Continuing my coverage of the Wii, I must today discuss the “Check Mii Out Channel.” I’m happy to announce that the first Mii contest is finally over and this, ladies and gentlemen, is my award; a souvenir photo:

You may notice, I went for a more classical approach. He is based on the original Mario, with small pixel eyes and an open mouth.

I assumed everyone was going to make Marios that looked the same, and so I made one that was more individualistic. I was only half right. While voting, I saw hundreds of Marios that generally looked nothing like Mario or were strange spins on him. The top 50 winners though were basically identical, which is somewhat disappointing. My Mario was in the “7th level.” I’m not quite sure what that means, but I was shown an animation of Mario running up a Fuji-esque mountain and he stopped near the snowcapped top, so I’m happy with that.

For those of you that haven’t heard, this channel allows online Wii owners to upload their miis for public viewing and judgment. You can view public miis with a random “grab bag,” by popularity, or by searching for a specific type of or individual mii. That’s pretty cool, but the real fun is in the contests.

Nintendo is hosting contests on this channel that ask players to design miis to a given theme. The first worldwide contest asked for “Mario without his hat.” After that we saw “A Pilgrim from the first Thanksgiving,” “The Tooth Fairy,” and “Cleopatra” as national contests in the US. I understand that in Europe, instead of the pilgrim contest, players were asked to produce “King Arthur.” Continue Reading…