Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

When I first saw the E3 2005 video of Iwata and Miyamoto playing Wii Tennis using their in-game caricatures, my mind drifted back to E3 2003 when Nintendo demonstrated a quirky upcoming game called Stage Debut.

Nobody really seemed to know what Stage Debut was all about. It seemed similar to Animal Crossing, but with even less purpose or direction. You could create caricatures of yourself and friends and watch them interact in what looked like a primary school. The process of getting yourself into the game involved taking a picture of yourself and then answering a few simple questions. Your face was mapped onto an in-game character and your answers determined its personality and appearance, from what it wore to how it moved. This character and others would then interact of their own accord and you got to watch. From all accounts, that was it. Mindless but fun. Unfortunately, it was never released.

When seeing the Mii presentation videos online, the thing that really struck me was how similar this looked to Stage Debut. Going back even further, Stage Debut was apparantly based on Mario Artist: Talent Studio for the Nintendo 64 disk drive addon that only released in Japan (the Nintendo 64DD). It’s fairly easy to see the evolution of the Mii creation tool for Wii when looking at screenshots and videos from Mario Artist: Talent Studio and Stage Debut.

Stage Debut logo image from Robin Hunicke’s Stage Debut E3 2003 photos.

Links to images and some embedded YouTube videos after the jump.

Introduction to Mario Artist: Talent Studio featuring former President of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi:

Demonstration of Stage Debut:

Demonstration of the Wii Mii Channel:

There are some excellent photos of Stage Debut from E3 2003 on Robin Hunicke’s site (These are much better than the standard set released by Nintendo and found on most gaming sites).