Everyone loves Miis. Nintendo’s avatar creation system added a lot of personality to the Wii when it launched in 2006, allowing users to project themselves into various games, starting with the now legendary Wii Sports and more recently in Super Smash Bros. as playable fighters. And Smash is what we’re going to be talking about today, in particular its Mii functionality and how it lets your digital self become a playable fighter.
Please Take Mii Seriously
Apparently something project lead Masahiro Sakurai wanted to implement into Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the Wii U and 3DS versions of the Nintendo scrapper allows one to turn their Mii into a fist-fighting Brawler, a dexterous Sword Fighter or a nimble Gunner. Each type has their own moveset, strengths, weaknesses and so on. As a huge fan of customising characters, my favourite aspect of the Mii integration in Smash is the ability to change clothing and hats from quite a nice selection. The Mii integration was so well received that Nintendo eventually decided to sell costumes as paid DLC. Well, fair enough; I mean, it’s not like the costumes are that expensive. They’re nicely designed and help frequent players stand out online. Then again, we were cheated out of being able to play as an Inkling from Splatoon…
They certainly look nice, but are these Mii costumes really a lazy excuse?
Now in their third wave of downloadable costumes, however, Nintendo have begun to take the mick. How? By including costumes based on characters that were highly requested by fans to be, you know, actual characters in the game. We did see a bit of this with the costumes released alongside Roy, Lucas and Ryu; Akira Yuki and Jacky Bryant from Virtua Fighter, and Heihachi from Tekken, among others, got the Mii costume treatment. Now I don’t think these characters were overtly requested to be playable in Smash, but I know of a few in the third wave that certainly were…
Are You Kidding Mii?!
If you’ve browsed Miiverse’s Smash Bros. community you probably came across more than a few messages asking for Donkey Kong’s big bad, King K. Rool, to become a playable fighter. Trawl through forums such as Smashboards and other Smash related forums (hell, anywhere on the internet with even a passing interest in Nintendo games), there’s been a strong calling for Donkey’s reptilian rival making the cut. Well good news; he has! Sort of. As a Mii costume, of all things. Honestly? His Mii costume doesn’t even look that great.
Remember that time Nicolas Cage dressed up as a bear?
For fans of Fire Emblem: Awakening, we now have Chrom. In Mii form, of course. Granted, Chrom does make an appearance during Lucina’s Final Smash, but we’re also talking about a game where eight Sonics can yell “you’re too slow” at one another. As a side note, I must admit it is a nice surprise seeing some of these characters at least get some recognition in the game. A nice little nod of acknowledgement from the developers is a cool touch where most other developers wouldn’t chance a shrug. But this optimism (for me at least) slowly turns to crushing cynicism when you realise: “These characters aren’t gonna be playable, are they?”
Which is no more apparent than the Lloyd Irving costume. As one of my favourite games of all time, the mere utterance of Tales of Symphonia sends chills of excitement through my body. It may not be the best or most polished RPG out there, but good gravy is that game special. So when you flash Super Smash Bros. x Tales of Symphonia in your Mii costume trailer, my feelings couldn’t be more mixed. On the one hand, I’m elated that my favourite Namco RPG is being represented in Smash. On the other, it twists the knife even more knowing Lloyd could quite possibly have been considered as a playable fighter, but was instead relegated to a costume for the Mii Sword Fighter.
Insert Lazy Mii Pun Here
We even got Ryu as well! Mr. Fitegames himself!
I know I sound bitter about this. Perhaps it’s not that big of a deal, especially not in the long run. But I suspect Sakurai and his team are growing, well, a bit lazy when it comes to Smash. Don’t get me wrong, the amount of love, effort and care even in the base game goes above and beyond most AAA releases of today. There’s a borderline silly amount of content in both the Wii U and 3DS versions. But seriously, we have Mewtwo, Roy and Lucas returning as downloadable characters after we were certain we’d never see them in a Smash game again. On top of that we got Ryu as well! Mr. Fitegames himself! Imagine if we had the likes of King K. Rool and Lloyd “gotta know when to go” Irving on top of that.
What I’m saying is Sakurai should not be content with releasing lazy Mii costumes for a cheap shoutout. These characters and series could’ve been better represented as actual fighters on the roster, or even as alternate costumes for some of the existing fighters. Perhaps Nintendo aren’t so keen on updating their roster of Amiibo, especially given the continuing pressure to supply them the world over. Or maybe Sora have already moved on to future projects; it’s a fair bet Sakurai’s been tasked with developing a Smash Bros. or perhaps a new Kid Icarus for the NX. Only time will tell, but at the end of the day I do feel these costumes are a bittersweet reminder of what could have been.
