These are five sub-levels of every danger imaginable (fire, water, electricity, and poison) and, as we mentioned, you only have Blue Pikmin to deal with. The enemies on each floor hardly help to calm your nerves, with the Fire Bulblax rearing its flaming, half-molten face as soon as you turn the first corner — again, PEGGY 3?!
Looking back on it now, this is spooky enough. But 20 years ago I was blissfully unaware of the hidden five-minute countdown timer on each floor. A time bomb that, when it reaches zero, unleashes the Waterwraith and makes every horror you’ve seen up to that point feel like a walk in the park.
For those lucky enough to avoid this abomination over the past two decades, the Waterwraith is a gelatinous blob that sits on two giant rollers and is capable of crushing all of your Pikmin in one swing. Armed with limited hull types, his transparent body is immune to all attacks (until you reach sublevel five), so all you can do is run and hide.
And I ran and hid. I first encounter with a Waterwraith resulted in a rare ‘Game Over’, with all my Pikmin flattened. The fact that it fell out of nowhere meant that every subsequent run was full of paranoia. When will the next one arrive? How much do I have left? Why are my palms so sweaty?
In the last sub-level, you can charge Purple Pikmin and finally take down that buffoon, but we Pikmin fans didn’t know that at the time (a sense of panic that you don’t get from the cool experience shown in the gameplay above). As far as I knew, this was an invincible demon that wouldn’t rest until Olimar, Louie, and every Pikmin in sight was lighter than a day-old Cola.
It was the best part of two decades before this blob-shaped beast burst into the franchise again in last year’s Pikmin 4 , but it still gave me the heebie-jeebie — and I knew how to beat the damn thing this time. Who would have thought that a giant, faceless entity that can end your game in an instant would be so terrifying?
In Nintendo’s defense, it has pumped out a good amount of nightmare fuel over the years capable of scarring more than its fair share of innocent little minds – Dead Hand in Ocarina of Time, Majora Mask’s tumble moon, Big Boo in Super Mario 64, the spooky strings of lavender town. We could go on (if we were brave enough).
But for me, the Waterwraith is the granddaddy of them all. It’s the ultimate combination of suspense, character design, and danger, culminating in an experience I’d rather never repeat. I want to Pikmin 5 just like everyone else, but I don’t know if my fragile heart can handle another episode of this monstrosity.
