Miis are customizable avatars used on several Nintendo video game consoles and services. First appearing on the Wii's built-in Mii Channel application, they have since appeared on each subsequent Nintendo system including the Nintendo DS and mobile phones, and have been used in over three hundred titles since their debut. Mii characters created by a user can freely be transferred onto an amiibo figure or a compatible Nintendo system depending on the iteration of the Mii creation software.

Origin

The overall concept of Mii characters took a period of over fifteen years to finalize, with the idea first originating on the Famicom Disk System sometime during/after 1986. Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, a prototype application was developed that consisted of being able to freely place and assign facial parts onto a character, Feedback for the software was fairly positive, but executives at Nintendo doubted whether the concept could be converted into a full game.

Nearly a decade later, in the summer of 1995, Nintendo commissioned UK-based developer Software Creations to work on a three-dimensional sequel to Mario Paint for their upcoming Nintendo 64 system. Eventually, the project evolved into the Mario Artist series, a set of four titles released through 1999 to 2000 only for the Japan-exclusive Nintendo 64DD add-on; a similar disk drive accessory akin to the Famicom's Disk System. The second application in the series was titled Talent Studio (known as Talent Maker early in development) and consisted of preset characters that players could freely customize portrayed as celebrities in-game named "Talents". Using the Game Boy Camera's Transfer Pak or the included Capture Cassette that utilized video ports, photographs of faces could be mapped onto a Talent and freely animated and placed into movies created with the application. While the application's character creator was extremely ambitious for its time, the game sold very little due to the 64DD's commercial failure.

Shortly after the Nintendo GameCube and Game Boy Advance's release, several accessories for the latter system were presented during Nintendo's E3 2002 and 2003 showcases which included the e-Reader and the Game Eye, a successor to the Game Boy Camera. These accessories were planned to be utilized within a GameCube title known as Stage Debut, a spiritual successor to Mario Artist: Talent Studio. Developed from 2002 to 2004, the game used was used in conjunction with the Game Boy Advance and revolved around players placing photographs of faces taken with the handheld's Game Eye camera and placing them onto dancing characters that could be placed in several settings along with characters from existing Nintendo franchises such as Super Mario, Pikmin, and Animal Crossing if the player scanned in a compatible e-Reader card. Although an official release was planned with an alternative logo being trademarked later after its public E3 showing, the title was later cancelled due to Nintendo executives once again not envisioning the title as a proper game.

Meanwhile, Yoshio Sakamoto and his team were planning a Nintendo DS spiritual successor to Tottoko Hamutaro: Tomodachi Daisakusen Dechu, a Nintendo-published Game Boy Color title featuring the manga character Hamtaro which utilized a real-time clock as well as a feature that let players register birthdays of themselves and other people into the game where they could discover their match with those registered, with the titular Hamtaro character reminding the player of each birthday as they occur. The successor was titled Otona no Onna no Uranai Techo, or Women's Fortune Telling Pocket Notebook, and an avatar system for registered users was planned early during development. Once then Nintendo president Satoru Iwata discovered the project, he relayed it to Shigeru Miyamoto who was coincidentally planning a similar concept for the upcoming Wii system. The members of the Women's Fortune Telling Pocket Notebook team then shifted development towards the Wii's Mii Channel application, and the DS title later became Tomodachi Collection.

Miis

Origin

See also