The Mii Channel

Talk about a blast from the past

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.

Nintendo Peripherals

But wait, there's more!

The otherday I was watching normal TV for normal people, and was bombarded by a surprise gaming ad. What company could have possibly sunk enough marketing revenue to afford a spot on BBC, I wondered. It wasn't sandwiched between any landmark shows or anything, but it's presence on the most widely watched channel in the country was impressive enough. But hold your applause, it was just a Nintendo ad. Those people pretty much wrote the book on 'family friendly' so stations will easily roll over backwards to accept some that Nintendo money. (Luckily those same advertisers don't look at the Switch's online store to see the sorts of games that Nintendo are approving nowadays. There's literally an upcoming Doom parody called BDSM (Big Drunk Satanic Massacre.) Way to go Nintendo for expanding your horizons!)

The advert itself was focused on one of the more weird announcements from Nintendo's last Direct livestream; Ring Fit adventure. If you are somehow unaware, this was a game that picked up quite some traction with the way it seemed to be attempting to supplant Wii Fit as the go-to exercise game for middle age mothers. Using a plastic ring. Okay, sure it looks bendy, but I seriously doubt about the versatility of a plastic ring to hold your Joycons. Nintendo seemed sold enough to pimp this thing out to BBC, however, so I guess they must have faith. The whole thing got me thinking about the other peripherals Nintendo has committed to throughout the years, so that's what we're looking at today.

First, since we mentioned it, we should start with the good old Wii Fit balance board. This piece of kit was designed as an addendum to the motion-centric Wii kit and sought to empower mothers across the world with the power to partake in basic yoga. Their accompanying software also included a variety of workouts ranging from the simple routines that even I could get behind to the ones so excessive that even reading the description left me knackered. As the Nintendo Wii was so commercially popular due to it's marketing towards family units, it made absolute sense for Nintendo to actively attempt to appeal to all typical family demographics and Wii Fit was exceeding successful in this department. So successful, in fact, that Nintendo went onto release the Wii Fit Plus within a few years. In terms of actual numbers, Wii Fit was the third best selling game of 2008 earning over 4.53 million units sold. (That's a lot of balance boards!)

Let me get a little topsy-turvey on you for a moment as I return to the Nintendo Switch for a peripheral that I never partook in but have been forever fascinated by. Just what the heck is the Nintendo Labo anyway? Well, quite simply, it's a 'build-it-yourself' kit of cardboard for which players are expected to construct elaborate cardboard cradles to fit their Joycons and simulate a game. (Way to save money on materials and save the planet from an influx of plastic, Nintendo! Now if only you could do something about the size of Switch game cases...)The Labo is impressive not just in it's simplicity but in it's sturdiness. None of the designs require glue or cellotape in order to make the thing work, yet all are sturdy enough to withstand semi-constant use. (Just don't take it out in the rain, I guess.) I still hold issue with the excessive large price points for what is essentially a bunch of cardboard, but I suppose that's just classic Nintendo shenanigans nowadays, no one even questions them on it anymore.

Okay, so this next one isn't exactly a peripheral, but I feel it's worth bringing up at least once before I die. Who has heard of the Nintendo Virtual Boy? That's right, one of gaming's first, and least successful, forays into Virtual Reality, all the way back in the dinosaur age of 1995. Tech for this machine was being developed as far back as 1985, with Nintendo being excited about bringing the project to it's fullest fruition pretty much for the entire next decade. Once it was here, however, it was clear that things hadn't worked out exactly the way that Nintendo, or the world, had hoped. Due to limitations in the hardware and cost, only one colour could be represented within the Virtual Boy and somehow Nintendo decided that colour should be bright, mind-numbing, red. Also, developers didn't quite know how to make games for the thing or even what kind of games to make, so the console had one of the smallest libraries of any consoles ever. (I'm fairly certain that it's below 15 games.) The hardware had a head-stabilizing stand that required it to set on a table. (That's a big brain move.) and the whole thing looked incredibly unwieldly from the outside and felt incredibly uncomfortable from the inside. Amazingly, Nintendo managed to sell 910,000 units (according to their own data) before the thing was discontinued. I guess some people are masochists.

Now, I feel certain that I've discussed this next piece of hardware before, but I can't find the article so i'll just have to assume that I merely dreamt about writing it. Remember back in the height of the propaganda wars when Nintendo and Sega were wasting millions on disstrack commercials instead of making games? (It's better than just sending each other snide tweets like Sony and Microsoft.) It was in the midst of this conflict that Nintendo decided to drop their next peripheral that would determine the course of gaming history; The Power Glove. This ugly looking thing was based off an actually impressive design patent for a glove capable of detecting every movement of the hand down to finger flexture due to fiberoptic sensor's in the material. (For the late 1980's this was space tech!) The power glove, however, had to be mass produced, so much of that was stripped out for a more basic control scheme that was a lot less sensitive. The result? The thing was nigh on unplayable. The glove was supposed to simulate a traditional controller making for a viable replacement, but due to the imprecision of the sensors, you couldn't even play Zelda with this hunk of junk. Perhaps the most famous appearance of the Power Glove was in the Nintendo propaganda Fred Savage movie; The Wizard, in which the antagonist, Lucas, wields the tech and utters that most infamous of lines. "I love the Power Glove, it's just so bad!" (The line speaks for itself.)

Now let's talk about the humble gun. Wait what? Yeah, Nintendo have had a few of these over the years. From the classic NES Zapper back in 1985, Nintendo went on to implement their light gun technology into the 1992/93 Super Scope. Both of these weapons revolutionized the way that games could be made by ensuring that aiming no longer had to be handled exclusively by humble directional arrows. Now one could just point and shoot like god intended. Although there is no way that Nintendo could get away with something like that in the enlightened age of the 2000's onwards right? Mommy blogs the world over would just explode if they saw something like that, wouldn't they? Not so, it would seem, for Nintendo also supplied their Wii with an extensive amount of hardware. An old friend of mine even owned the Wii Zapper gun and said that it worked great on House of the Dead. (Wait a minute, they released 'House of the Dead' on Wii? Nintendo really know how to surprise me...) There was also the Wii Perfect Shot (Which is just a handgun) The Wii Shot Gun (Not a shotgun but a rifle) and the logic 3 Wii machine gun. (That's a freakin Škorpion, guys, are you trying to set the mommy blogs off?) Maybe only some of those examples were first party, but they were all approved for sale by Nintendo and I take that as consent. (Can't wait for the upcoming Switch/Beretta partnership!)

I've never been a huge fan of the peripheral trend, but that might be because I'm a huge cheapskate who guffaws whenever he sees a 50+ price tag. This tools tend to be rather expensive and their versatility rarely makes up for that cost. At the end of the day, I'd rather put by money behind a cool new game, but by that same merit, perhaps I'd enjoy said game a lot more with a piece of £20 cardboard strapped around my face. Who knows? I think it a mostly harmless practise and always find it fun to gawk at the latest item and go, "Why?"so I don't want it going away anytime soon. I'm always interested to see the ways that Nintendo try to exercise their creativity, even when a lot of them are quite dumb. You can't fly if you don't first stumble, or something like that, I'm no Ted talker. Looking at all these examples does leave me with one genuine question, though; how long until Nintendo try VR again?