Mii Channel

Mii Channel
Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Wii Released in JP: December 2, 2006 Released in US: November 19, 2006 Released in EU: December 8, 2006 Released in AU: December 7, 2006 Released in KR: April 26, 2008 Released in TW: July 12, 2008 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has revisional differences. This game has a prerelease article

To do: Revisional differences. The face library archive in apps.7z in wiidump.7z has a build of the software in the tools directory with a build date of 11/11/2006. https://www.miilibrary.com claims that prototype Mii Channel screenshots of Miis featured in the revolution game pack are included in a development data leak that went public in September 2020, featuring minor differences and having a prototype version of the small beard part with 3 prongs instead of 2 (see https://www.miilibrary.com/RFL/WiiSports/000_Saburo-Wii) and some more rough part models, verify if this is true and look in the data for any other notable things. The September 2020 leak also contains sound samples not used in the final application's music.

The Mii Channel is an application for the Wii that lets you create avatar characters known as Miis, which can then appear in other games and applications. While chiefly a symbol of the Wii, a few DS games like Tomodachi Collection also have Mii support - and users can exchange characters created in them with the Mii Channel.

For the 3DS and Wii U, the Mii system returned and was overhauled, with the Mii Maker offering far more customizability. Despite this, they also became much less popular in terms of games focusing on and implementing them. All of this continued with the third generation on the Switch, where the Mii creator isn’t even its own application.

Sub-Pages

Prerelease Info

Build Date

Present in builddate.dat, in the root of the 00000002.app archive.

v0	v2	v3	v4	v5	v6
10/5 0:18:56	11/11 21:51:14	1/16 10:39:14	7/3 10:51:56	3/6 20:34:12	10/6 16:06:57

These dates do not include years; yet, by observing the later and recorded Wii updates, it can be deduced v4 was presumably made in 2007, while both v5 and v6 were products of 2008.

(Source: v5 v6)

00000000.app (opening.bnr) includes the codename and an extended build date of the channel, including the builder information:

v2	v3	v4	v5	v5 (Korea)	v6
NigaoeNR.0611112151 @NIGAOBUILD-WIN	NigaoeNR.0701161039 @NIGAOBUILD-WIN	NigaoeNR.0707031052 @SHIRAIWAY-COM	NigaoeAllNR.0803062102 watanabe_shinji	NigaoeKrNR.0803062103 watanabe_shinji	NigaoeAllNR.0810061616 watanabe_shinji

Version Differences

Six "major" versions of the Mii Channel are provably known to exist. In addition to those:

• v5 also has a separate Korean version (the international version of the Mii Channel is region-free and otherwise distributed in all other regions);
• v6 also has a separate version for Wii U and Wii Mini (omitting WiiConnect24 as well as, inexplicably, support to transfer Miis on a Wii Remote). If the regular v6 is installed on one of said consoles, the Wii Remote storage can be accessed and appears to be fully functional. The hidden Nintendo DS connectivity feature is still implemented, albeit obviously non-functional on Wii Mini.

Internal Project Name

The software is internally named nigaoe - literally "portrait" in Japanese. This is also seen in the official filename of Mii Channel install packages: RVL-NigaoeNR-v?.wad, and is written on a placeholder face texture in the Everybody Votes Channel.

Unused Graphics

This is an unused 9th pair of glasses. These are stored alongside the rest of the glasses graphics in 00000003.app/RFL_Res.dat