Mii

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Mii (pronounced /ˈmiː/ me) is a digital avatar incorporated by Nintendo for the Wii's Mii Channel. After creating them, (you can create them as you wish) they can be used as participating characters in certain Mii-oriented games, as first shown in Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Play, and Mario Kart Wii. Miis are customizable and allow the user to capture a likeness or caricature, or capture the personality of themselves and others.

Up to 100 Miis may be created on any Wii console. The Wii Remote itself can hold up to 10 Miis on its internal memory, which can later be transferred to another Wii console. In addition, Miis can also be exchanged via the WiiConnect24 service, whereby allowing a player's Miis to "Mingle" will enable such Miis to appear on other people's Wii consoles (appearing in a "Mii Parade", where up to 10,000 may feature). Users can also transfer Miis to supported Nintendo DS games. Miis can only be edited on the console on which they were created.

[edit] Creating Miis

A picture of a female Mii being created.

Miis are created through the Mii Channel on the Wii. After specifying a gender for the Mii in question, the user can alter the shape of the Mii's head, its eyes, hair, eyebrows, nose, and mouth. In addition, the creator can give the Mii glasses or facial hair as he/she desires, or give the face sharp contours, wrinkles, or ruddy cheeks, for example, among other possible attributes. Many of the features can be fine-tuned by adjusting their size, position, and inward rotation to the center of the Mii's face. Furthermore, the Mii's height and width can be adjusted using slide bars, and using the on-screen keyboard, the creator can name the Mii, assign it a birthday, give it a favorite color (such becomes the color of its shirt and its optional hat in red, orange, yellow, light green, dark green, dark blue, light blue, pink, purple, brown, white, and black), and designate it as one of the 10 favorites, in which the Mii's pants/trousers change from black to red, as well as putting the Mii first in Mii selection for some games. Miis obtained by enabling the "mingling" feature of the Mii Channel, whereby a user can view Miis from other Wii consoles in the Mii Parade, have white trousers. Miis sent by Wii Friends to other Wii Consoles have blue trousers. Male Miis have shirts and female Miis have dresses. However versatile Miis may be they do have some drawbacks. Miis can only be made using combinations of predetermined graphics causing appearances to be somewhat limited, causing the creator to only be able to make a caricature of a real person or a vaguely similar character.

[edit] Use of Miis on Wii

Miis are intended to be an extension of the player, and in keeping with this spirit, the user can use them in several Nintendo titles for the Wii. Wii Sports is perhaps the best-known example of this, and it adds a further personal touch to Miis by saving game statistics and records for individual Miis. Even if the user created Miis had never participated in any game as players, the Miis will make cameo appearances as computer controlled opponents, teammates or within the audience.

Miis have been used to serve as game file icons (profiles) within several games. Often appearing as just a head for identification, this Mii has no impact on the actual gameplay other than to identify a player in another way besides name.

When users communicate with other Wii owners across the world using the Wii Message Board, they can attach a Mii to the sent message as a form signature so that the recipients can quickly identify the sender. A Mii can only be attached to messages sent to another Wii console, although such a feature is disabled when sending to regular email accounts on computers, or mobile phones.

Miis are primarily used in the Wii Series of games, such as Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit and Wii Music. Players can also use their Miis, however, in other first-party games, most noticeably within WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, Mario Party 8, Mario Kart Wii, Mario Super Sluggers and Animal Crossing: City Folk (using their Mii's head as a mask). The Japan-only Sega game Pachinko: Sammy's Collection is the first third-party game to incorporate Miis, while the Wii version of FIFA Soccer 08 is first third-party game released in North America and in PAL regions to use the Mii Channel. Many other games, like We Ski, and (the Wii version of) Guitar Hero World Tour, also use Miis.

While a Mii's head always remains the same, its body varies between games. For example, in Wii Sports, the Mii's body is stylized, with spherical floating hands and bearing no arms, much like Rayman but in Wii Fit its body is designed to look more natural, and its weight will be determined by the weight the Wii Fit found of the player in Wii Fit tests. Sometimes Miis will wear outfits in context with the game. In Mario Kart Wii, Mii racers can be dressed in jumpsuits, in Dr. Mario Online Rx, Miis appear in medical clothing, and in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, where they appear as bobblehead dolls, they will be dressed up in bounty hunter Samus Aran's Power Suit. In MLB Power Pros, Miis are designed to look like regular Power Pro-kun avatar, with legs detached from the main body. In Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 2, the Mii's body is formed more like a regular human. However, IGN's Lucas M. Thomas sarcastically commented that "[it] doesn't look disturbing at all."^[1]

You can customize your mii in many ways, with unlimited combinations. Lots of people make celebrity miis.

Miis are also incorporated in the downloadable Everybody Votes Channel, where Miis represent the voter. Up to six different Miis can be registered within the channel to use in voting. Another Mii-centric channel, the Check Mii Out Channel (also known as Mii Contest Channel in Europe), was released on November 11, 2007. Perhaps an evolution of an idea shared by Shigeru Miyamoto at the Game Developers Conference in 2007, this channel allows players to share their Miis and enter them in popularity contests. ^[2]

[edit] Use of Miis on the Nintendo DS

Miis can be transferred from a user's Wii to supported Nintendo DS games via the Mii Channel. A code must be entered by the user to unlock the feature. (Press A, B, 1, hold down 2)^[3]

The Nintendo DS game Personal Trainer: Walking uses Miis to allow players to track their progress in the game. Players are also able to create Miis in-game.^[4] The DS version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time will also support Mii data.^[5]

[edit] Check Mii Out! Channel

Mii Contest Channel (Check Mii out Channel in America ) in Wii Menu

The Check Mii Out! Channel, known as the Mii Contest Channel in Europe and Oceania, in Spain as "Canal Concursos Mii" and Miirame in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries like Mexico, is a channel for the Nintendo Wii that allows players to share their Miis and enter them in to popularity contests. It was released worldwide at 12:45 AM UTC on November 12, 2007. It is available free to download from the channels section of the Wii Shop Channel.

There are several features in the Check Mii Out! Channel. People are able to submit their Mii(s) for other Mii creators around the world to view. When a Mii is submitted to the Posting Plaza, a twelve digit Entry Number is given (#### - #### - ####), so others can find it using the search function. The submitted Miis are also given two initials by their creator and the Mii's talent. If a person likes that Mii it can be imported to their Mii Channel plaza, but cannot be edited, but may be used in Wii games that use Mii interface. People can favorite Miis, and the Mii will be given a rank out of five stars, depending on how many people like the Mii. The Artisan is also given a five star rank.

For every month, the Posting Plaza has a "Mii Artisan" ranking section that lasts for the whole month. The first ranking Mii Artisan by the end of the month is declared as "Master Mii Artisan".

Check Mii Out! is the first Wii Channel that uses the Wii Message board. When WiiConnect24 is turned on, Nintendo will send a message as soon as new contests or when contest update is available (i.e. judging, results, etc.). If a person doesn't want to receive these messages from Nintendo, they can opt out by going to the settings in the Check Mii Out Menu.

Scrolling headlines of a contest and a picture above it, will appear on the Check Mii Out! Channel icon when an update to a contest is available.

The Check Mii Out! Channel has new contests going on all the time. Players submit a Mii that they think fits the category, and they are judged by other players.

At the end of a contest, a "Level System" is shown on a 1-10 scale (10 being the highest, and 1 the lowest). The Mii that you have created will be running up the mountain. Your Mii will be based on a 1-10 scale, and if it stops at a certain spot (ex: 5th layer), your Mii will be ranked level 5. Your "Eye for Miis." is how you judge other people's Mii's. If the ranking of the Miis are high, then you are a great judge. The user is then shown the first place Mii, along with its "Artisan." This leads into the top 50 Miis for the contest, viewable either as a "Parade" or "Arranged".

For certain contests, those who participated in a contest can create a souvenir photo that shows their submitted Mii and their artisan placed and posed on top of a background related to the contest theme, the image can then be sent to the Wii Message Board. Souvenir photos are usually related to Wii games such as Super Mario Galaxy.

[edit] Nintendo-themed contests

Theme	Region	Date first seen	Date of results
Mario without his cap		November 11, 2007	November 26, 2007
Luigi without his cap		December 13, 2007	December 26, 2007
A Mii version of Princess Peach		January 24, 2008	February 9, 2008
An outdoor person		February 26, 2009	March 11, 2009

[edit] Development

This caricature software, created for the Nintendo DS, is the immediate predecessor to the Mii software for the Wii. The character being created resembles Satoru Iwata, the current President and CEO of Nintendo.

A screenshot of the earliest prototype of the Mii, running on the Famicom Disk System. The program ran a very simple face-creation utility, and was intended to come with an animation program.^[6]

Video game developer Shigeru Miyamoto revealed information regarding the development of Mii during his keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference in 2007. He stated that the current Mii design is based on traditional Japanese wooden dolls (known as "Kokeshi")^[6], and also highlighted several stages of the Mii's development process. The idea first appeared for the Famicom Disk System, but confusion over how the idea could be a game halted development.^[6] The idea appeared again with the Nintendo 64DD, where the player could edit a 3D character with a wide variety of clothes. Again, however, the project was never furthered.^[6] With the release of the Nintendo GameCube the idea was incorporated into Stage Debut, an unreleased game which planned to make use of the e-Reader and a camera attachment, but this idea was also canceled, as those at Nintendo feared there was not really a game to make out of it.^[6] The build Miyamoto showed during his conference showed a virtual Miyamoto dancing with some Pikmin upon a stage.

Around the time of the development of the Wii, a separate team at Nintendo were working on a friend registering software for the Nintendo DS.^[7] Within the software they were also developing a program where, in a manner similar to the Japanese puzzle game Fukuwarai, the player had to place the different parts of the face onto a drawing of a face. This team, however, was completely unaware of Miyamoto's Mii concept.^[7] Eventually the software evolved to allow the player to edit the parts of the face in terms of size and position, in order to make the character look more like a specific person, and was soon shown to Satoru Iwata, president and CEO of Nintendo.^[7] The software was then shown to Miyamoto as soon as possible, and eventually the team working on it moved to work with the Nintendo division EAD on the development of the Mii Channel.^[7]

[edit] Special Miis and Mii Editing Limitations

Currently, only two special Miis have been released by Nintendo. For a limited time between March 13 and March 29, 2007, Wii owners in Japan were sent Mii versions of the famous Japanese comedian Sanma Akashiya and ex-tennis player Shuzo Matsuoka. The duo had been featured in Japanese promotions for the Wii, highlighting Miis themselves.^[8] Their Miis feature gold pants, as opposed to a gray pair, and cannot be edited or copied. If owners transfer them to another Wii or Wii Remote, they will be removed from their original location, instead of traditionally making another copy. It is also possible to create special Miis through the use of third-party software, but Nintendo forces these entrepreneurs to shut down in many cases.^[9]

Nintendo's forced shutdown of these third-party sites brings a shortcoming of their Mii offering to light. Sometimes when a customer has needed to return his or her Nintendo Wii for service, a replacement machine must be sent. When that happens, the Mii software recognizes it is a different system and will not allow any editing of Miis created on the original system. Nintendo, while offering to copy game data and Miis to the new machine, will not alter the Miis so they can be edited on the replacement machine.^[10]

[edit] See also

• Avatars, the Xbox Live equivalent
• PlayStation Home, which also features avatar creation

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Mii Channel at Nintendo.com
• Celebrity Mii designs
• Web Based Mii Creator
• Personalized / Customized Miis but you need a wii first

v • d • e Wii Hardware Wii Remote (Wii MotionPlus) · Wii Balance Board · Wii Speak Online service Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection · WiiConnect24 · Wii system software · Nintendo Points Games Wi-Fi Connection games · WiiConnect24 games · Wii games using Miis · New Play Control! series · Games using GameCube controller Wii Menu Everybody Votes Channel · Internet Channel · Mii Channel · Wii no Ma  · Wii Shop Channel Virtual Console Japan · North America · PAL region (Europe and Australia) · South Korea WiiWare WiiWare games (North America, PAL region) Wii Series Sports · Play · Fit · Chess · Music (songs, instruments) · Sports Resort  · Fit Plus