Key Takeaways
- Miis were a key part of Nintendo’s consoles, but their popularity has waned over the years due to a lack of innovation.
- The updated Mii Maker in
Miitopia
for the Switch showcases the need for more creativity and sharing options. - The upcoming Switch 2 could revitalize Miis by including a better Mii Maker accessible across various games.
Since the launch of the Wii in 2006, every Nintendo console has featured Nintendo’s iconic Miis. Once the face of Nintendo’s consoles, their prominence has diminished with each new hardware launch. But Nintendo’s next console could revitalize the Miis with a long-awaited change.
Miis Brought a Charming Personality to Nintendo’s Consoles
The Wii was designed to be a console that anyone could enjoy, and Miis played an important role in fulfilling that goal. Games like Wii Sports and Wii Play are perfect for spending time with friends and family, but no one wants to wait an hour for everyone else to make their own avatars every time they start a new game.
Miis were the perfect solution to this problem, as you only needed to make one Mii character that could be used across numerous multiplayer games. You could even bring your Miis to another Wii console by storing them in a Wiimote.
It’s not hard to see why most Wii owners loved the Mii Maker. You could easily create avatars of yourself, your friends, your favorite celebrities, or a freakish abomination if you wish. The Mii Maker is simple enough for anybody to understand, yet it still provides an abundance of options for creating characters of all shapes and sizes.
If you’re like Mii—I mean me—you probably spent hours creating characters with the Mii Maker while listening to one of the most relaxing songs on the Wii.
Best of all, Miis added an extra dose of absurdity to any game they appeared in. With Miis, you could blow-up your siblings with blue shells in Mario Kart Wii, compete against gold medalists in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, or go toe-to-toe with grandma in a Wii Sports boxing match.
Most of these games are incredibly fun on their own merits, but the added silliness of being able to see yourself onscreen helped the Wii deliver many of the best party games ever made.
Later Nintendo systems featured games that found even more imaginative uses for the Miis. Tomodachi Life on the 3DS is a life simulator that lets you shape the lives and living rooms of your Miis as they begin and end relationships, find new hobbies, and participate in a variety of outlandish events. Similarly, the most recent entries in the Super Smash Bros. series allow you to add any character to the roster in the form of a Mii Fighter.
Fans Have Been Waiting for a Better Mii Maker
Miis were an essential part of Nintendo’s unique appeal, but their popularity has waned in recent years. Despite their continued presence in Nintendo consoles and apps, Miis have appeared in fewer games with each new system. While this could partially be blamed on the declining popularity of local multiplayer games like Wii Sports and Wii Party, it’s also the result of the Mii Maker’s own lack of innovation.
Apart from the addition of new color options on the Switch, the Mii Maker hasn’t changed since its original iteration on the Wii. If you’re able to transfer your Miis from a prior Nintendo console, there’s little reason to revisit the Mii Maker on any of Nintendo’s newer systems.
Despite the Mii Maker’s declining relevance, the Switch inadvertently proved its importance with Miitopia, a turn-based role-playing game starring your Miis. Miitopia was originally released on the 3DS and later ported to the Switch with numerous new features. One notable addition in the Switch port is a drastically expanded version of the Mii Maker that offers a larger selection of hairstyles, makeup options, and facial features, allowing you to create multiple layers of shading and add minor details that aren’t available in the original Mii Maker.
Some players have created impressively accurate recreations of real people, fictional characters, famous paintings, and just about anyone (or anything) else you could imagine. The best part is that Miitopia allows you to share your custom Miis with other players. Even if you aren’t interested in Miitopia‘s campaign—which I highly recommend playing—you can easily spend hours messing around in the character creator and browsing through other players’ collections.
Unfortunately, Miitopia also highlights the Switch’s biggest missed opportunity. Miitopia‘s character creator is a massive step forward for the Mii Maker, yet it’s exclusive to just one game. You can’t transfer your Mii designs from Miitopia into other games or even your Switch collection. So if you want to use any of your immensely detailed Miis in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, you’re out of luck.
It’s the Perfect Time to Bring Back Miis
Miitopia‘s console port was released too late for its Mii Maker to make a stronger impact on the Switch, but the upcoming Switch 2 could include the updated Mii Maker at launch. Instead of being limited to a single game, the upcoming console would hopefully let you bring your creations into almost any game that features Miis. The only exception would likely be the backwards-compatible Switch games.
The ability to share your Miis is also an important part of Miitopia and many prior iterations of the Mii Maker, which is why the Switch 2 should also revive the Check Mii Out channel. The now-defunct Check Mii Out channel was a free app for the Wii that allowed users to share and download each other’s Miis.
The channel also hosted contests, wherein users submitted Miis based on specific prompts and were judged by other players. These contests inspired players to make the most out of the original Mii Maker, and a new version of this app for the Switch 2 could be even better thanks to Miitopia‘s vastly improved character creator.
Miitopia might have encouraged Nintendo to shine the spotlight on Miis once again, but that renewed popularity won’t last without a memorable lineup of games to showcase the new Miis. Whether the Switch 2’s exclusives will live up to the lofty expectations set by Wii Sports remains to be seen. Thankfully, games like Tomodachi Life and Miitopia prove that there are still plenty of creative ways the Miis can make a comeback.
Although the Switch is one of Nintendo’s best consoles, it never recaptured the charm of the Wii’s early years. The Switch 2 has the opportunity to fix that by updating the Mii Maker and embracing its creative online community. If it launches with a memorable lineup of multiplayer games that reintroduce Miis to both living rooms and online lobbies, the Switch 2 may become Nintendo’s next best-selling console.
