About a week ago Nintendo launched a new channel for the Wii called ‘Check Mii Out’, and it’s a doozy…
But before I start. For those that have been living under a rock this past year, the Wii is Nintendo’s newest game console. It’s been sold out worldwide for over a year due to it’s innovation and how much fun it is. In addition to playing all sorts of games, the console also has ‘channels’ that you can use right from the operating system, include news, weather, a web browser, photo viewer etc.
One of the first channels to ship with the console is the Mii channel, which allows you to make avatars (called Mii’s) of yourself to use in games or just for the fun of it. Here’s a video of the process of making an Mii.
As soon as we got the Wii we made Mii’s or ourselves, and of Jim & Joyce (who very soon had a Wii of their own). We also made a few ‘celebrity’ Mii’s, mostly by coping designs clever people had done and posted online.
This past week Nintendo launched the Check Mii Out channel, which is a mega-depository of Mii’s from people all over the world. You can search through lists of favourite Mii’s, or just screens of random Mii’s and then import them into your console. The channel also includes contests which will be voted on by all Wii owners, and then the winning Mii’s can be downloaded. Appropriately, the first contest is to design a Mario Mii.
Needless to say, the popularity lists are dominated by celebrity Mii’s, and selecting one allows you to call up variations as well, until you have screens and screens of subtle takes on a specific person to choose from.
And yes, that is Hitler in the first shot. I suspect 95% of all Wii owners must have a Hitler and a Jesus by now.
The channel really shows off the amazing creativity of some people. While the amount of facial pieces seems high, it’s actually quite tricky to get a Mii to look ‘just right’, so we were amazed by some of the spot-on likenesses we found on this new channel.
The non-humans in particular, are astounding. Even inspecting the Darth Maul, it’s not clear how he made it using the pieces provided. And that Miss Piggy?? Woah! (The short red-faced guy on the second row is Corporal Giroro from Keroro Gunso aka Sgt. Frog)
We’ve already added 40 odd new Mii’s to our Mii plaza since this channel went live, and I’m sure that number will increase (latest additions: dead-on likenesses of Beavis & Butthead). I can’t wait to play Wii Baseball again and have some of these new ones on my team…
…although Bernard has always been a mean outfielder:
(And yes, that is C3PO just below him)
My Mii looks pretty good, a little slimmer than the real thing!