Nintendo’s portable Mii playground, Tomodachi Collection, came out in Japan today and not much is known about it. Thanks to a demo on Japan’s Nintendo channel I got to try the game out.
The premise of the game is to keep Miis living on the island happy. You start the game by a making Mii and setting personality traits. The full game includes an option to import Miis from a Wii instead of designing them from scratch.
Once settled in an apartment players can feed their Mii ramen, orange juice, and croquettes. You can drop in on the floor and they’ll walk over to. Or, if you’re kinder you, can directly hand food to them. Eating is one of the ways to fill up your Mii’s satisfaction meter, which rewards players with money used to buy more food.
When Miis have needs a thought bubble with a scribble appears. Poke the bubble and the Mii will tell you what they want. One of the three Miis in my care wanted to dress up in a cartoon cat suit with a tail. Sure, why not? I gave him the cat suit, he changed into it, and his satisfaction meter jumped to level two. Players can also change the look of each Mii’s apartment by dropping layouts like “European Style”, which is a green room with a checkered floor.
Miis in Tomodachi Collection also have the ability to talk. They greet you by saying things like “hello” (in Japanese, of course) when you visit them and speak full sentences explaining what they want. All of this is done with a flexible speech synthesizer. You can even make Miis say custom phrases up to sixteen kana characters long. The Miis can even “speak” a limited amount of English. You write words, but they just read letters with a Japanese accent. So, “dude” comes out as dee-uoo-dee-eee. Still, pretty neat to see Nintendo included this in.
Currently, Tomodoachi Collection has not been announced for North America, but Nintendo trademarked Friend Collection outside Japan which sounds like it could be a localized name for the game.
