Miitomo is here! It’s finally here! Seriously, I’ve been waiting for this for over a week. Completely out of proportion for a free-to-play mobile game, but that’s just the kind of guy I am
What is it?
In case you’ve been living under a rock (and from a certain point of view you have been. I’m looking at you, Australia) Miitomo is Nintendo’s app-based attempt at a social network, a sort of hybrid of Twitter and Tomodachi Life. You make a Mii, you add friends, and then your Mii will ask you questions and disseminate the info around to your friends-list piece by piece. It doesn’t really seem like a lot, but they finally cracked the mobile app code- micro-transactions and pseudo-currency! You earn currency by answering questions, commenting on answers, adding friends, and changing your clothing.
Yes. You get currency for changing your clothes once a day. This is truly next-level social networking.
What can you spend it all on? Clothes! Not for you, silly, for your Mii! It also integrates with the new MyNintendo website (the slightly shittier version of the old Club Nintendo, where you only get points for buying games digitally) to get some currency on there that you can spend on, you guessed it, digital clothes! Also some games and discounts. All digital rewards nowadays, which really begs the question- why do they keep talking about how “availability may vary”? I mean, this is data. If you run out of MarioHat.png, I think you can just copy/paste a few more onto the server.
Oh, and before I forget, there is already a thriving community on /r/miitomo of people just adding the heck out of random strangers in order to see what their favourite breads are. No joke, that is an actual question. You can also link in your Twitter and Facebook in order to get friend suggestions or be alerted when people you went to high school with join you in this strangely-compelling social experiment. One thing to note here is that although Nintendo brags about their 1000-friend limit, the rewards stop after you’ve added 20 people. Just to make certain, I personally made the sacrifice of tracking down 100+ randos online and adding them all. Nothing.
There’s also Miifoto, where you can take your painstakingly-crafted Mii and put them in a variety of poses/backgrounds/situations with other Miis. It’s entertaining, especially with the fact that you can use those pictures in comments on other people’s posts. You have an array of expressions, animated poses, backgrounds, stamps, etc that you can really let loose with. You can even just throw Miis onto a photo you took with your phone, so that’s pretty slick as well.
Last but not least, there’s pachinko! Kind of. Not really. As a way to get certain promotional outfits like pancake breakfast or crazy cat lady (seriously, I’m not even kidding here) you can play a pachinko-esque Mii Drop, in which you drop you and your friends into a machine, bounce around a little, and try to land on platforms with hotdog costumes on them. If you miss all the platforms, you get candy! What’s the candy for? Forcing your friends to tell you their answers, of course! Why would you do that? For more currency! Which you can spend to play Mii Drop! To get more candy! The fun never ends!
What does it mean?
At the end of the day, I’ll probably keep poking at it occasionally but I see my time with it slowly lessening in the near future unless I find some really compelling people to friend or they manage to keep the general audience engaged. It’s just enough like Twitter to want some funny/interesting people to follow, but it’s a full Facebook-style friend system so you’ll need to find people that care about seeing your stuff as well.
Pros:
- Crisp, high-resolution Miis
- Club Nintendo is back (kind of)
- Custom instant meme-replies to anything with Miifoto
Cons:
- Adding friends is a pain (Twitter, Facebook, face-to-face, or friends of friends)
- April Fools, it was just MyNintendo wearing a Club Nintendo skin-mask all along!
- Mii Drop’s bullshit physics
Verdict:
It’s free, so if you have a little spare time and at least one friend, why not?
