As Nintendo finally revives Pikmin, fans remember the native PC port that's quietly existed for 22 years

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There's no frontier Captain Olimar can't conquer

Pikmin
(Image credit: Nintendo)

We're finally in the middle of a proper Pikmin revival, and fans are taking the opportunity to reminisce about how Nintendo left a native PC port of the first game on the original disc.

Years ago, fans discovered that Nintendo included - probably accidentally - a Windows executable file on the original 2001 GameCube disc that lets you run the game on PC. It seems to be a developer build of the game, as it comes with a ton of debugging tools and no shortage of graphical glitches. It'll even run on modern PCs with a bit of detective work to find the correct DLL files, but it's not exactly an ideal way to play the game - after all, it doesn't let you save.

You can get more details on this PC executable on The Cutting Room Floor, and it is an absolutely fascinating bit of Nintendo history. Games are obviously developed on PCs, but while Nintendo licensed a handful of its properties for computer games back in '80s and '90s, it officially published a grand total of zero internally-developed PC titles in its lifetime.

The Pikmin series seemed destined for the same historical dustbin where Nintendo keeps the likes of F-Zero and Golden Sun, but between the new remasters, the mobile title Pikmin Bloom, and the impending release of Pikmin 4, it looks like the little plant guys are here to stay.

A bit of hands-on time with Pikmin 4 has one GamesRadar+ writer ready to become a fan of the whole series.

Dustin Bailey
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.