Saturday, December 01, 2007

Check Mii Out

The ingenuity of the creators of the Nintendo Wii game console continues to amaze and delight me. We had to pay above the going price to get ours from some guy on eBay, after spending many hours on the phone to all local stores that sell Wii's asking every day if they had any in stock. I was frustrated at not being able to get one, but I am glad we finally did.

The thing that is a new is a feature called Check Mii Out. I've always thought the feature on the Wii where you can make your own Mii is really fun. You can make one that looks like yourself, but we quickly realized we could make ones that look like our favorite characters. There doesn't seem to be a limit to how many you can make; I think we have over 100 of them. And they play on your team (or the other team) when you play Wii Sports. So, we have Mom batting and Severus Snape pitching. And Mario and Link, and whenever a friend comes over, we let him make one representing himself. It's very cool.

So now, with this new feature, you can share your Mii with the world. Right on the Wii, you can go to a channel where you can upload your creation, and see those others have uploaded. The only limitation is that you can only give them initials, not names (my son theorizes this is to keep people from being able to use inappropriate words). So, HP for Harry Potter, either LV (Lord Voldemort) or TR (Tom Riddle) for the boy wizard's evil nemesis. We've seen quite a few HPs, and I personally think my Voldie is the best. Snape is popular as well, and I'm not the only one who dressed him in Slytherin green even though he always seems to wear black.

Other popular ones are JC (Jesus Christ) and MJ (Michael Jackson -- someone did a great job capturing the Gloved One's hollowed-out cheekbones). People are getting creative and making non-human characters -- Storm Troopers and Ewoks. I tried my hand at Snoopy after seeing CB (Charlie Brown) and PP (Peppermint Patty). It was hard to get Snoopy's ears right, though. I thought I did a good job with Dobby (Harry Potter's house-elf friend).

One great feature is that you can download other people's Mii's onto your machine. You can't edit them once you've got them, but you can get them.

My kids, even my 16-year-old boy, have had a great time with this feature. It's frustrating that you can only use initials and not names, but then it's sometimes fun to try and guess who they might be.

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