Back in the bygone year of 2006, Nintendo launched their second home console for the 2000's, this one aimed to compete against the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. There was one problem however, somewhere along the way of their pursuit into innovating the tech around peripherals, Nintendo had fallen behind in terms of raw power in the video game arms race. This 'fall behind' really began back in 1996 with the release of the Nintendo 64, when it became clear to big N that their direction of tech would leave them wanting in the future.
Perhaps this debacle would is best symbolized in one of the most important moments in Video game history; the break-up between Nintendo and Square. These two were orignally a pair made in heaven, both Japanese companies that had found considerable success in the west and shared an exclusive partnership together. In particular, Nintendo were the ones who published Square's hail Mary of a game, the original Final Fantasy, and thus saved the company from bankruptcy. However, in the years that followed that relationship began to strain as Square's direction started to divert. By the time the team had come to work on Final Fantasy 7 it was clear that everyone wanted to push themselves in regards to what was visually possible, and their partnership with Nintendo wasn't going to achieve that. Despite pressure from third-party studios, Nintendo had opted against a disk based design for their new Nintendo 64 and instead tried to evolve their cartridge system to it's highest form. Whilst it is undeniable that, for the time, the polygonal rendering of the Nintendo 64 was groundbreaking, it was nothing compared to what could be achieved on their rival's new platform, the disk-based Playstation. (A console which was famously originally pitched as a Nintendo evolution.) Square opted to leave their Nintendo partnership to be with the new hotness and this marked the symbolic end of Nintendo's battles to be the home of the most powerful games.
Ever since then Nintendo worked on little quirks to sell their consoles, such as the 'portablilty' of the Gamecube and the motion remotes that launched with the Nintendo Wii in 2006. However, this didn't mean that Nintendo completely shed every competitive bone in their body, there were still a profit-driven company afterall. Whilst the other big gaming companies were scrapping it out to pick up the 'gamer' audience, Nintendo took aim at the family audience to significant success, the Nintendo Wii struck a heavy cord with parents wanting to connect with their children and elderly folk who needed to exercise more. With all this success it was almost as though Nintendo didn't even need to worry about what everyone else was doing, they were making money just fine on their own, but greed is an insatiable mistress and Nintendo couldn't help but cast a curious eye at the things their competitors were up to.
The Xbox 360 had launched with some curious framework for social features that bade players to create animated avatars of themselves. This strange sort of 'virtual you' seemed to be designed as a placeholder for folks sharing real images of themselves and allowed for folk to connect over more then just user names, at least in theory. Playstation adapted this concept into their own version of this called Playstation home, which created an entire online hub space for avatars to interact in and Nintendo worked on something similar, although theirs would be built straight into the core system, called the Mii Channel.
Everyone who was a Wii owner back in the day is familiar with the Mii Channel as, similar to Xbox, the Wii straight up wouldn't allow gamers to jump into their software without first creating an avatar, or what Nintendo would call a Mii. These Mii were very unique compared to their competitor's avatars, as they were realized in an incredibly simplistic manner to be both easy to render and allow players to be imaginative. They were designed to really resonate with the younger audience that Nintendo had become associated with and give those kids a canvas to go crazy with. Players would choose their Mii's facial features out of a selection of stock cartoony options, shape the head out of a choice of mostly geometric shapes and pick a favourite colour. That's it, job done, Mii made. Then people were free to jump into their games with a digital recreation of themselves handy.
Such was useful considering the first game that most Wii buyers owned was Wii Sports, due to it being included with every Wii console. (A fact which propelled that game to the top of the 'most sold games' chart in a manner that many labelled 'unfair'.) Wii Sports was a game in which a handful of 'sporty actvities'; Bowling, Tennis, Baseball.etc. were simulated using the motion detecting controllers and sensor bar inherent to the Wii. Through this the traditionally lethargic act of gaming could take on an active spin as people could theoretically get a day's workout without leaving the house. (emphasis on 'theoretically'.) Nintendo did have a little trick up their sleeves to ensure that players shared a close affinity to their Wii sports activities, and that was by making your Mii avatar's the star of every sport. That way players could see a rough approximation of themselves doing all the fun sports activities that they were too lazy to go out and do themselves.
This created a dependency around the Mii channel from the get go and ensured that Wii owners got familiar with the Mii system right away. And, seeing as how the Wii was a 'family console', people could create avatars for their entire family to get in on the action. Of course, for folk who's entire family would rather jump off a cliff than play a video game with them, like me, this usually just meant that we spent our free time creating wild and wacky characters off the top of our heads or based on celebrities. As an incurably boring individual, I just made a bunch of real-life sports stars to play alongside me for the Wii sport matches. ('Tiger woods' for golf, 'Roger Federer' for Tennis, and so on.)
The Mii's did exist outside of games, however, in a clinical void, which I have referred to before, know as: the Mii Channel. The Wii was one of the first game systems to feature downloadable apps for players to mess around with, although all the early ones were first party, and so to sell the new idea to players in a manner that would be familiar in terms of vernacular, Nintendo decided to call their apps, Channels. The Mii Channel was a place that represented the home for all those Mii's that you created on a whim and promptly forgot about, it was a forum in which they all met up and wondered about aimlessly in perpetuity. The players could then hover over their creations and watch their interactions from afar, awarding the same kind of curious fascination that one gets from Tamogotchis or The Cantina hub from the Lego Star Wars games.
Of course, the one thing which everyone remembers vividly in relation to the Mii Channel is that instantly recognizable and hummable theme. If you find yourself wondering how it was that thousands of gamers could spend hours watching stick figure Mii's walk around an empty plaza with no end, look no further than this hypnotic, sleepy anthem which would bewitch the unwary with it's inoffensive notes. Just like with the peaceful tunes that dominate the peripheral mind of Minecraft gamers, the Mii theme was both iconic and implacable enough to forever dwell on player's minds. That one tune that stuck in your head but wasn't annoying enough to wish to banish. You know this particular song was beloved by the fact that, alongside 87 (soon to be 88) fighters and hundreds of music tracks, 'Super Smash Bros. Ultimate' went out of their way to include a light hearted remix in their music vault. (Giving the fans what they want as always.)
The Mii channel was always a curious entity in my eyes, and the fact that I'm writing a blog purely about it's existence 13 years later just goes to show you how it stuck with us all. Perhaps it was the draw of something creative that struck a cord with gamers, or maybe it was the allure of ruling over a society of mindless slaves, either way I find it hard to find a former Wii player who doesn't hold an inexplicable love for this strange moment out of gaming history. Mii are by no means gone in today's Nintendo world, but they are no longer stables of their vision. One can still make their avatar into a fighter for the Smash bros roster, however, if they so choose.
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