All you will ever need to know about the little Miis!
The great thing about the Nintendo Wii Console is that it is so versatile that it isn’t just about games! There are so many other brilliant things you can do with it such as connect to the internet, watch TV, go on WiiTube and play around with cartoon versions of yourselves or celebrities which are known as Mii’s. With more than 160 million Mii avatars being created since introduction, there is obviously something very appealing about them!
A Mii is a digital avatar based on Kokeshi , which are Japanese dolls, that is used when you are playing your Wii Games and it enables you to put a face to the character you are controlling in the game. They are created using the Mii Channel on the Wii Gaming Console and then used on Mii orientated games such as Wii Sports, Wii Fit Plus and Mario Kart but to name a few. For a full list including games waiting to be realised check out this Wii Games List for Mii’s.
Mii and Wii Games
An example of how the Mii features in the Wii Fit is that the Mii plays a crucial role in the Wii Fit Game as it represents your progress and as you lose weight your Mii gets thinner with you and even gets happier! Other Mii’s feature too as when you play the jogging mini game other Mii’s will run past you! A hilarious part of Wii Fit is the Bird’s Eye Bull’s Eye game which has your Mii, dressed up as a chicken, flapping frantically (through you flapping your arms about like a maniac on the balance board!) to get to certain goals within a time frame.
The Mii takes a bizarre turn in the Dance Revolution Hottest Party 2 Wii Game as although the aim of the game is to hit the arrows on the dance mat in time to the music, so not that much different to Just Dance you might think but the original part is the Mii action! You can use any of your Mii’s in this game and then you can stick your head onto other bodies. Trying to dance watching The Queen in gangster clothes is kind of difficult!
The classic Mario and Sonic character team up for fierce competition at the Mari & Sonic At The Olympic Games which makes for excellent gaming as if you don’t want to choose one of these legendary characters to race, then you can choose to compete as yourself instead!
Hot off the press, Nintendo have announced that they are to create a game called Wii Party game where the Mii characters are the stars of the game and is solely a party game with three different categories: Teiban Party, Pair Party, and Living Party. Teiban Party, also called ‘Standard Party’, contains a collection of luck-based games like Bingo, Roulette and Mii-jan, Pair Party is obviously for pairs of players, encouraging teamwork and collaboration and the Living Party mode is playable only with two or more players. The title can be played solo or with up to 3 friends (it uses Mii’s as player if you are a player or two short!) and it currently has 13 different game modes such as Board Game Island, Globe Trot, Swap Meet and Spin Off Bingo. There are also 70 mini games where four people can use their own Mii Characters to race horses, jumping over logs, knocking their opponents into holes and much more! As a direct successor the Wii Sports, Nintendo want to create a game that takes full advantage of the Mii characters and Wii Party should be it. Screenshots from the game have been released:
Miis will go globe trecking in the new Wii Party
Make Your Mii:
Creating your Mii couldn’t be easier as once you have selected the gender of your Mii, you can change the shape of the head, eyes, eyebrows nose and mouth shape and add accessories to it in the shape of glasses, rosy cheeks, wrinkles and many more aesthetically pleasing attributes! By changing the size and position of the centre of the face you can also finely tune the features of your Mii by giving it a big forehead with tiny cheeks! Also, by using the slide bars and the keyboard you can change the height of your Mii plus give it a name, a birthday and a favourite colour.
The Official Nintendo Magazine listed six step to successful Mii making. Important factors included:
Making your Mii features much larger than in real life as seeing that they are only characters of the real life person, exaggerating the features makes for a fun Mii! Also the Kokeshi dolls, from which the style of the Mii originates, and also shaped the same with normal size body and hen a larger head.
Don’t be too realistic when designing your Mii or you could end up either bitterly disappointed or offended! If you take on board the above tip, the exaggerated features will help make the character fun so you won’t feel like you need to have the features exactly life like.
Use the Mii face as a blank canvas and think abstract for once as you don’t have to have the eyebrows, nose etc in the correct order! Variety is the spice of life so mix and match the facial features to have a nose on the forehead!
Mii Contests:
There are a few uses of the Mii on the Nintendo Wii Game Console as well as just being the player in your games such as your Mii can be used when you communicate with other Wii owners on the Wii Message Board as your Mii will instantly help identify you to other board users. Or set your Mii up to be voted for in the Mii Contest Channel where it can be entered into popularity contests such as beauty contests and Nintendo themed contests. There is no prize however apart from the knowledge that you created a winning Mii!
Mingle with Mii:
Part of the fun of Mii’s is that you get to create any character you want and then show it off to the world either through the Mii Contest Channel or by sharing them with your friends. This is easily done by using WiiConnect24. Firstly enter each other’s Friend Code into your Wii Console. Make sure your Wii consoles are using WiiConnect24 and then select ‘Wii Friend’ from the Mii Plaza menu. Drag a Mii into the envelope and select the friend you want to send it to.
The Mii Plaza menu also has the option of letting your Miis ‘mingle’ with other Mii’s and this can be achieved by selecting Mingle on the Mingle option, turning on WiiConnect24 and registering a minimum of one friend. Make sure you remember to set your Mii free by changing the travel settings in the Mii Channel to Mii and watch your little one interact!
You can send up to 20 Mii’s a day and after a while your Miis can mix with friends Miis, then friends of friends Miis and so on. To accept shared Miis from your friends, click the Mii Parade button and drag the Mii you want to your Mii Plaza. Miis sent to you directly by a friend will come into your Mii Plaza with a drum roll next time you enter the Mii Channel! And to make sure that you have your Miis on you a all time you can upload up to 10 Mii’s onto your Wiimote and transfer them to your friends Wii Game Console. Images taken from the Official Nintendo Support Site.
Celebrity Miis:
Obviously the first choice for most of us would be to make ourselves a little Mii that reflected us and out personalities. However there are the minority, like me that just want to see which celebrity I can attempt to make so I can watch Victoria Beckham kart with Super Mario! It is so much fun making celebrity Miis as you can make them look as life like or as downright silly as you want!
It’s a bit of a phenomena, the celebrity Mii, as there are dedicated sites where you can upload and view other celebrity Miis. www.showmii.com is a dedicated site for famous Miis that has been around since 2006. There are 100’s of hilarious well known Miis that are either sent in by the public or created by the owner of the site itself. “ShowMii.com serves to showcase the best examples I can find, share tips and techniques, and to encourage Wii owners to go next-level with their Miis.” Examples of these hilarious Miis are that of Jennifer Lopez, Barack Obama and the freaky Homer Simpson!
One of my favourite celeb Miis is from a US company called http://www.nerdyshirts.com/ as not only did they create a unique set of Miis for us UK residents, but they also put them on a t-shirt: Biitles:
The post about the Beatles leads me very nicely onto my next point, as whilst I have been researching all about Mii’s I haven’t found one decent British Mii Site that shows celebrity Miis from the Country where all you have to do to be famous is to be seen out with a footballer once! So, why not send me your proper good ol’ UK celeb Miis and we can show those across the waters how it’s done (granted, they are not going to be as glamorous as the USA celebs, but I would love to see Kerry Katona as a Mii!!!) So, make your classic Brit style Mii, take a photo of it on the screen (make sure the Mii is clearly visible in the photo), and send a link to the photo or send as an attachment to info@nintendowiifitconsole.co.uk and I will post them on here for all to see!
