A Mii (ミー, Mī?) is a digital avatar used in Nintendo's Wii and Nintendo 3DS gaming consoles. They allow users to capture a likeness (or a caricature) of themselves and others. After creating one using the Wii's Mii Channel or the Nintendo 3DS's Mii Maker, they can be used as playable characters in various titles for the consoles, respectively. The Mii will also be used in Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console.
Mii characters are created and stored in the Mii Channel or the Mii Maker, which are installed on the Wii and the 3DS consoles, respectively. While the user can assign a gender, name, birthday, and favorite color to a Mii, the majority of the interface used for Mii creation focuses on the appearance of its face and head: the user is given a variety of different hairstyles, eye, nose, and mouth shapes, and other features such as facial hair or wrinkles, to select from. Most of the facial features can be further adjusted, including their size, position, color, and alignment. Accessories such as hats and glasses are also available to add, and the Mii's height and build can also be adjusted. The Mii Maker installed on the Nintendo 3DS can use facial recognition to generate a Mii, which selects facial features based on a photograph of a person's face taken with the system's cameras. The features can then be fine-tuned by the user.[1] Because the selection of facial features is considered by some to be limited,[citation needed] users are encouraged to develop caricatures of real persons instead of accurate depictions.
Both Wii and Nintendo 3DS consoles each can store up to 100 Mii characters, and Wii Remotes are also able to store and transfer Mii characters to other consoles. It it also possible to see other characters from TV shows and games.
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. 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.
Miis are primarily used in games such as Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Wii Party, Wii Fit Plus , Wii Music and Wii Sports Resort. 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, Bomberman Blast 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 Europe and Australia to use the Mii Channel. Many other games, like We Ski, and (the Wii versions of) Guitar Hero World Tour and Sonic Colors 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, 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, or Mario style overalls for males and a Peach style dress for females, 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. This design was however, criticized by IGN's Lucas M. Thomas, who sarcastically commented that "[it] doesn't look disturbing at all."[2]
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.[3]
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. (In order, tap A, B, 1, then hold down 2 for three seconds)[4]
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.[5] The DS version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time also does it.[6]
A Japanese DS game called "Tomodachi Collection" came out which is a sim game using Miis and has a built-in Mii editor, and Miis from the user's Wii's Mii Channel can be transferred and vice versa.
Unlike the Nintendo DS, which features limited support of Mii characters, its successor the Nintendo 3DS features Miis as a standard. Similarly to the Wii's Mii Channel, the Nintendo 3DS features its own Mii-creating application called Mii Maker, which is more advanced than the Mii Channel.[7]
Mii characters can be created manually with Mii Maker as on the Wii's Mii Channel, but they can also be created automatically through the use of the Nintendo 3DS's cameras. The system captures an image of a subject's face, and the application converts the image into a Mii likeness using integrated recognition software. Automated Mii character designs can be manually adjusted. Mii characters can also be imported from the Wii to the 3DS. However, Miis cannot be sent from the 3DS to the Wii, as Mii Maker features an expanded selection of design parts that are not available on Mii Channel.[8]
The Nintendo 3DS can generate and read QR codes that represent Mii characters. QR codes and pictures of Mii characters can also be transferred to an SD card in any picture format, and be used in various ways, such as posting them on a web page. Miis on the Nintendo 3DS can also be used in conjunction with the device's Augmented Reality software - the software includes a mini-app named 'Mii Pics' which allows the user to take a photo of their Mii within a regular photo, using an augmented reality card included with the system.
The first Nintendo 3DS game to include support for Mii characters is Pilotwings Resort. Miis obtained through StreetPass appear as Non-player characters in Nintendogs + Cats. Mii characters also appear in Pokémon Rumble Blast, Mario Kart 7, and in many more games.
The Check Mii Out Channel, also known as the Mii Contest Channel in Europe and Oceania, is a Wii channel that allows players to upload their Mii characters and share them with other users. There are also popularity contests, in which players design a Mii that personifies a specific idea or character and then vote on the Mii that best fits the suggestion. The channel was made available for free download on the Wii Shop Channel on November 12, 2007.
A feature on the 3DS, the StreetPass Mii Plaza makes use of the handheld's StreetPass feature, which exchanges data between nearby 3DSs in standby mode. As Miis are gathered in the plaza, they can be used in one of two minigames, Puzzle Swap and Find Mii (known as StreetPass Quest in PAL regions). In Puzzle Swap, players can exchange pieces of a jigsaw puzzle based on Nintendo games. Find Mii is an RPG minigame in which players use the Miis they gathered to fight through dungeons, earning accessories for their Mii. Each Mii possesses a different type of magic depending on their color, and become more powerful if the player meets them more than once. These games can be optionally played with Play Coins, though the results are more random than with Streetpass Miis. On December 6, 2011, the feature was updated to include SpotPass functionality, as well as new puzzles, a sequel to Find Mii, a map showing where players met other Miis, accomplishments and a music player.[9]
Currently, only four 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.[10] Miis of Satoru Iwata and Reggie Fils Aime's (the presidents of Nintendo and Nintendo of America, respectively) were released on the 3DS for the 1st anniversary of the handheld console. 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 typically will force these entrepreneurs to shut down.[11]
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.[12]
The history of Miis were revealed at the Game Developers Conference in 2007. Shigeru Miyamoto first said that the Miis started out as a concept for a Famicom game, where a user could draw his face or someone else's. At the conference, Miyamoto commented the concept could not be turned into a game and the concept was shelved.
A few years later, during the N64 era, an unsuccessful disk drive for the N64, the Nintendo 64DD, was made. Nintendo had developed a short film using Talent Studio's avatar maker, which now included clothes & a built-in movie editor. After the disk drive's failure, Nintendo still had work to do on the Mii project.
The next try was for the e-Reader. Along with the Game Boy Camera, it could build an avatar maker. Miyamoto showed another short film they made with the newer avatar maker, which was called Stage Debut, which was shown at E3 2002.
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