This interview was recorded on November 16th, 2025 over voice chat using Discord.

Becca: Hello!

Emmet: Hello.

Kal: Hi.

Becca: Today we’re talking about the Mii Contest Channel, or Check Mii Out Channel. Depends what region you use. Before we start, you’re both relatively new. Could you explain what you do?

Emmet: I’m in the content team at WiiLink, and I do some Nintendo Channel stuff here and there. I upload videos there, and I’m trying to learn developing it.

Becca: Gonna have to fact check that one.

Kal: (laughs)

Emmet: No, seriously! I got my own backend up running yesterday, so I can edit .go files and see them.

Kal: Hi, I’m Kal. I’m not 100% sure what I do here just yet, but I’ve been known to encode stuff for Wii Room, and I now do a majority of the visuals and a bit of contest creating in CMOC*.

_{*CMOC - Internal shorthand for Check Mii Out Channel.}

Beginning of an artisan

Becca: How did you end up in this part of the job? I might be misremembering, but I believe neither of you were originally brought on to do specifically Mii Contest.

Emmet: I signed up via the application for content management- I wonder how many people submitted, but I was one of the few chosen. I believe we got everything settled during the August or July meeting. We all were just told “alright new guys, you do this”, and then I was told to handle the Check Mii Out Channel.

Becca: It really was that simple wasn’t it.

Emmet: It really was.

Kal: For me, I’ve known Becca for quite a while. We are both big Scott the Woz* fans. (laughs)

_{*Scott the Woz - Comedy gaming YouTuber. Mostly focuses on Nintendo games with skit humor.}

Becca: Huge.

Kal: Huge. White boy gamers rise up.

Emmet: I’ve met him personally.

Kal: Becca and I’ve known each other for a while, I knew a lot about WiiLink from her, I knew a good bit of the drama, the lore. (laughs) And when they needed some extra people with a somewhat powerful PC to encode, I was like “Me! Me! Pick me please!” (laughs) After my interview, I remember going to the mod chat in Scott’s server, and I remember saying “Oh my gosh, I just flubbed this interview, this is a job I wanted so bad, I fucked up”, I had a bunch of crying emotes, and not even five minutes later you come in are like “You’re in”. And I was like. “AHHHH”

Becca: (laughs)

Kal: And then Weegee* made fun of me because I came in immediately to say I botched it. With CMOC, I guess it just happened. I was poking around channels, wasn’t doing a ton outside of encoding, and I know my way around an art program.

_{*WeegeeFett - Head mod of the Scott The Woz Discord server.}

Becca: Mhm.

Kal: So I’ve been part of CMOC ever since, and I’m really happy to be. I didn’t think this is a position I would be in, but I don’t regret it.

Becca: I think that’s very common for people who do work here. I was originally brought on in 2023 as a translator. And I’m pretty sure that is the smallest part of my job at this point.

Emmet: I believe we just needed extra help with Check Mii Out Channel, because it was just me and I wasn’t really getting contests pushed out on time. I think it was 2 contests per week? And sometimes I would ask for help from the original guy, but he hasn’t answered and I think his last message was in October 12 when I asked for extra stuff and he said “been busy”.

Becca: What can I say? He’s been busy.

Kal: I hope that I’ve been an okay replacement.

Emmet: We’re doing fine. We actually pushing out a contest later today so that’s pretty good.

Becca: A big contest.

Kal: We actually don’t need to do anything this week because it’s already set as Air Riders* weekend.

_{*Kirby Air Riders - 2025 sequel to kart racer Kirby Air Ride.}

Becca: Mistakingly I said it was gonna happen yesterday when it was really today.

Kal: Because of different timezones, we have to put it on Saturday but technically it happens in Friday night in America.

Becca: I made the mistake of saying it’s in Canadian Standard Time which I was informed later, does not exist. (laughs)

Kal: (laughs) I’m sorry, I’m laughing because that’s 100% a mistake I would make, and I’m neighbors with Canada.

Emmet: Yeah, I used to think Canadian Standard Time was a real thing when Sketch wasn’t answering my questions related to Nintendo Channel.

Becca: Sorry to all the Canadians out there. I live in a country where it’s normal to have one timezone, I don’t need your weird daylight savings and multiple timezones crap.

Kal: Sorry, I just went into the team calendar, and I checked my profile for my account, my location is set to My House.

Becca: True!

Emmet: I just do Earth.

Kal: Oh true.

Becca: Oh no, you can’t say that, that’s an Elon Musk thing now.

Emmet: It is? I’ve been saying before he said it I swear.

Kal: He might be the most uncool guy.

Becca: Wasn’t there a period where if you tweeted anything on Twitter, instead of saying something like “From Twitter to Android” it would say “From Earth”.

Emmet: My shoulders are working overtime on that one.

Kal: You can’t say have this for record. Elon Musk sucks major ass (derogatory), and he’s a stinky transphobe who was balding and then had gender affirming surgery which he’s so against.

Becca: Bald!

Kal: Have you not seen his hairline?

Becca: I just like saying the word bald I think it’s funny.

Emmet: Elon Musk kind of looks like a lowercase b.

Becca: (laughs) What does that mean?

Emmet: If you look at his side profile.

Becca: Jesus christ.

Kal: Look at this dude’s hairline! It was running away from him in the 90s.

Emmet: (singing) Running in the 90s~ This is a WiiLink interview. We need to get back on topic.

Kal: (laughs) Yeah.

Emmet: Sorry Becca.

Topic of the week

Becca: A lot of contests we do are based on media events that happen during the week. Mostly game releases, but doesn’t necessarily have to be game related. How do you usually decide what events are notable enough for contests, and what aren’t?

Emmet: So one thing I noticed before applications came out and I joined the team, these contests weren’t very on the nose. The ones we have now, they’re not too on the nose, it’s easy to put up to interpretation. One of the previous contests, I believe being the bounty hunter one. There were some pretty good submissions, someone submitted Samus Aran, that was honestly genius. My jaw dropped at the thought of that. The changes that I wanted to make were to make contests that were easy to get behind. By doing that, you can have a mix of look alike contests, so you can think of a subject and those subjects would be in tandem with a popular TV series that released, or a game that’s about to release. I remember the first contest coming in was the Invincible contest, and that got a lot of positive reception. Then I think our first game related contest, I don’t remember what it was.

Becca: Funnily enough, I believe it was Kirby and the Forgotten Land ー Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World.

Emmet: You’re right. And I think the second one was Drag X Drive.

Becca: Wasn’t that the only contest that week?

Emmet: It was only that because that was the only thing happening that week. As for our recent contests, we’re actually judging the contest we published last week, that being Pineapple, who you might’ve seen the Forming Links on. And also Korok from Hyrule Warriors. We also have somebody behind the times and somebody from 2125. As we’re doing this right now, we’re doing Battle of the Racers. We planned this a while backー we thought it was funny to have an obscure character for Mario Kart World.

Becca: That was for when the game came out.

Emmet: That was on launch. And then we figured why don’t we do this for all of them. And Battle of the Racers start today, and ends November 28th. Canadian Standard Time.

Kal: (laughs)

Becca: Across Canada.

Emmet: Across Canada.

Kal: You can blame Canada if you lose.

Becca: Yeah, blame Sketch.

Kal: I do wanna mention real quick, I do really like that when we come up with an idea for a contest, Emmet likes to come up with the opposite, like with “someone behind the times” we’d have “what someone would look like in 2125”, and I feel like that is such a go- (laughs) I don’t mean to gas you up but like, I feel like that’s such a good way to do it, and if you look at one and think you couldn’t do one, you probably could do the other.

Emmet: That’s something I really like, I wanted to do parity contests, because it sounds so cool to have two contests that are similar coexist, but I didn’t think of that, I didn’t think that you could do one over the other. I will admit, I sometimes play my own contests. I don’t know if that’s rigging the votes.

Becca: I remember there was one user with a Japanese username who keeps winning. We stopped posting the winners online so I’m not sure if they still are, but we do have a few usual suspects.

Emmet: Those are the master Mii artisans that you might find around the posting plaza, or you might see them win a contest because their Miis are just that good.

Kal: It’s crazy what people can do with how limited the base Mii creator is, it’s crazy how creative people can be. People take the limitations and absolutely run with them, and it’s so cool to see because it’s really amazing what you can do with just a couple shapes.

Emmet: To think that I’m afraid that people won’t understand the contests, trust me, those artisans, they will understand.

Becca: Especially with the Wii version, it’s the most limited version of the Mii maker.

Emmet: Yeah, it’s the first iteration.

Becca: You can use different hair colors, but there’s only 8.

Emmet: Yes, 8 hair colors.

Becca: And the Switch version actually has hair dye options. Shame that it sucks real bad.

Kal: I would really love to see Mii contests with the makeup from games like Miitopia and Tomodachi Life.

Emmet: Don’t know if that’s gonna happen.

Kal: I don’t think the tech will ever get there, but if it does I would love to see that.

Emmet: It could be worse, we could be making Miis on the Nintendo DS with the Personal Trainer Walking Mii maker.

Becca: You know how graffiti artists like Banksy always leaves signatures so people always recognize them. I like the idea of someone seeing some rogue Wii in the street that has like a cool Mii and you just react “whoh it’s that guy!”

Emmet: “Whoh, it’s that guy!”

Becca: “I don’t know the name of him.”

Emmet: It’s that guy, you can’t tell because the posting plaza uses two initials.

The Griffinpocalypse

Becca: You touched on it briefly before, but the channel isn’t just about making the contests itself, it’s also about moderating the Miis. What is it like, and how many dictators are on there?

Kal: I was literally just trying to remove one in the middle of this conversation. (laughs)

Emmet: Really?

Kal: Literally. Because I just cleared all the Adolf ones out a few weeks ago, and there’s a new one. There’s a fucking new one.

Becca: First name basis?

Emmet: I actually just deleted one just now. Thankfully dictators aren’t posted too often, and if they are they’re super easy moderate, we just have a delete button on our panel. We can delete Miis. I don’t know what it looks like if you Mii gets deleted, I probably have to upload my own Mii and then delete it to see what that looks like, but one of the first things I did after getting access to the panel was delete every single mention of Hitler.

Kal: We also need to talk to someone about the artisans, we have a couple of dictatorish artisans.

Emmet: Art-is-ans or art-ease-ans?

Becca: You’re the one who said Samus Ah-ran earlier I don’t think I trust you.

Kal: Yeah. (laughs)

Emmet: Is that not how you saying it?

Kal: No it’s Aran.

Emmet: Sorry, I go by the way Bill Trinen pronounces it in that one Tomodachi Life trailer. I’m not kidding, he actually pronounces it that way.

Becca: Well, Bill Trinen also said you should watch the Mario Kart World Direct to see why it’s 80 dollars so I don’t know if I trust him either.

Kal: (laughs)

Emmet: I didn’t know he said that. I don’t keep up with gaming news, I get my news from the Nintendo Channel.

Kal: Real.

Emmet: Wink wink.

Kal: The only news source I trust.

Emmet: Bias, what’s that?

Kal: The asses are bisexual? Good for them.

Becca: True!

Kal: (laughs)

Becca: What do you do with the really common Miis, like Peter Griffin? I feel like there’s a new Peter Griffin every second of every day.

Kal: We try our best to keep the Peter Griffins out, but just when I thought I was out they pull me back in.

Emmet: There’s really nothing we can do about it. It’s like- What’s the Pokémon’s name, Hydra? You cut off its head and two more pop up.

Kal: Technically there is a Pokémon named Hydra, but that is a Greek mythology thing, not Pokémon lore.

Emmet: Well, you cut off a head, two more pop up. We delete one Peter Griffin Mii, 15 more pop up. It’s insane.

Kal: It’s epidemic.

Emmet: They’re cockroaches.

Kal: They’re spreading. (laughs)

Emmet: Technically they’re not breaking the rules, they’re not a dictator, it’s just annoying but we can’t really delete people for not doing anything wrong.

Kal: Please make Peter Griffin vs Adolf Hitler.

Becca: Has anyone made a Mii of Peter Griffin and Adolf Hitler’s child.

Emmet: Hopefully not.

Kal: There is an Adolf Musk on the posting plaza. I can’t really justify quite deleting it.

Emmet: You can’t see the name, and the initials are still E. M. I think. I would look it up, but you might not believe me when I say this, my WASD keys are not working at the moment.

Becca: If your WASD keys aren’t even working you really need to go touch grass.

Emmet: I was playing Minecraft earlier, I went to go eat dinner, I looked at the time, I ran back upstairs to get on this, I go to hit my A key to search up Adolf, and I find out my A key is not working, nor is my D key.

Becca: Y’know how it is. I’m just eating dinner and think fuck man, I gotta look up Adolf Hitler right now.

Emmet: It’s only because we were talking about it.

Becca: Sure man.

Kal: I will say, I’m superstitious about it, I will never type the full first name. I only write ADOL.

Becca: He’s not Beetlejuice!

Kal: It’s like a superstition, I don’t know why! (laughs)

Becca: As of today, we’re considering bigger contest events. Do you think there’s more potential or room to use this format in the future?

Kal and Emmet: (simultanously) Absolutely.

Kal: Obviously, I don’t want to promise anything, since stuff can be really finicky, but I definitely would like for us to make more big contests like this. I think it’s a good time and an easy way to get everybody together.

Emmet: No doubt we’re going to do more things like this in the future.

Kal: We don’t want to promise anything because foot in mouth and all that. We’re testing the waters with this one, and I think all of us unspokenly thought it was a cool idea. Especially since you got into it with the visuals and all that.

Emmet: Yeah Canadian Standard Time, my favorite. I’ll stop before I get fired.

Becca: I’m going to go flatten Canada down to one timezone. We should all live in one line.

Emmet: Are you on Harvard’s blocklist perchance?

Becca: No?

Emmet: Next question.

Kal: If I was to say anything to people on CMOC, keep being creative. We love seeing the stuff you guys create, and not to toot my own horn (laughs) but I think CMOC is one of the best places to see the WiiLink community thrive. It’s so cool to see, Emmet and I will have an idea of what we would make, and it’s kind of like when you create art and when you put it out into the world it’s not yours anymore. And I kind of weirdly feel that with CMOC? We just make a contest in a Discord channel somewhere, and then people make Miis across the globe.

Emmet: It’s funny, I remember the hysteria for it back in the day. I guess I should tell that story?

Kal: Yeah, I wanna hear this.

Emmet: Okay, so it’s 2018 or something, back when it was still called RiiConnect24, and I think it was like five guys working on it, way more than what we have now.

Kal: Five guys, burgers and fries.

Emmet: Quite literally. At the time, there was only one working channel, and that was the Everybody Votes Channel. The Forecast and News Channel also worked but nobody’s gonna think about those because they were already installed on the Wii. I think the News Channel was first. Then in 2019 the Nintendo Channel works, so people are wondering where the Check Mii Out Channel is. Around that time, a video was uploaded to the RiiConnect24 channel, explaining that the Check Mii Out Channel was difficult to develop. And then there’s this guy called Josh. Josh just comes in out of nowhere, brings back Check Mii Out Channel in like a month, gets posting plaza perfectly working, a couple months or a year in he gets contests working, and I believe the first contest was Peter Griffin. So we can thank the beginning of Check Mii Out Channel contests for the Peter Griffin pandemic.

Becca: I was gonna say Josh was so cool, I kind of hate Josh now.

Kal: (laughs)

Emmet: He’s not around anymore. He literally just brung the channel back in like month, and then dipped. That’s it, he’s literally a legend.

Kal: He did the coolest shit ever and then refused to elaborate.

Becca: He created a canon event. He tied Peter Griffin so close to the Check Mii Out Channel that he’s impossible to remove.

Kal: And he gets away with it!

Becca: I guess it is kind of like putting your child out there in the world, because you put your child out there in the world out there in the world and he comes back as Adolf Griffin.

Kal: Y’know what, and we love him anyway.

Becca: (laughs)

Emmet: Not Hitler, Peter Griffin.

Mii Contest Channel is available to download from the WiiLink Patcher. New contests live every Saturday.

Featuring:

Kal Daytona (Clownfish) - clownfishin.industryplant.club

Emmet Batewell (Ninuno) - @ninuno on Discord