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Making Miis and watching them grow is the best part of Tomodachi Life. So why not share some of that joy with the rest of the world? What's that you say... because doing so is unnecessarily confusing?
Well, I'm here to help you out.
Like some other recent Nintendo games, the newly minted 3DS sim game has some surprisingly nifty online features. Figuring out how to use them to their full effect can be more of a chore than it should, however. So here's a quick rundown of the main ways that you can start swapping Miis back and forth.
Using QR codes
This is by far the easiest of the the ways I've discovered once you get the hang of it, so let me start here.
As with all things Mii-related in Tomodachi Life, this journey starts at the Town Hall.
When you tap the blue icon on the main village map, you'll go into a menu for all the nitty-gritty details of your island:
Tap the 'QR Code' button on the bottom right. You should be greeted by this screen:
Scanning a QR code works exactly the same way it does on a smartphone: bring the 3DS camera in line with the code for the Mii you're trying to import, and the polygonal avatar will pop out of it into your game.
Creating a QR code can involve a few more steps, but isn't that complicated once you figure it out. After clicking 'Create QR Code,' you'll see a full menu listing all of your Miis. Select the one you want, and the Mii will show up on the top screen with a code to his or her right. You can just snap a photo of the top screen with your phone or another camera, which will work for other people trying to upload your Mii. Or you can save the QR code as an image the same way you would any other screenshot in Tomodachi Life.
To send your code, you can use the game's photo-sharing feature, which is found on the village map:
The game provides a simple tutorial showing how the image sharing part works. Once you've synced it up to your social media channels, you can post your QR code on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr very easily. Here's mine!
— Yannick LeJacq (@YannickLeJacq) June 21, 2014
Now, on to the trickier parts.
Using A Local Connection
If you're in the same meatspace as another 3DS owner, you can swap Miis and other items using the 'Send/Receive' feature listed in the same menu as the QR Code features:
Once you and your fellow 3DS owner have your systems ready, press that button and have one of you search for a connection while the other waits. Once the two of you are synced up, you'll be able to send and receive Miis and pretty much any item (food, clothes, gifts, etc.) that you can use in the game as well.
A quick note here: when you send a Mii this way, they show up in the receiving island as a complete package with the outfit(s) and apartment decorations they had in their original home. That differs from the way pre-existing Miis arrive when you import them using StreetPass, which I'll describe next.
With StreetPass
This is the one that got me, since a lot of the other StreetPass features in Tomodachi Life work much more seamlessly. Basically what you need to do if you want to import a Mii from a 3DS you've successfully StreetPassed with is exit the game and visit StreetPass Mii Plaza. Once you're there, toggle over to the Mii you're interested in and press A. Then select the 'Mii Maker' option. Then go back into Tomodachi Life, and proceed as you normally would when making a new Mii until you get to this screen:
Instead of creating one from scratch or with the 3DS camera, use the 'Transfer from Mii Maker' option. And then you're finally good to go!
Again, just to keep in mind: when you pick up a Mii using StreetPass, they don't come in a package that's quite as complete as they do when using the other options I mentioned here. I imported the Mii version of Kotaku editor Stephen Totilo using his SteetPass data, for instance, and was prompted to create a voice for him on my own. Always a good opportunity to get back at your boss with a vengeance, but it also involves a bit more work.
Ok, that's it for now. Start dropping in some of your favourite Miis in the comments below, I'm going to curate a list of my favourite Miis and their whackiest (and wisest!) comments later this week.
I spent this past week playing what is currently the best-selling game in the world: the Japan only 3DS game Tomodachi Collection: New Life. After scouring the internet for Miis to populate the game, I spent my first three hours with the game in a state of nostalgic, yet amused, bafflement. My extra hours with the game have done little to change my original opinion: it is a crazy random game designed from the bottom up to take as much of your time as possible.
Good — Wild, Crazy And Random
So much of Tomodachi Collection is truly random. As you play, you are constantly interrupted by a news program using your Miis to showcase your latest unlocked areas and events. In my case this was anything from the Lara Croft opening of a new hat store to the Joker reporting live on events from downtown.
And the more Miis you import, the more they want to pair off and become friends — or even lovers and make children. If their first meeting goes well, you may even be treated to a scene of your stalking them on their first date.
But neither the news nor dating scenes compare with the complete insanity of the Miis' dreams. Sometimes you enter a psuedo-mini-game. In one such, about 10 of my Miis were hiding under a cup; when I lifted it, they scampered to hide under a different one.
Other times, you are treated to a bizarre use of the 3DS's camera. Once when a Mii was eating breakfast (in a dream), the curtains opened to reveal a live feed from the 3DS camera of me looking in at him. It was a random, silly, and somewhat creepy moment.
Good — Always Something To Do
Unlike many other life simulator games, there is no downtime to be found in Tomodachi Collection if you have enough Miis collected. Sometimes one of them will need something — a hat, some clothes, some food, or a new set of furniture — and you head out and buy it for them. Other times they will ask you to play a short mini-game to win a special item from them. I spent a lot of time playing catch, playing memory, and trying to see through heavily pixelated censoring to decipher what the covered image really was. And as I mentioned above, the rest of my time was spent invading dreams, watching the Mii news, or spying on my friends while they went out on dates.
In other words, I never felt like I was running out of things to do.
Tomodachi Life Jb Hi Filter
Mixed — Made For The Long Haul
In some ways, Tomodachi Collection feels more like an addictive social game than anything else. You are given rewards each day you visit your town and there are many events you won't see until you have spent several weeks (or more) with the game. While events and mini-games are plentiful, they are also short — making this a great game to pick up if you only have five or 10 minutes to play.
Of course, this means that if you, like me, would rather sit down and power through a game in long chunks, there is much of the game you may miss. Moreover, there is enough repetition in quests and mini-games that things do feel more than a bit boring when played in long stretches.
Bad — What's The Point?
While I was having fun playing Tomodachi Collection, one question kept popping into my head: “What's the point?” True, there always seemed to be more than enough to do, but I really felt like there was no overall goal to keep me motivated while playing. It may be fun to set up Doc Brown and Princess Zelda on a date (and eventually seeing their child if it all works out), but it's hardly a driving force to keep me coming back for more. Without a defined goal, I found myself getting bored with the game even as I enjoyed the randomness the game presents.
Final Thoughts
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On one hand, Tomodachi Collection: New Life is a cute, random game that often succeeds at bringing a smile to your face. On the other, it's a long, repetitive game with no real goal other than to have fun while playing it. While I enjoyed it for what it was, it was a game that felt too much like wasting time for the sake of wasting time for me to enjoy it much past the first few hours. But if you are one who loves addictive social games or other life simulators like Animal Crossing or The Sims, you will likely find plenty of fun to be had in Tomodachi Collection.
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Tomodachi Collection: New Life was released on April 18, 2013, for the 3DS in Japan. There is currently no word on an international release.