The Rise and Fall of the Miis

mes those quirky little avatars you made of you and your friends back on the Wii that were such a huge part of Nintendo's identity yet nowadays it feels like they're disappearing and it seems Nintendo has forgotten about them why are they being phased out for a long time Nintendo had tried experimenting with making some kind of Avatar Creator it's one of Shero Moto's ideas to create a game based around this in some way but it never really went anywhere Mario AR's Talent studio for the N64 DD eventually brought this idea to life however the game didn't perform very well at all and was hindered by its limited audience fast forward half a decade when the Wii was in development Moto wanted to have another go at this concept and this time with the idea that these characters could be stored within the Wii Remote and would resemble some kind of Japanese doll these doll-like characters would be implemented into three upcoming Wii games we Sports we play and presumably we fit however there was no solid plan for how these characters faces should look with one idea being that you could load a picture of yourself from an SD card into the Wii to be projected onto the character's blank head it turned out that coincidentally at the same time that these Wii games were in development a separate team at Nintendo was working on a DS game where you could assemble Faces by sticking different facial features onto a blank head this prototype was eventually seen by mosu who realized that this concept was just what they had been trying to achieve for years and it fit together well with the idea of a little doll shaped character so the two projects combined and M went into proper development with the project now being made for Wii games at some point late in the development of the Wii it was decided that these characters could become one of the primary features that was built into the console itself with the Mi channel the production of these Miis ended up spreading widely with Nintendo employees worldwide sending photos of their faces and suggestions back to the development team so that the customization could be as diverse and accessible as possible so you'd hopefully be able to create a caricature of any human face and so the wi released and of course went on to be a huge success in a global Phenomenon with Wii Sports and the Mi at the front of it you can see why they were appealing you could be an athlete from the comfort of your couch along with your friends and family sitting next to you the Mi Channel itself became a big part of the Wii's identity too it sat proudly as the second channel on the Wii menu and the novelty of it made it basically its own game from the beginning M were quite a social thing in nature and Nintendo pushed that in a few ways as well as just being used in multiplayer games creating a mi up on the TV was also just a fun thing to do with friends I always used to enjoy when someone new came around and would make a me of them together before playing games the Mi Channel included online functionality too through we connect 24 separate from the main plaza where Miis hung around was the Mii parade where you could send Miis over to the Mii parade could fill up with other people's Miis from other consoles and yours could be sent to them you could even receive messages from Nintendo with special Miis that could join your parade Miis were also featured in the Wiis free online apps like the everybody votes Channel and Mi contest Channel where people would have to try and make the best Mi to match a theme going back to the game side of things Mi were pretty much everywhere and appeared in basically every other Wii game they were a popular thing to add to party games as playable characters like Mario Kart Wii and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Gam games as well as third party games that featured their own me likee characters like Go Vacation who' want to play as one of those characters over a me anyway you could even play as me in games where they felt quite out of place for example in Animal Crossing where you could replace the expressive face of your villager with the Blank Stare of your me in Sonic Colors you could become some kind of half Hedgehog half man beast and you could even play football as your me in FIFA as well as being player characters the me showed up elsewhere in games a common thing was for them to replace your profile or save file in Mario Galaxy your files select screen can be a bunch of small planets in the shape of your head floating around they'd also appear in the backgrounds of games as sort of Easter eggs what was cool was that the meat that showed up in the backgrounds would normally be the ones that you created yourself so the crowds in Mario Kart Wii could be made up of your friends and family and a giant statue of Luigi could be replaced with a statue of you me from me parade even showed up so people from all over the world could invade your games I remember playing Coconut Mall a ton when I was younger and I saw all my friends and family in cars and I used to think that when a me was in a car that person was actually driving in real life because I was a dumb stupid six-year-old so most of the mi's appearances were actually guest characters in non-me related games but what were they like in their own Wii Series games well Wii Sports introduced a bunch of named me characters who acted as the NPCs and CPU players of the game and they'd be carried forwards into future Wii Series games the most well-known me is obviously Matt the boxing trainer and all around Chad I like how these Mi are meant to be specific people within the Wii Sports World rather than just randomly generated ones I think they give the game a lot more personality and character even though the Mi themselves are hardly developed as actual characters alongside Wii Sports wi play was also released and while prominently featuring Miis it wasn't really based around them not all mini games even had them playable and it was really just meant to be a fun Tech demo for the Wii remote with a variety of different games and control schemes wi fit came next you played as youi of course but the mascot of this game was the balance board character this game was however the first game to feature woohoo Island then known as we fit Island wi Sports had a different location in World those being a modern city and for golf a large wooded Coastal area it was kind of generic and felt like it could be anywhere really but woohoo Island was the complete opposite it had tons of different landmarks and recognizable locations and had its own identity as a unique fictional world the island had been seen before in a Wii Sports demo though it didn't appear in the final game and was limited to just the setting of The jogging mini game within wi fit as the series continued on new games like Wii music where a band of M would play instruments together and Wii Party which was basically a Mario Party Like game with the Miis were developed and released notably wiess was the only game in the Wii series with no Miis kind of a missed opportunity really it would have been really fun to cast your M as different chess pieces dressed up in costumes based on each piece maybe even acting out attacks like in Harry Potter's wizard chess it really would have set the game apart from other digital versions of Chess and then there was wi Sports Resort this was probably the biggest game of the original Wii series and it sold incredibly well including better controls and a bunch of new sports and modes I'd even consider it one of the best party games ever this game had the unique theme of a sports Island Resort which really ties the whole game together it's the most developed version of the island that we've seen and the game really Embraces it and truly brings it to life every sport in the game takes place here and in the surrounding area in the background you've got me just wandering around living their lives and either participating in or viewing the sports and there's a bunch of things that aren't necessarily sports related like ancient ruins a cruise ship and a volcano but they just add to the setting so much it's all brought together really well in the modes where you get to Traverse across a large area like cycling and water sports and of course there's the island flyover the most iconic mode that lets you freely explore the island and it's so much fun I used to love just flying around and imagining what life would be like for the meis there Nintendo didn't need to put so much effort into building this world but they did and it's so much better for it it really stands apart from its predecessor M were the icons and identity of the Wii series however the gameplay itself didn't really focus on them of course they were the main characters but really they just could have used Mario characters and it would have still been the same gameplay-wise so what if M were the core focus of a game and a proper game not just a mini game like the Mi contest Channel well Nintendo thought of that and created the Tomodachi collection on the DS this game was a Tamagotchi style life simulation where your M live on an island and take care of your needs the DS didn't have its own dedicated Meme Maker so one had to be included in the game to accommodate it a few other DS titles went on to include M and also let you import the ones that you already had on your Wii however Alber a Fitness training game ended end up being exclusive to Japan including the Japanese Tamagotchi collection unfortunately it's funny that the console that the M were born from hardly featured them at all in the end me's appearances weren't just restricted to the Wii and the DS in official Nintendo interviews on their website developers would be represented by their own Miis I've always found it cool to see the personal Miis of Nintendo employees and this was taken even further in the future of course with the popularity of Miis there were going to be clones and knockoffs I've already mentioned the ones that appeared in third party Wii games but the most notable me clones were made by a certain computer company in 2008 Microsoft introduced Xbox avatars which were developed by rare these were used just like Miis being made on the console and used in a variety of casual games R Deniz that they copied the Miis and the avatars were supposedly in development before the mies were even announced I'm not going to say that isn't true but from the final designs of them I think it's pretty obvious that they took some inspiration the facial features look really similar to the simplistic style that the Mi used however I think that the more realistic head and body shap just don't work that well with the faces it looks off it's like they just copied the m without any of the charm to their credit having the option to customized clothing is cool and does set them apart from the Mi a bit more and I will say that these original Xbox 360 avatars look a whole lot better than their newer extremely generic counterparts so me were a huge deal throughout the Wii generation and this era was definitely the peak of their popularity they were mainstream thanks to the massive success of the Wii it felt like everyone had played on a Wii at that time even people who didn't own one well didn't have much interest in gaming it sold 101 million units and with it being a social and family oriented console it's possible that hundreds of millions of Miis were made based on real people their simple designs and wide amount of uses made them work so well for the Wii and they became some of the main icons of Nintendo up there with Mario and Link in some ways they surpassed Mario in representing Nintendo because they weren't limited to a specific game franchise it just wouldn't make sense giving up on them when moving into the Next Generation and so Nintendo went in strong with the mi in their next pair of consoles the 3DS and the Wii U the 3DS launched in 2011 and brought with it its own brand new meaker these included some new customization options as well as a function that allowed you to take a picture of yourself which could then be turned into a me unfortunately it didn't really work well the results were quite funny though being on a handheld console you couldn't really mess around with your friends making M on the TV but it was still perfectly fine it also had another camera function of being able to scan QR codes to import M which was actually pretty cool the console launched along with only a small number of Nintendo games but the mem maker did not go to waste instead of making a brand new Wii series Style game for the 3DS Nintendo took two pre-existing series and turned them into Mi games kind of nintend dog was a massive hit back on the original DS so it made sense to make a proper successor for the 3DS the player character in those games was just real life you interacting with the digital dogs and a few other characters in the game appeared as portraits of realistic humans however in the 3DS sequel all humans were replaced by m which was an interesting decision the game was meant to look real and having M alongside realistic dogs just seems odd the thing is Nintendo wanted to actually show people in game as 3D models and realistic humors probably would have looked atrocious on The Limited hardware and in my opinion it just wouldn't feel nintendoe I think Mi work well enough and it helped give the game more opportunities that it would have had with actual player models especially when it came to interactions with other players the other Mi game on the 3DS was pilot Wings Resort this game is strange it is a pilot Wings game the gam playay structure and music were all the same as they were in Pilot Wings 64 but instead of building upon the world and characters of that game they're replaced by Miis and the game takes place on woohoo Island so in some ways is it more of a sequel to Wi Sports Resort it feels like an expanded version of the air sports mode from that game which is a good thing but it's just a bit confusing was it originally planned as a new pilot Wings game or Island flyover 3DS edition the game's title suggests both woohoo Island here is pretty much the same as it was before and it doesn't really introduce that much new to the Mi universe and hey if it ain't broke don't fix it neither of these games were revolutionary in terms of gameplay or their use of M but the 3DS did launch with another kind of game that kind of did both the 3DS was packed with a bunch of free software that came pre-installed on the console Face Raiders augmented reality games and most notably Street pass me Plaza Street par was kind of the 3DS's answer to the online social features that the Wii had and the DS didn't have except instead of being based around online connections it was based around local interactions in real life I think the concept of it is really cool you take your 3DS around with you when you go out in public as you do with a handheld console and it will connect to the 3DS of anyone else who's doing the same thing nearby connecting with another person would earn you rewards in games as well as unique player content being shared between you like Mario Maker levels a ton of games supported it but the main one was of course the street past me Plaza rap itself within it you'd have your own Mii set up and anyone you Street past would have their Mii join your Plaza you could then take their Mii with your own into the different small games that were available with their Mii helping you progress in some way these games mostly feature some kind of collection mechanic you could build up an army of other people's Miis or fill out jigsaw puzzles with the pieces they'd give you among other things and the main collection was the plaza itself full of different mies from all over the place you can see what country they were from and what their favorite game was too sometimes special me could be sent over the internet from Nintendo so you'd have a Nintendo employee in Plaza which helped make it feel like a cooler expanded version of the Mi parade on the Wii a downside compared to that version is that they don't appear as your own cast of Miis like on the Wii within games but I'm not sure if the 3DS had many if any games that worked like that anyway one description I've heard of Street pass is that it's kind of like a secret club that only 3DS owners are a part of and it's quite accurate it's a shame that Nintendo never brought it over to the switch similar to the Wii Mi would show up as playable characters as such in various games and there were a few more games that ended up starring me for the first time Pokémon Rumble World which was a sequel to a wew game had your me sending off a toy Pokémon to battle and the story mode in Mario Golf World Tour has you playing as your Mi it turns out that there's also one Mi game on the 3DS that I'd never heard of before making this video it's called AK b84 plus me no akb48 plus me sorry and it's a game about your me joining a real life Japanese pop group it wasn't made nor was it published by Nintendo but there are me right there on the box and you play as one so technically it's still an original Mi game I guess it looks like there are other games based on this pop group though but nothing like this one so I'm not sure if this would be classed as a me ified game or not weird over on the Wii U side M were integrated into the system itself more than ever before on the Wii and 3DS having a Mii was always optional though they were required for some games to work but on the Wii U you have to have a mi to use the console at all because making one is part of the system setup your Mii would represent your user profile and be displayed on the menus the Mii Maker here was basically the same as the 3DS's with new music though it unfortunately didn't have a Mii Plaza for your Miis to hang out in instead they just stand on shelves it's cool that you compos them but this Mi maker was actually the least interesting one at the time however the Wii U did have its own Plaza full of Miis that being waraa Plaza on the main menu when you weren't connected to the Nintendo network there are a bunch of mies standing around talking about the various pre-installed software that the Wii U had with you standing in the center but when you are connected those Miis are replaced entirely meerse meerse was one of the Wii U's big new features outside of the game pad Nintendo took the idea of Mi being used in a social way to the extreme and made a whole social media based around them almost every game would have its own Community we could make posts and drawings for everyone to see and quite often they'd be integrated into the games themselves for example in Mario 3D World M would stand around on the world map dressed as sprixies and displaying things said posted and in Wind Waker HD you could find and send messages in a bottle with a Mee post written on there could even be private sub communities within games wi Sports Club had one for each club which were based on real world regions and if you made a tournament in Mario Kart 8 it would get its own community no one ever joined mine though it's quite a unique way to interact with games and other people being completely built into the system rather than having a profile picture everyone was represented by a me and it really helped give the feeling that you were part of a big community of Nintendo fans rather than just faceless strangers posting whatever developers showed up on meerse 2 Mah hero Sakurai would post his photo of the day series on there with screenshots of Super Smash Bros for Wii U and you can find interviews and updates from other bigname Nintendo employees too like Shero mamoto and AG Aluma who all have their own accounts with their own personal mies you don't normally see these people posting on social media so it was really cool to have some kind of way to hear from them that wasn't just Nintendo directs or interviews with journalists third party developers could have verified accounts too I remember the creator of some kind of be related game holding a drawing contest on there once all of this stuff was great but meerse was a pretty weird place but that was to be expected anyone with a Nintendo network ID could join so it was full of children probably too young to be online and Nintendo's rules were quite strict about people posting anything inappropriate or not game related back to the wara plaza this was basically a limited capture of meerse visualized as a physical space where your Miis hung out and chattered right on your main menu the plaza was like Street pass a sort of evolution of me parade since all the Mi are from other real Wii U owners including your friends and you could choose to download them to your own Mi collection ction if the owner had given permission the Wii U had some of its own me Centric titles it launched with Nintendo Land one of the best party games I've ever played again the game included different attractions those are all mini games based on different Nintendo franchises they all tried to use the Wii U gamepad in various cool ways with the best ones having asymmetrical multiplayer where the GamePad player Works differently to others instead of playing as the actual characters from games he plays M wearing themed costumes and the whole game has a cool theme park aesthetic where everything's clearly sets up to be a game for the Miis instead of actual monsters you have robots and puppets that look like them the game's main menu had a hub that you could walk around and here you'd have loads of Miis wandering around like a real theme park they could be real people's mies too if you were connected to Mee and they display their own merse posts after this Nintendo continued to use Miis in their sequels to Wii Series games Wii Sports Club was sort of a remaster of Wii Sports with online multiplayer and some new control methods but it failed to have much impact like at all this was probably due to the fact that most people probably had the original Wii Sports already and wi Sports Club had a weird payment model with day passes and the sports being sold separately the other games we fit you and wi pass you were perfectly fine successes but that's all they were just sequels the Wii U was already underwhelming for a lot of people and having a few just another Mi games didn't help Miis did show up in other games though they were playable where you'd expect Mario Kart Mario and Sonic Etc though their addition to Super Smash Bros was a bit more notable for some reason Reggie fiz was a popular request for a smash fighter so Nintendo added him at least in me form and you'd have to make him yourself all fighters in Smash 4 had customizable move sets but the Miis went even further one they were Mi so they were completely custom anyway and two you could unlock different costumes for them these just made it more interesting than playing as a basic me and on top of that there were costumes based on specific characters so even if you couldn't play as Gino or Knuckles you could at least make a mi that looked like them pretend you were playing as them while the Wii U did Embrace M just as much as the Wii and 3DS the only completely original Mi game it got was Nintendo Land and that was still just a game that starred them as characters but not the focus like Tomi collection was on the DS back over on the 3DS it was another story it got two of the best and most Mi focused games ever released in 2014 the 3DS received one of its most popular and beloved titles the ultimate Mi game Tomodachi Life this was finally a sequel to Tomodachi collection and this time it was actually released worldwide I think during this generation me were just taken for granted no longer the fun new characters that they were at first but this game brought them back into the spotlight the premise is the same as its predecessor taking care of M on an island the Mi look up to you like some sort of God who helps them with their daily problems but they also just get along and live their lives having Hobbies jobs and forming relationships with each other this game gave the M more personality than they ever had before they aren't just the characters of the game they are the game the fun of them being me is that they can be whoever you want friends family fictional characters celebrities and the game was actually overviewed in a Nintendo Direct presented by the mes of the Nintendo employees with a whole Island full of them I wonder what kind of impact it would have had if the original game had released outside of Japan a few years after Tomodachi Life came mopia this game worked as a source of successor to Tomodachi life but within a different genre mopia is a fantasy turn-based RPG that stars m in every character role in the game you play as yourself and have a party of whoever you want fighting alongside you all the NPCs can be customized too they're all actual character characters but who they're being played by is up to you the game can connect to the internet and automatically fill in all the characters with me made by other people if you want as well as for the gaml it's pretty simple but quite addictive there are still very large elements of life simulation here and the me in your party still have their own personalities and choices like in Tomodachi life so you don't have to control them other than your own me however you still manage them sorting out their needs organizing them and helping them become friends which boosts their teamwork and makes them stronger this whole game seemed to come out of nowhere and it turned out out to be so so good and full of creativity when it comes to the Mi Universe in the 3DS and Wii U generation it had been developed slightly further with a brand new cast of named mes appearing in Wii U games and wooho Island was still used continually appearing in Mario Kart 7 Smash Bros and we fit you it didn't really get developed further though but tomod actuallyy life in mopia kind of filled in the need for a world for Mis to live in so in general Mis had a great time across the 3DS and Wii U but Nintendo not so much with poor sales of the Wii U and Nintendo's relevance fading they did something very unlike themselves and started releasing mobile games the first of which being Momo Momo appeared to be a spin-off of sorts of Tomodachi Life you had your me living in an apartment it could talk and it had the same personality types as in that game but the actual game playay was very different it actually wasn't really a game it was more of a social app your me would ask you a bunch of questions you type in whatever answer you wanted and then your friends could visit and see what funny thing you came up with and vice versa there was a bit more to it you could dress up your me with a much more detailed outfit Creator than Tomodachi Life you could earn rewards with an arcade style mini game and there was a pretty decent photo mode for taking pictures of mes the app had a section where you could find me shared by others and see answers to questions from strangers from all over the world so it seemed like Nintendo was attempting to make another hopefully successful methed social media but it just wasn't good enough the idea was unique but not appealing enough to keep people sticking around and it ended up being the first of Nintendo's apps to shut its servers down the launch of the Nintendo switch in 2017 set a bad precedent for the future of Miis the Mi maker was no longer a prominent app and was buried in the system settings no music no Plaza pretty much just a bunch of menus along with this Miis were no longer a requirement you could use them as your profile picture but it was completely optional and that was the only thing you could do with your Mii on the system the switch launched with three Nintendo games the legend of zelder breath of the wild snipperclips and one two switch Zelda and sniper Clips had no space for M obviously but onew switch that game was the switch's we sport or Nintendo Land and was just the kind of game that Nintendo would normally put the me in it seemed pretty clear that they wanted to go a different Direction with their new casual party games and one two switch was quite minimalistic visually anyway so there wasn't much place for m in the switch's first year M only appeared in two games Mario Kart 8 Deluxe which was a port of a Wii U game and joy sound a Japan exclusive game and again a port worst of all mea shut down in October of 2017 leaving the Wii U a much more lifeless console with many in-game features made unus able however not all hope was lost mopia released worldwide this year a year after its original release in Japan this was only on the dying 3DS though in July 2018 M finally reappeared in Go Vacation which was ported from the Wii to the switch it wasn't until December of that year around 2 years since their last appearance in a brand new game that they resurfaced in Super Smash Bros ultimate unfortunately this still wasn't a sign of me staying relevant as it was pretty much mandatory for them to be included since the game was bringing back every single character playable in the series it's like saying FZ is coming back cuz Captain Falcon was there around this time it felt like M were completely done for Nintendo was clearly trying to phase them out and they probably wouldn't be making any noteworthy new appearances in games the main reason theorized is that Nintendo just wanted to distance themselves from anything representing the Wii era of games because of the failure of the Wii U it made sense M weren't even the only thing gone from that era Nintendo moved on completely from the Nintendo network over to Nintendo accounts and switch online the switch as UI lacked most of the Nintendo charm most people associate with previous consoles and even amiibos were appearing less and less it's possible that meom was an experiment to see how the general public would react to m in 2016 maybe the game would be a huge success and they'd once again be mainstream but since it failed too that might have been enough proof to Nintendo that M were outdated by now it was clear that M were dying and slowly becoming a relic of a bygone era but then they came back M technically appeared in Super Mario Bros you Deluxe at the beginning of the year but this was only in the side mode of a wiii u Port where they really came back was with Super Mario Maker 2 not actually playable this time but a big part of the game with the original Mario Maker merse was very well integrated into the game all your levels would be posted there and comments on levels would appear there too since your Mario maker and meerse accounts were the same it was a good place to share and discuss levels as well as hold level building contests and stuff which gave the game a massive online community the switch didn't have me verse so Nintendo had to sort of bring it back here this was this wasn't even the first time me verse source of returned either in Splatoon 2 you could post drawings to be displayed in the game hub like in the first one with me versus years being replaced by a fresh button but it didn't work as well the posts were only posted to Twitter or Facebook so you couldn't actually respond to them on the console and there was no way to really find a post you were looking for anyway in Smash ultimate the ability to share content like me is in stages online returned and within the switch online app you could view them in a sort of social media format even years returned but no comments anyway in Mar Maker 2 you had to set up your own profile which was unique to the game this meant having a unique username and a mandatory Mi to represent you the pseudo Mi verse was the comments same as on the Wii U you could comment on other people's levels and they would appear in the levels themselves with them being tied to your profile disappointingly that was it there was no good way to respond to people after they had commented on your level and if you wanted to share and discuss levels properly it would have to be done on a separate social media on the plus side Yumi wasn't just an icon anymore it was an actual 3D model and you could work to unlock different outfits and poses for it which would then show up on your profile and whenever you played online multiplayer despite their significant appearance in Mario Maker M didn't really return to the level they were on before just a few months later ringfit Adventure released which was the switch's answer to we fit except in the form of an RPG instead of a mini game collection it actually reminds me of mopia in a lot of ways but you guessed it this game didn't have mes instead you play as a pretty generic slightly customizable Avatar like one two switch this game would surely have featured m in the previous generation but it just didn't here it took its own Direction instead with a unique art style and set of characters the roughly 2-year period following Mario Maker actually had a total of zero new games with M their only relevance came in the form of new costumes in Smash even there some of these costumes just outright obscured the M from view so it felt more like you were replacing them it's not like they just wouldn't fit in any of the games from that period Animal Crossing had them before and so did Mario and Sonic which both received new games Clubhouse games from the DS received a sequel during this time and it would have been a perfect fit for the Miis it even had bowling and golf with golf courses from Wii Sports to be fair the original game didn't have Mi either and since your switch profile appeared in game technically you could at least see your me if you wanted a portal Super Mario 3D World was also released and it understandably removed the merse integration but still the Miis in that game also work like a sort of time trials mode where you could race the ghosts of other players Mi through levels and that was gone too so once more it looked like the Mi were fading away until they weren't mopia randomly got brought to the switch and this wasn't just a basic Port either it had to be reworked just to use one screen and button controls it had improved graphics and included some extra content like a horse that could travel with your Miis it also added a big change to the Mi maker the first addition was wigs which brought some more realistic and animated hairstyles to your Mi and the second was the makeup feature this was basically a large collection of different shapes that you could arrange on your M's face pretty much however you wanted using different colors and gradients people were able to make some insanely detailed detailed faces don't get me wrong these were really cool but it felt like many went too far and they barely even resembled M anymore it kind of takes you out of the game seeing them next to normal Miis it's weird this game had a big following online and Miis were technically relevant again but a massive amount of them didn't really look like Miis obviously it's still optional but I think the best ones kept the basic style of mes and use the makeup to just create things not possible with the normal features things like non-human characters scars and other unusual details that are important to the character it seemed that this game might have been the beginning of the mi's rebirth following on from mopia Mario Golf super rush had a story mode campaign starring a mi much like his 3DS predecessor and in November of that year Pikman became MiFi in the form of Pikmin Bloom this wasn't the first Nintendo mobile game to feature M outside of momo they usually appeared as your user icon thanks to the ability to assign your Mi to your Nintendo account however in Pikmin your Mi as your player character representing you on the in-game map as the leader of your Pikmin Squad you can unlock different clothing for your me and there have been frequent updates and events adding new options there was an exception to this Resurgence the new Big Brain Academy had its own avatars instead of the Mi hits we iteration had the fate of the Mi swung in the other direction yet again the next year after 5 years Nintendo had finally decided that the world was ready for a switch successor to Wii Sports I've been mentioning switch games that felt like they should have had Miis but didn't throughout but there's one game that feels the most important in this regard wi Sports was the Mi game the one everybody's played and the one world's introduction to Mi sure the Tomodachi series is more focused on the Miis but those games don't have nearly the same amount of recognizability that we Sports does it was just such a shock to see that M had been replaced in switch Sports some of the other games that I mentioned had their own forms of Avatar but they weren't trying to imitate Miis and they didn't really feel like they had any obligation to have them but the Wii Sports series and the Wii series as a whole had only ever starred Miis so the situation with these new characters the sports mates was different they remind me of the me knockoffs that you'd see in third party week games and attempt to have their own thing but just worse the customization is more limited it makes everyone have the same kind of face no matter what different features you pick Nintendo clearly was expecting a mixed response to the change because M were thankfully still optional as player characters in the game it was easy to miss this in the trailer however and after the game's official announcement Nintendo's Twitter account confirmed to the inevitably upset fans that M were in fact still there the main reason for adding new avatars was likely to make the game feel new to Casual audiences though I do wonder if it backfired on them with casual players not actually recognizing it as an official new Wii sports game nearly 2 years on switch Sports is still the latest game to feature M their brief comeback across a few games was ended in a pretty disappointing way being cast aside for some new characters although not all hope was lost an update to switch Sports added a cheat code which turned all CPU players into Miis they even added some of the original named Miis from the Wii but it seems like there wasn't too much effort put in as they weren't created with one toone accuracy compared to the originals it's the thought that count on top of this m were added to Mario Kart tour it doesn't seem like much as M have been in the last three Mario Kart games but they made quite a big deal out of it there was a whole event dedicated to them with collectible Mii tokens and racing suits most recently Mario Kart 8 Deluxe added a bunch of new Mi racing suits in its final update there was no reason to this and I doubt that many people even considered wanting more but it does show that Nintendo still cares about M to an extent in fact there's a few other little ways that M are being kept alive like I mentioned you can have a mi attached to you a Nintendo account and they'll appear in the my Nintendo website whenever you sign in play games or when they offer reward coins on the switch's news app there are occasional posts from the ESOP team who are represented by what I'm assuming are their own Miis Mi even had a cameo in the Mario movie when Luigi's phone is ringing you can see the silhouette of a default male me with this iconic pointy hair who represents the unknown person calling Luigi while these aren't all very important they help keep m going as Nintendo icons so what does the future hold for M it's not very certain the switch generation had gone back and forth on having them appear in the games and it didn't exactly end on a high note this generation was a whole new era for Nintendo and a lot of changes came with it I wonder how different the fast approaching switch 2 will feel in the last few years we've seen Zelda take a proper New Direction and now Mario 2 ever since the movie and it's possible Nintendo will want to finally truly distance themselves from the Wii ERA with the next console but those small me inclusions do add up and Nintendo definitely hasn't been ready to let them go I think an important thing to think think about is Nintendo accounts Nintendo has stated that their account system isn't going anywhere it will be continued to be used and expanded on in the future and it'd be strange for them to suddenly remove M for no reason even if it's the only thing I don't see why they couldn't still be used as user icons on the switch's successor personally I expect that M will continue to exist in the state that they are now at least for a while longer before Mar Maker 2 and then mopia I wouldn't have been so sure though it's a shame as me have been a part of gaming my whole life I grew up with the we and lots of my first gaming experiences involve playing as my Mi so it would be nice for them to be more prominent again it'd be even better to see a new Mi Focus game whether it's a successor to Tomodachi life or mutopia or something else entirely even woohoo Island could return we'll just have to wait and see as always thanks for watching And subscribe for more [Music]

Channel: Endo

Views: 126,000

Keywords: Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Switch, videogames, games

Id: 2TaxtNGjM3M

Length: 34min 1sec (2041 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024