home but is unable to do so without aide. To do so he enslaves a population of different coloured creates that are native to the planet. These creatures are both intelligent and social beings who dwell in structures, later named Onions by our ‘Hero’, and expertise in various trades that benefit them in their natural environment. For this reason, Olimar exploits the trusting creatures for his own purposes under the guise of helping out this population.

One cannot help but draw comparisons to European explorers and Christian Missionaries ‘educating’ and converting natives in Africa, America and Asia during the Colonial period and Mercantilist era. Olimar, much like the explorer Christopher Columbus of Castile and Aragon (modern day Spain) did with his ‘Indians’, decides to name the natives Pikmin. Olimar sees the Pikmin as lower beings that he can help with his superior way of life, whilst benefiting from their physical labour.



Once Olimar gets what he wants he abandons the natives, leaving them to fend for themselves after they have grown accustomed to the parasitic, if not somewhat paternalistic, symbiotic relationship that was experienced. One can liken this in history when the Romans fled Britain to protect their continental borders from invaders, leaving the indigenous Celts who had grown accustomed to their protection from exploitative overlords only to suffer invasions from Germanic tribes that would push them into modern day Wales and Scotland.

Much like the early explorers, Olimar returns home with souvenirs the distant lands, which the local economy puts a high value on, resulting in further voyages to the faraway lands for the harvest of valuable raw materials. This is where Imperialism blatantly rears its ugly head in Pikmin. While Columbus, also lauded as a hero, did significant damage to indigenous peoples, further voyages on behalf of Spain led to the extermination and exploitation of the natives on a much larger scale. One need only look to Hernando Cortes’ campaign over the Aztec people for proof of that.

Imperialism is defined as the direct extension of sovereignty and dominion over a foreign territory for the acquisition of influence and trade. In Olimar’s second journey to the Distant Planet the exploration is done with and full blown Imperialistic practices are put into place. The Hocotate Freight Company, which seems oddly similar to the East India Shipping & Trading Companies, is in extreme debt. The Company’s president demands more treasure from the Distant Planet in order to finance the failing company, much how gold and silver were used to pay for the lavish expenditures of the European monarchies. The Distant Planet and its Pikmin served Hocotate Freight Co. merely as a farm and tools with which to harvest their crops. Much like the people of the Americas, Asia and Africa were and continue to be exploited by Western nations and Capitalist giants, the Pikmin are exploited once again, robbed for their natural resources for the profits that they will never see, shipped to faraway lands and other peoples.

Perhaps Olimar is not the cute, loveable and well intentioned Hero that he seems to be at a first glance, but rather a cog in the capitalist machine of exploitation that is Imperialism.