Best Of 2024: 20 Years On, Pikmin 2's Waterwraith Remains Nintendo's Scariest Moment

17 hours ago 19

Over the holiday season, we're republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!

Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Jim is reliving a childhood trauma to mark Pikmin 2's 20th anniversary...

To the casual observer, Pikmin must seem like a pretty relaxed experience. Everything is colourful. The characters are cute. There's even a little dog guy in the latest one. All told, it must just be delightful.

It's no secret that I love Pikmin and, with bloodshot eyes and unbrushed hair, I am here to grab you by the shoulders and tell you that you are wrong.

Pikmin is not a relaxing experience. Sure, your little buddies are cute, but good luck getting to sleep at night after you've heard their cute little screams. PNF-404 (which is the planet that you're prone to crash landing on, for those wondering) is a never-ending wheel of traumas. You will see Pikmin drowned, eaten, and squished all before making a mad dash back to your ship before things get dark and the real predators come out to play. Think that sounds relaxing? Think again, buddy.

But as the hardened Pikmin fans know, watching your troops get burned alive is child's play. The series has plenty more stomach-churning horrors up its sleeve and all pale in comparison when put up against Pikmin 2's Waterwraith — a being so devilishly horrifying that I would still put its reveal among Nintendo's scariest moments.

Today, the game turns 20 (in Japan, at least) and so I am putting on my big boy pants and diving back into the moment that left my GameCube on pause for 45 minutes while my confused mother attempted to decipher what her sobbing son meant by "blob man," "rolling pins," and "so many little ghosts."

It all takes place in the 'Submerged Castle,' one of the four caves found in Pikmin 2's 'Perplexing Pool' area and the site of so many horrors you have to wonder just how dazzled by the cute overworld the age rating board was when it slapped a PEGI 3 on there.

Before you even dive into this cave, things look hairy. You can only enter with Blue Pikmin and your ship is reluctant to join you down there, telling you in a definitely-not-sinister way, "You two must go alone". But nonetheless, you load up on viable team members and jump right in because how upsetting can it really be?

Very upsetting, matey. Very upsetting.