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In fact, I found all the fruit. Rather than go off to the big oak tree and find (I presume) Olimar, I spent a few days wandering around the other areas finding the fruit I’d missed.

This involved quite a lot of journeying underground, as these were the areas I naturally avoided previously, with a tendency to get lost. It was only at this late stage in the game that I realised the utility of the Go Here function, where you can point to a position on the map and the party will head directly there. This was a godsend with the hidden entrances to underground areas, and also meant that the issue I had with the controls – that my characters would occasionally just stop moving forwards because the game didn’t think I was pressing up enough – disappeared.

There were only a few pieces of fruit that caused me issues. Two were in the tropical area, and required use of a metal box which acted like a seesaw with another metal box – and I couldn’t work out how to get to the second metal box to balance it. In the end it was pure luck that I threw a yellow pikmin over a vine onto a trampoline, and it landed on the box, letting me solve the puzzle. Another piece was at the top of a section which the game enforced a side-on camera for, where I had to work out the order in which to balance another pulley system. And the last was guarded by a big crab, who killed quite a few of my pikmin before I realised I had to use rock dudes to crack his claw.

So, with all fruit collected, I went off to the oak.

I’ve got nine powerups (which I know full well I’ll never use, because they’re limited consumables), I’ve got 67 days of juice left, and I’ve got about 400 of each pikmin type available. Bring it on, Olimar.

I foresaw one plot twist – that who the crew believed to be Olimar was in fact Louie – but did not foresee the other one, with Louie scarpering as soon as he could, taking our food supply with him. Suddenly there was a fresh urgency about finding fruit, and with the game urging me to chase Louie but me being aware that I was one tropical smoothie away from starvation, I found myself pulled in two directions. Not only that, but shortly after I landed in the Garden of Hope I was introduced to the blue Pikmin, and so I had a third objective – build up the blue population.

I decided to forget about Louie for now, get a number of blues ready, and collect some of the underwater fruit that I’d noticed on the map. Blue harvesting initially went a little wrong, when I was attacked by a frog who killed off five of my then-population of 10, but I got back into it with a vengeance when I remembered that flying pikmin could provide important backup while I walked around the riverbed. Within a couple of game-hours (the notches across the top of the screen) I was up to an army of 50, and went off in search of fruit. An underwater strawberry and orange, building a bridge using submerged pieces, and a wayward plum later, I felt ready to look for the wrongun.

Over the two next days I found more fruit and enemies, building more bridges and pillars, and having to carefully manouvre rock pikmin around to break crystals. And then I found a new boss, bigger than anything so far, who tried to stamp on my pikmin and drown them in the mud. It had no luck, however, because my reds held on tight to its legs before I jumped on its back and threw rocks and yellows at it. Goodbye big planty thing, and hello again Louie – and the captain’s rubber duck.

What looks to be the final area has opened up now, with no fruit to collect; with the juice returned from Louie I now have a buffer of about 45 days but I am minded to collect all the remaining fruit before going on to find Olimar. I mean, he’s been held for a while already, what harm are a couple of extra days going to do?