Even Zelda designers knew cursed Mii designs were key to fun on the Wii

As with many other families, mine is split between gaming and non-gaming. The fact that my dad is not a gamer was evident when he spent hours creating Miis, complete with black holes in their eyes. Wii Sports Resort table tennis, I knew Nintendo’s Wii and its customizable avatars were something special.

Wii’s spirit was very simple. Young, old, cis, queer, modder, noob — anyone could pick up a remote and have fun. Everything about Miis, even their names, encouraged people to make their avatars into amusing 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”). In 2010, I had a chance encounter with Wii Sports Resort’s CPU Mii Takashi introduced us to a different take on fun.

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. The So You can also find out more about this by clicking here.We learned a lot. was what Mii customization was capable of — endless production of the hideous, horrifying, and hilarious.

In the mid to early 2010s, our families began using the Mii Channel as a way for all generations to interact. With countless choices of noses and brows or eyes or other body parts that could be customized, it became a popular activity. Gathered around a TV at grandma’s house, the kids debated features with our uncles. We’d get chuckles from a cousin when we teased her tall stature with the longest height possible, and an amused glare from an aunt when her husband rotated and moved her Mii’s eyebrows to resemble antennae (no reason, just vibes). We spent hours upon hours designing cursed Miis before launching into the games of our choice. Wii Sports ResortThe CPU Mii, Ryan was slammed by a Mii with a bowlingball face. Our cursed Mii creation has faded from memory, but our Miis still lurk on our Mii Channel, with their noseless and unholy faces. I confess: They’re still funny.

Cursed Mii aesthetics weren’t exclusive to my household in those days. In fact, the chaos and popularity of Miis of the month was featured in the no longer-existent Nintendo Power. magazine. The outlandish images, which were also posted in forums online, inspired Chris Elson and others to create their own abhorrent designs. During his elementary school years, Elson says, Mii customization became a multiplayer game with his brother, with each competing to create the “ugliest” avatar on the DS Mii Maker.

“The key was to make your Mii look as not-human as possible,” says Elson, now an undergraduate student in Chicago. “I remember trying to make my brother laugh with a turtle Mii. I made its eyes hang off its cheeks.”

Image: Nintendo

Image: Nintendo

Other assemblages included moving a beauty mark slightly off the forehead to resemble a fly, subbing nostrils for eyes, and flipping a Mii’s face entirely upside down — a choice that contemporary customizable games like The Sims didn’t offer. While Elson no longer tinkers with Mii Maker, he looks back fondly on his roster of Miis as “ugly but creative things that got a good laugh out of us.”

Miis are still alive and well, even though Nintendo is no longer developing the Wii.

Alice is a Mii modder and researcher known as @HEYimHeroicThe cursed Mii’s aesthetics remain a mainstay of the gaming experience. “The higher the value I input in Mii Studio, the lower it goes on the face,” they say about a Mii they show Polygon. “That’s how I got the nose there.”

The appeal of Miis is a result of the inherent freedom, say some, that Nintendo exploited in early Wii U development. The team found, among other things, Michael Tutori – an unused CPU that was ever-grinning from Wii Music, as well as eclectic, unused Miis in “family_post,” a debug folder for the Wii U’s WaraWara Plaza from the Wii U system version 1.0.0.

Image: HEYimHeroic/RTGames

Image: Nintendo

“Sometimes developers create ugly Miis for fun too,” Alice says. “But other ‘cursed’ Miis can have actual uses for game devs, like testing how large a head can be without hair clipping through an accessory. And some Miis actually populate games that aren’t about Miis.”

Alice discovered in 2021 what she was looking for. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild The game was populated with an enhanced version of Mii called UMii. It used similar attributes and parameters to the traditional Miis.

UMii has increased the number of applicants for BotW Modders can import their custom avatars and then share them on Discord. After Alice’s discovery went viralTweets are a great way to connect with people. imported Twitch streamer RTGame’s famous cursed Mii “I want die,” with its signature wide eyes and near-vertical eyebrows, into BotW’s Kakariko Village — and met with giddy praise from Twitter fans who immediately pointed out its hideous appearance. “Honestly, this may be more viscerally upsetting than the original,” one user replied. “Well done!”

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via HEYimHeroic

When asked if they think that the cursed Mii aesthetics will weaken due to the current over-saturation with customizable characters, (Elden Ring, Overwatch), Alice remains optimistic about the impact of Nintendo’s trademark avatars.

“Recent Mii games like [Miitopia] expanded Mii customization further,” Alice says. “People have created viral content like Squidward through them. If Nintendo would have leaned into the cursed Miis [for]They would have sold more Wii Us. It’s exactly what I would like my family to experience when they open their new console on Christmas Day. So, I think cursed Miis will be here for as long as memes are here.”

That doesn’t mean all unexpected Miis should be considered cursed, Alice says. Nintendo is Japanese, afterall, and Western audiences may mistakenly believe that Miis are cursed. This can be due to a difference in culture. Nintendo Japan designed some Miis based off Japanese celebrities. For example, the toothy smiles of Sanma and Akashiya.

It does not take away from the retro charm these Miis have in the video game world. The experience of watching your Peter Griffin Mii chat with a Japanese celeb in the Wii U Mii Plaza while your Mii is walking by creates an unforgettable, and perhaps utopian digital existence. The next time I swing by my hometown, I’ll be sure to dust off our old Wii to flip through the cursed abominations of days past, grateful that this customization menu brought together gamer and non-gamer, grandparent with grandchild, novice with expert modder.