Wiiiiiiiiii!

Colin and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on July 21. In exquisite graduate student fashion, we celebrated not by taking a weekend trip (no time), but by purchasing a Nintendo Wii.




We have enjoyed our Wii immensely. So far, we have not purchased additional games for it, so we are limited to the Wii Sports that comes pre-loaded on the console. However, our creativity has shown us another way to have fun with the Wii: playing with Miis.

In case you are unfamiliar with the Wii gaming system, let me explain. A "Mii" is an avatar you use during play. You can customize your Mii quite extensively. You can choose body type, face shape, hair, nose, eyes, mouth, and extra features like freckles, glasses, and facial hair. If you're willing to put in some effort, you can end up with a pretty authentic Mii.

Of course, as soon as we got our Wii, we made little Colin and Weezey Miis. But why stop there? Eager to include avatars of people that we could otherwise only play with in our dreams, we made Miis for all of the main characters on our favorite television show, The Shield. Now, when we bowl, we are cheered on by such unlikely combinations as Claudette Wyms and Vic Mackey or Dutch Wagenbach and Shane Vendrell. But chances are you aren't familiar with them, so I'll stop there.

The other excitement we have found relative to Miis is creating avatars of either famous figures or mutual acquaintences and asking each other to guess whom we're designing. We typically do not save these Miis, but the process is hysterical.

How do you use technology for fun in ways that were probably not intended by the designers?