What are the different types of Pikmin?

The founding three arrived in 2001 and still define the system. Red Pikmin resist fire and hit hardest, the soldiers. Yellow Pikmin resist electricity, can be thrown highest, and originally carried bomb rocks. Blue Pikmin breathe underwater, the only type that can work in the ponds and rivers every game scatters across its maps. Every later type is a variation on this grammar of colour, immunity, and task.

Pikmin 2 added specialists found underground. Purple Pikmin are ten times as heavy and strong, stunning enemies and hauling treasure at ten Pikmin of carrying power in one body, but slow. White Pikmin are the fastest, immune to poison, able to dig out buried treasure, and poisonous themselves if eaten, a dark little trade the catalogue states plainly. Pikmin 3 added Rock Pikmin, living stones that shatter crystal and armour but cannot latch on, and Winged Pikmin, weak fliers who carry cargo over hazards and water.

Pikmin 4 completed the modern set. Ice Pikmin freeze enemies solid and can freeze a body of water into a walkable surface when enough are thrown in. Glow Pikmin live only in night expeditions, immune to almost everything, merging into a single charged blast, and vanish at dawn like the bioluminescence they are drawn from. Spin offs add their own footnotes, but these nine are the canon a collector or player needs.

The types are also the merchandise. Every colour is a plush, a figure, a strap, and a garden ornament in Japan, and type by colour is how Pikmin goods are shelved and collected. The Japanese guidebooks print the type charts as field guide spreads, immunities and weights in tables, which is why this page mirrors them: in Pikmin, knowing your colours is knowing the whole game.