This is a collection of Glitches possible in the first Pikmin game, as well as its New Play Control! remake. Some glitches are exclusive to one of the two versions; said exclusivity will be pointed out on the respective glitches' notes section.
Please read the Glitch notes before attempting any of these glitches or before adding your own.
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To do: Mention some game-breaking glitches, like the ability to lay down to push pieces, extend Pikmin swimming times, etc.
Care to do so?
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Main glitches
Counter glitch
- Effects: The Pikmin counter will display erroneous numbers, including a total of Pikmin on the field that doesn't correspond to the truth, and a number of Pikmin on the party superior to that of the field number.
- Prerequisites: None.
- How to: So far, there is no known way to trigger the glitch on purpose. It seems to happen most often when Pikmin die with unconventional ways, specially by being killed by the Smoky Progg's smoke trail. It also happens with some frequency with deaths caused by The Forest Navel's abysses, and when several Pikmin die at once. Finally, it can also be related to some bridge glitches.
- Notes: This glitch can also happen on the New Play Control! version.
- Likely explanation: Some of the possible Pikmin deaths must override the standard "killing" procedure. When certain, as of now unknown circumstances happen, the code will not handle deaths the normal way, and the Pikmin counter won't be updated correctly.
Libra glitch
- Effects: The Libra will bounce off the map and be forever unobtainable, making the game impossible to complete (the Libra being one of the 25 required ship parts).
- Prerequisites: Have the Libra uncollected.
- How to: This glitch happens at random, but cases of the glitch occurring are not uncommon, so you shouldn't assume it won't happen to you. The glitch happens when the Pikmin carrying the Libra from the ledge it sits on fall down, making the ship part bounce up and potentially land outside the area and into the abyss.
- Notes: Should this happen, you should restart the day, seeing as the part will rarely come back. There are reports of the Libra occasionally respawning elsewhere, though. In the New Play Control! version, one can redo any day, so saving at the end of a day in which this glitch happens is less harmful.
- Likely explanation: The part is situated above high ground, on a very precarious and small ledge. When handling collisions with the ground, the game is programmed to make ship parts bounce off. Seeing as this is a rare scenario, though, that code wasn't optimized that much, resulting in the bouncing to be erratic given some circumstances.
Pikmin glitches
Alter Pikmin species
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Medium |
Helpful |
Missing
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- Effects: The color of a Pikmin can be changed without the need of a Candypop Bud.
- Prerequisites: You must be on an area with a Puffstool.
- How to: Have a Puffstool transform the Pikmin you want to alter into a Mushroom Pikmin. Use the Mushroom Pikmin Helper Glitch so that they can follow you. Now, take them to an Onion of the color you want to change them to, and issue them to go into that Onion. Now you can withdraw them back.
- Notes: None.
- Likely explanation: Reds, Yellows and Blues are identified as being Pikmin types. Mushroom Pikmin, however, are labeled as just being "Pikmin" with special attributes. If the player is able to bring these Pikmin into an Onion, something that was never intended, the game will accept the Pikmin onto the Onion, seeing as that Pikmin technically doesn't belong to an incompatible color. (e.g. If you bring a Mushroom Pikmin into a Red Onion, that Pikmin is neither Yellow or Blue, so the game accepts it.)
Cloning Pikmin
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Medium |
Helpful |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes a Swooping Snitchbug clone two Pikmin.
- Prerequisites: None.
- How to: Go to an area with a Swooping Snitchbug and lure it to the landing site. Get any type of Pikmin out. Put the Pikmin in the Onion when the Swooping Snitchbug swoops for them. If done correctly all of the amount of Pikmin will go in and the Swooping Snitchbug will have two in its hands.
- Notes: None.
- Likely explanation: A Swooping Snitchbug that successfully grabs a Pikmin will keep it on its claws. However, while climbing unto an Onion, Pikmin are in an uninterruptible state, so they will actually continue climbing instead of being caught. This creates an extra Pikmin.
Controlling Mushroom Pikmin
- Effects: Makes it possible to partially control a Mushroom Pikmin.
- Prerequisites: Have a living Puffstool in the area.
- How to: The timing on this glitch is very strict. If Pikmin are left idle by the Puffstool and are called at the exact moment the creature inverts its cap (just before it blows its spores), the Pikmin may become glitched Mushroom Pikmin and rush to Olimar's side immediately after.
- Notes: Controllable Mushroom Pikmin cannot be thrown, dismissed or whistled, but they can be controlled with the C-stick. They can follow tasks such as carrying an object or plucking grass, but once the task is completed, they'll return to their normal Pikmin form. Normal Pikmin will attack these Mushroom Pikmin, so care should be taken.
- Likely explanation: When the player whistles a Pikmin, it attempts to join their party. If the Puffstool possesses the Pikmin while this is happening, the Pikmin will cancel its attempt to join the player, and become possessed. On the other hand, if a Pikmin is whistled while being possessed, the party joining attempt will be ignored altogether. If, however, both events happen simultaneously, the game will both turn the Pikmin into a Mushroom Pikmin and add it to the party. The partial ability to control a Mushroom Pikmin comes from the lack of code to handle the control of this type of Pikmin, as this was never intended.
Crushing glitch
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmful |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes a Pikmin vanish instantly by being crushed.
- Prerequisites: None.
- How to: When an enemy is defeated and falls to the ground, there is a chance that a nearby Pikmin will mysteriously vanish without leaving a spirit or making a sound. There are several enemies that have this happen more frequently than others, and it also happens with more regularity when swarming enemies rather than throwing Pikmin at them.
- Notes: This glitch happens more frequently in the New Play Control! version. It can also happen in Pikmin 2.
- Likely explanation: When falling down, enemies will push any nearby Pikmin downwards and to the side. If the collision is just right, there's a chance that the downward push is too strong and the Pikmin falls to the ground, where it instantly dies shortly after.
Pikmin out of bounds
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmful |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes Pikmin go out of bounds, where they can slide back into the area, go far enough to be irretrievable, or slide the opposite direction, where they will fall off-screen and die.
- Prerequisites: Have a living Goolix on The Impact Site.
- How to: If the Goolix is near the right of the tree-stump arena and the yellow, brain-like nucleus is hit by a Blue Pikmin, that Pikmin, or the other Blues that are attacking the smaller, blue nucleus may be knocked into the out-of-bounds, forest like terrain.
- Notes: None.
- Likely explanation: The collision between the Gollix' nuclei is meant to throw away all nearby Pikmin. If the creature is too close to the edges of the area, it's possible for the fighting Pikmin to be thrown off.
Purple Pikmin?
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmless |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes a Blue Pikmin look purple in color.
- Prerequisites: Have the Pearly Clamclamp section of The Impact Site open.
- How to: Enter The Impact Site on any given day and take out one blue Pikmin. Go to the pond where the Pearly Clamclamps are. Leave the blue Pikmin there, and end the day. When you return there the next day, the blue Pikmin will have turned purple.
- Notes: None.
- Likely explanation: None.
Rainbow Pikmin glitch
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Medium |
Harmless |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes four Pikmin repeatedly go inside one another.
- Prerequisites: None.
- How to: Throw a Blue Pikmin, a Yellow Pikmin and two Red Pikmin at a twig at the same time.
- Notes: None.
- Likely explanation: None.
Rebel Mushroom Pikmin
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmless |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes a Mushroom Pikmin attack the Puffstool rather than Captain Olimar.
- Prerequisites: Have a living Puffstool on the area.
- How to: While fighting a Puffstool, try having a Pikmin be knocked down at the same time it's affected by the Puffstool's spores. Upon getting up, the Pikmin should change to a Mushroom Pikmin, but its skin should turn into a pale shade of its normal color, and their mushroom will glow, as if they were idle.
- Notes: Rebel Mushroom Pikmin cannot be called to the player's side, and normal Pikmin will still attack them.
- Likely explanation: A Pikmin is programmed to continue attacking an enemy after it's knocked down by it. Normally, the spores both stop the Pikmin from attacking the Puffstool and possess the Pikmin, but if it happens while a Pikmin is lying down, the possession will occur as normal, but the code that triggers when a Pikmin gets back up goes into place, making the Pikmin attack the Puffstool regardless of the possession.
Swimming glitch
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Medium |
Helpful |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes a non-Blue Pikmin swim indefinitely.
- Prerequisites: There should be a living Swooping Snitchbug in the area.
- How to: Make a Swooping Snitchbug catch a non-Blue Pikmin near water. If you're lucky, the creature will plant the Pikmin underwater. When plucked, the creature should swim indefinitely until Olimar walks onto land.
- Notes: None.
- Likely explanation: A burrowed Pikmin must count as a different object from a regular Pikmin. When the burrowed Pikmin object is destroyed, and the normal Pikmin object is created (i.e. when the Pikmin is plucked), some of its attributes get initialized. Seeing as Pikmin are normally meant to be plucked while on land, the "air remaining" attribute starts at 0, which means "not underwater". However, if a Pikmin does happen to be underwater, the game will make it swim, but will not decrease its "air remaining", as it's already set to 0.
Enemy glitches
Beady Long Legs escape
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmful |
Missing
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- Effects: Fighting the Beady Long Legs outside of its arena. Possible game crashes.
- Prerequisites: There should be a Beady Long Legs or another boss on an arena, ready to be fought.
- How to: If Pikmin and/or Olimar are left at the gate of an arena, the creature will try to attack them, at random times leaving the arena.
- Notes: If the boss falls onto the abyss, for instance, by luring it into the area with the Libra, it could make the game crash. The game can also crash after some time has passed since the boss left its arena. This glitch can also happen with other bosses that dwell on an arena. To perform the glitch more safely, fight against the Beady Long Legs on The Final Trial in Challenge Mode.
- Likely explanation: The boss' movement isn't linear, it depends on how its legs move. This complicated set of operations can make the boss gradually move outside of its limit, and it it ever steps out, it'll be free to roam around. The game was never meant to handle situations where a boss can interact with stuff outside of its arena, so game crashes aren't uncommon.
Shearwigs falling into the abyss
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmless |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes a Shearwig fall into an abyss and die.
- Prerequisites: None.
- How to: Find some Shearwigs in The Forest Navel region, likely near the area where the Automatic Gear is. Lure some or all of them to the area along the edge of the world where you find the Libra and the Analog Computer near the section with fire geysers. You can lure them into the small lake and they'll lose health, or you can punch them. When they have lost enough health, they will begin to fly. Wait for a few seconds while they recover in the air, and occasionally, they will fall into to the abyssal depths of the hole.
- Notes: The Shearwigs won't come back out, but they'll respawn in their original spot after a few days.
- Likely explanation: Shearwigs weren't programmed to check where to land, as they're normally always above solid ground before landing. Only by luring them can they descend whilst above a pit.
Yellow Wollywog stuck
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Depends |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes a Wollywog stuck in a jumping animation. This can be helpful to the player, as the Wollywog won't be able to attack, but it also stops the player from bringing the corpse and its Pellet to the Onion.
- Prerequisites: None.
- How to: On The Final Trial, in Challenge Mode, there is a Yellow Wollywog near a pipe. If the Yellow Wollywog jumps on the hole in the pipe, it gets stuck there; it can be coerced into doing so by moving Olimar onto it.
- Notes: While stuck, the Wollywog cannot be harmed; it remains in its jumping animation and cannot be brought out of it.
- Likely explanation: The Wollywog only contains code that handles its collision with the ground. The pipe doesn't necessarily count as ground, but rather as an object. Either that, or the pipe only counts as having slidable walls, and these walls keep pushing the Wollywog inwards, and seeing as there isn't enough space for it to go through, it gets stuck.
Misc. glitches
Embed glitch
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmful |
Missing
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- Effects: Some objects can get embedded inside walls and other objects, making retrieving them impossible in some cases.
- Prerequisites: None.
- How to: Occasionally, a ship part or a pellet can become partially embedded inside a wall. It can be possible to move the object against the spot it's stuck in, though that can either set it free or burrow it deeper. Issuing Pikmin around these objects is sometimes pointless, as they'll be unable to distribute themselves correctly over it, and thus, be unable to carry it. For a stationary and partial there's the Blue 20-Pellet on The Final Trial in Challenge Mode.
- Notes: This glitch can also happen in Pikmin 2.
- Likely explanation: Objects may become embedded for a variety of reasons, but mostly, it's due to them being pushed inside walls by other objects. This is because the game attempts to avoid having objects overlapping one another, and as a last resort, an object is embedded against a wall.
Inaccessible Onions
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmful |
Missing
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- Effects: The Onions won't have their rings of light out, and can't be interacted with.
- Prerequisites: Have uncollected ship parts, besides the Secret Safe.
- How to: Bring a ship part that has not yet been identified (i.e. Olimar has yet to come close to the piece and comment on it) close to the S.S. Dolphin, but not so close that the Dolphin will appraise it. The next day, when Captain Olimar comes out of the Dolphin, the part will be identified, and the Onions will be inaccessible.
- Notes: The only way to undo this is by going to sunset or resetting the entire save file.
- Likely explanation: The cutscene that plays at the start of each day cannot be skipped, and it should not be interrupted. Normally, one cannot interrupt the cutscene, as the player is unable to control Olimar before the cutscene's end, but if there's a ship part near Olimar when the cutscene starts, the game will recognize the proximity between the Olimar object and the ship part object; this triggers the identification monologue. Seeing as such a process was never meant to happen during the cutscene, the game is unable to complete it, and the Onions will never be able to open their rings of light.
Pellet Posy glitch
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Helpful |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes the player able to go out of bounds.
- Prerequisites: None.
- How to: Go to an area near the Nova Blaster on The Forest of Hope with Pellet Posies. If there is no Posy inside a wall, try another day. Once you find a Pellet Posy inside a wall, try to go in between to fly out of bounds.
- Notes: You can use this glitch to get the Radiation Canopy, Geiger Counter and Sagittarius. When you throw a Pikmin at it, the screen will go black and you will be falling.
- Likely explanation: When two things are in the same spot, the game is programmed to push the movable ones apart. Seeing as both a Pellet Posy and a wall are unmovable, the game will attempt to push Olimar out if he's found to be crammed between both. The ejection will likely push Olimar through the wall, given that technically, Posies have more solid hitboxes than the thin line that makes up a wall.
Silent Bomb-Rock explosions
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| High |
Harmless |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes the explosion sound of a set of bomb-rocks not play.
- Prerequisites: Play on a day where there are a lot of bomb-rocks.
- How to: Gather as many bomb-rocks in the area as you can find. A good place would be The Final Trial on Challenge Mode. If you make them more than 8 or so explode at once, the explosion sound will be either extremely loud and cut off after a split second, or it might not even play at all.
- Notes: Try not to have your device's volume set too high.
- Likely explanation: Most games limit the number of sound samples that can play at once. Normally, not many sounds need to play simultaneously, so this value probably isn't more than 10 in Pikmin. The code that silences a sample or sample instance must be made in such a way that if the same sample needs to play several times in a row, it can actually cut off all instances of the sound that are playing.
Spinning Olimar
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| High |
Harmless |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes Captain Olimar shake erratically on the GameCube version, and makes his body spin around, leaving the head alone, in the New Play Control! version.
- Prerequisites: There should be a built bridge on the area.
- How to: Simply walk on a bridge.
- Notes: In the NPC! version, if you try to fix the camera behind him, it will make it spin in the direction in which Olimar's body was when the button was pressed.
- Likely explanation: A bridge counts as an object, not as solid ground. As such, the code to handle walking on it must be different.
Tilted objects
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmful |
Missing
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- Effects: Makes some objects become tilted.
- Prerequisites: None.
- How to: Have Pikmin carry an object from a high ledge. Given the object's physics, it may fall down at an angle, and the Pikmin will proceed to carry it in said angle. Some Pikmin might even be holding it in mid-air, while other times, the Pikmin may let the object fall.
- Notes: This glitch can also happen in Pikmin 2. This is similar to the Libra glitch, except that objects aren't normally irretrievable.
- Likely explanation: Because of the game's physics and enforcement of gravity on objects, if Pikmin carrying the front of an object fall from an edge before the ones at the back do, the piece will be tilted. This is normal, but given that pieces falling from high places isn't common, the game doesn't handle it too well. Occasionally, it'll leave the piece tilted as the Pikmin are carrying it.
Two-sectioned bridge
| Reproducibility |
Danger |
Demonstration
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| Low |
Harmless |
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- Effects: Makes a bridge have two sections, each with a rolled up bundle of sticks, one of them floating in mid-air.
- Prerequisites: Have a built bridge.
- How to: There is no known way to cause this glitch purposely. Randomly, Female Sheargrub will eat a bridge, but it'll be split, with the half opposite to the side being eaten float in mid-air.
- Notes: None.
- Likely explanation: None.
