/Threaded/ Gone with the Mii
05/04/2007 | Filed under Discover > Threaded
Nintendo’s latest game console is turning a world of couch potatoes into hard-working athletes obsessed with celebrities, as Oliver Lindberg discovers.
Rarely has a video game console created such a storm. 50,000 Nintendo Wiis were sold in the first 12 hours of it going on sale in the UK (about one a second). Everybody’s talking about it, everybody wants one. The online community embraced their new favourite toy at a breathtaking speed. Mere weeks after its launch, the web was littered with hacks and tribute sites. And as soon as a craze is mashed up with kittens (www.wiikitty.com), you know it’s a hit.
There’s more than one and a half thousand pictures of gamers swinging their Wiimote about in Flickr’s Wii Motion Pool (www.flickr.com/groups/wiimotion/pool). Dig around a bit and be amazed how many OAPs you can spot having taken to a Wii bit of playing. Since the console uses motion sensitive technology, a Wii workout can be pretty exhausting. In fact, a 25-year-old computer programmer from Philadelphia lost nine pounds in six weeks during what he called the Wii Sports Experiment (www.wiinintendo.net/2007/01/15/wii-sports-experimentresults). The only rule: play Wii Sports every day for 30 minutes. So Mickey DeLorenzo got himself a book deal and teamed up with traineo.com to develop a Wii fitness programme. But before you rush over to your console to become a Wii muscleman, a few words of warning. Excessive playing can lead to a so-called Wii elbow, aching backs and shoulders, as well as utter destruction. If you believe the extensive Japanese safety manual for the Wii, which covers all eventualities, from hitting somebody in the face with the Wiimote to pouring orange liquid over it, Nintendo’s new hit is a dangerous weapon (www.tinyurl.com/vazch). And apparently, the Wiimote smacking into televisions, walls, lamps and competing players is a common issue. www.Wiihaveaproblem.com documents the shocking stories of overenthusiastic gamers accidentally whacking their partners, pets and smashing their lounge to pieces.
DJ Wii
There’s more uses to the Wii than just knocking somebody out, though. For instance, you can DJ with the Wiimote. hence the neologism “wiijing” (www.djwiij.com), control your digital home, including lights, thermostat, security camera and video recorder (wiihacks.blogspot.com/2006/12/nintendo-wiicontrolled-smarthome.html), or turn a robot into a sword-wielding, tennis playing monster (www.usmechatronics.com/usmgarage/WiiBot.html). One of the most popular trends, however, is centred around the Mii channel, which enables you to create 3D avatars that look like you, your friends or (and this is what all the fun’s about) famous celebs. Uberblogger Jason Kottke kicked it all off with the Celebrity Mii Contest (www.kottke.org/06/12/celebrity-miicontest-results), and now we’ve got dedicated Mii portals like www.miiplaza.net (featuring about 6,000 Miis) and www.famousmii.com, where you can find everybody’s Mii from Jack Black to Condoleezza Rice and Hitler. For just $5, you can have your own Mii created by an artist (www.miistation.com), and some genius even recreated the opening sequence of the Big Lebowski in Wii Sports Bowling, dubbed it “Mii Lebowski” and uploaded it to the GameTrailers site (www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=23836).
A special award, however, should go to top designers Cindy Li and Dan Rubin, who put together a celebrity Wii Mii death match between the two most important Jeffreys in web design: Veen and Zeldman (www.tinyurl.com/yqrd58). They put it on YouTube and spent the rest of the night building Mii characters. A full 22 hours without sleep has taken its toll, but the resulting list reads like a Who’s Who of web design, from Andy Clarke to Molly Holzschlag, they’re all there. It might be a Wii bit dangerous (sleep deprivation, smacked foreheads, wrecked furniture), but it’s a fixed part of our culture now. It’s like the Wii has always been here. Who knows, it may even become an Olympic sport.
CREDIT: Mii designs by Brandon Erickson. You can see more of Brandon’s cool Mii designs here.
Comments
Bob Law / 24/01/2008 / 23:37 / http://www.twenteverzekeringen.nl
Wow, this article is fully packed with info. After reading this article our team deceided to buy a Wii machine for our lounge area. It's great. And another comment: the products that you descibe in your topic are hot in my country just recently. I would like to publish this link to my friends and business contacts. Is that ok?
