The Nintendo Wii is a social video games device. It's probably the only game console you can switch on anytime during a party with any kind of people without ruining the fun for non-gamers. The controllers are so damn simple to use even your mom who hates video games can kick your ass at Wii Sports. Mine did.
It's always a lot of fun to play golf at 4:00 AM when survivors are so drunk they have to sit down before swinging their clubs, or any other simplist yet funny game everyone will understand in a couple of seconds. The Wii is so damn casual you can go to pee with your Wiimote still tied to your wrist. It will ring at the beginning of your turn if you're playing golf.
Then enters one of the most stupid yet interesting features: Miis. What are Miis? Dead simple 3D avatars meant to represent yourself in most of the dead simple available games. Building a Mii is pretty easy, and generally quite funny because your friends will bug you until your Mii actually looks like yourself. This is where it gets tricky. Most people will make their own Mii and save it on your Wii. They may be random guests you'll never see again, but also your friends, your parents, your lovers: everyone who's spent some time playing with (or without) you.
No big deal if Miis stay in the Mii Channel like a low-poly family photo gallery. But they just don't. Most Nintendo games include Miis at some point. Mario Kart Wii is of course amongst them. In my case, the problem comes from this simple equation:
Mario Kart Wii + ebriety + drum & bass = awesomeness
Which means I play this game each time a friend of mine, who shares my current addiction for drum & bass and ebriety, is around. And each time I play this game, I have to face dreadful virtual spaces populated with people I know, including people I'd like to forget.
Enjoy pictures of my daily personal hell (taken with my already old P1i on a crappy TV I borrowed):
A lot of not-so-virtual people are living inside my Wii, including my mum, my mum's boyfriend, old friends, new friends, friends of friends, ex-friends, ex-girlfriend, best friend of the ex-girfriend and ex-girlfriend of a friend, ex-girlfriend's brother and sister, ex-girlfriend of the ex-girlfriend's sister, colleagues who also happen to be friends, my new girlfriend... and so on.
Here you can see my Mii, riding a duck-shaped bike and staring at another version of myself in an advertisement for... glasses. I guess it's a way Nintendo found to warn me playing too much will turn me into a egotist, self-centered, autistic and half-blind bastard. I love self-portraits.
Meet my mum, selling coffee. She only played the Wii once, and humiliated me at Wii Sport's golf. Now each time I play Mario Kart, I have to remember this painful moment when she finished the second level with an Eagle. I've never managed to finish any level with an Eagle.
Say hello to the ex-boyfriend of a friend. I doubt I'll ever see him again, but he was a funny guy. Now all he can do is trying to run over people driving karts in a perpetual back-and-forth motion. This is quite disturbing. But less disturbing than my mum or my ex doing the same thing.
See the guy in the cat suit? He's the one my ex cheated on me with. Or mostly the only one with a Mii on my Wii, as far as I know. Each time I see him, I remember how fucked up this relationship was, and it makes me smile. Thanks for the therapy, Nintendo.
I tried to draw lines of different colors linking Miis of the first picture, in order to show relationships between everyone. But it was such a mess I gave up (not to mention several Mii owners would have wanted to kill me). Too much people have slept with each other to keep the picture actually readable.
Oh and by the way, this is the official Mario Kart Wii main theme: