Cursed Miis became our utopia
Like with many families, a generational divide splits mine between gamers and non-gamers. When my decidedly non-gamer dad poured hours into crafting Miis with gaping black holes for eyes before unleashing them in Wii Sports Resort table tennis, I knew Nintendo’s Wii and its customizable avatars were something special.
The spirit of the Wii was simple. Young, old, cis, queer, modder, noob — anyone could pick up a remote and have fun. And everything about the original Miis, down to their name, encouraged users to customize their avatars as amusing self-caricatures. As a result, chipper facsimiles flourished in my family’s personal Mii Channel, from the ruby-red lipstick painted on my mother’s Mii (aptly named “Mom”) to the exaggerated eyebrows of my own (dubbed “Aleen”). Then, an encounter in 2010 with Wii Sports Resort’s CPU Mii Takashi introduced us to a different take on fun.
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Boasting a garish blue shirt, beady eyes, and lips undergoing mitosis, Takashi was what I can only describe as “cursed.” When he charged at our Miis in Wii Sports Resort’s Swordplay Showdown with his fishlike face, we could hardly swing our remotes because of our uncontrollable laughter. So this, we learned,was what Mii customization was capable of — endless production of the hideous, horrifying, and hilarious.
Over the early to mid-2010s, the Mii Channel, with countless options for noses, brows, eyes, and other customizable body parts, evolved into an intergenerational activity at our family meetups. Gathered around a TV at grandma’s house, the kids debated features with our uncles. We’d get
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