Images posted were taken directly from my camera unless otherwise noted. In this case, the amiibo logo was taken from Nintendo’s amiibo website.
Introduction
On October 11, 2011 Activision released Skylanders, a video game series that requires the use of figures that are equipped with a Near-Field Communications (NFC) chip which is read by an adapter. When the game identifies which figure is placed on the reader, it puts that character into the game and allows the player to play as him or her. The series has become so popular that it spawned a “Toys-to-Life” franchise and companies such as Disney have created a similar game that allows players to interact with various Disney characters. (Disney Infinity)
Nintendo was on the bench for awhile about the concept, as they had previously denied Activision’s request to make Skylanders exclusive to their home and portable consoles, On the launch date of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (June 10, 2014) Nintendo launched a series of figures called amiibo which act in similar ways to current market offerings, but differ in certain ways both good and bad that separate the figures as their own franchise.
Are Nintendo’s new figures the next best thing, or just a quick cash-in on a well established figure market?
The Good
Ease of Setup and Use
Thanks to the built-in NFC reader on the Wii U’s gamepad controller, a clunky NFC base is not needed to use an amiibo. This is especially useful as both Skylanders and Disney Infinity both used their own NFC reader and were not cross compatible, thus they took up a lot of space and were difficult to store. It is a massive plus for those looking to optimize space in their game room or family entertainment setup.
A Mario amiibo. There are many other characters to choose from as well.
![WP_20150129_16_01_29_Pro[1]](https://nowyoureplayingwithpower.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/wp_20150129_16_01_29_pro1.jpg)
After unboxing the amiibo, a quick registration process is required to assign ownership to the figure. By going to the Wii U settings under “amiibo” and selecting the register button, all that remains is to tap the figure on the NFC reader on the controller. Give the amiibo a dorky name that you hopefully won’t regret and now he or she is ready to play!
![WP_20150129_16_01_51_Pro[1]](https://nowyoureplayingwithpower.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/wp_20150129_16_01_51_pro1.jpg)
The final part of the setup. Don’t worry, the owner and nickname of the amiibo can be reset if you so wish.
Once you’ve registered the amiibo to the console, you can use the amiibo with any compatible game the figure is designed for. To use the amiibo, follow any on-screen prompts and the actions will differ depending on what game you are playing.
Compatibility across multiple games
Skylanders and Disney Infinity both share one common problem: their figure lines only work inside of their respective games. As cool as it would be to have Elsa from Frozen fight Spyro the Dragon, that fantasy will never come true (mostly due to copyright law and of course the dreaded cross-party licensing fees). This is where amiibo have a strong advantage in the toys-to-life market: if you purchase Mario in the Super Smash Bros. line, you can also use the same Mario amiibo to unlock a special Mario costume in Mario Kart 8. In the upcoming Mario Party 10, a special amiibo party mode will allow you to use your amiibo figure (granted its a character in the game) or a collection of amiibos to play on a traditional board game party board that the series is famous for.
Tapping a listed amiibo in Mario Kart 8 unlocks a character costume for your Mii. Photo credit goes to Nintendo.
The use across multiple platforms easily justifies spending the MSRP of $12.99 on a figure. In a sense, these figures act as Downloadable Content keys (DLC) that perform various functions or unlock items and other assorted goodies in a game.
Potato-quality GIF demonstrating how easy it is to use amiibo. Here, Mario is a computer controlled character you can train to hilariously school your friends with.
Great for Nintendo Fans…
FALCON KICK in glorious amiibo form. Desk lamp and lighting techniques sold separately.
Previously, a majority of Nintendo’s official merchandise was limited to Japan. In order to get a hold of some of this merchandise, shipping costs and the difficulties of importing from overseas made getting a hold of some of these items expensive and difficult. Now Nintendo fans can enjoy merchandise of lesser-known characters such as Captain Falcon (pictured) from the F-Zero series, Marth from Fire Emblem, and even the Wii Fit trainer from Wii Fit.
The Bad
Minor Amiibo Defects
Let’s face it, for the price point the amiibo figures look pretty good, especially from a distance. However some of the amiibo have minor painting issues where paint from one color transfers over to another, as well as significant downgrades from the prototypes that were presented during the original press release of the amiibos.
Yoshi (left) has some rough edges between where the white and green meet on his torso, where as Kirby (right) has a “butt flap” molding where the two pieces of plastic were put together in the factory.
In the prototypes, hands were sculpted with great detail. In the final version, hands on most amiibos such as Zelda (above) are a bit blotchy and unpolished.
Thankfully, most of the things listed here are very minor and not noticeable from a distance. Overall, the amiibo quality is pretty good for what you pay for. Don’t expect the quality from a hand-painted $100 1/8th scale figure from Japan.
The Ugly
Scarcity
As with most popular products, amiibo have been very difficult to find in retail stores. Some of the more popular characters like Mario or Princess Peach may be difficult to track down, however some of the lesser-known characters have been extremely difficult to track down thanks to the evil-doers known as toy scalpers. Scalpers are individuals who seek in-demand items and clean out inventories of retail stores and then proceed to sell said item at a significantly inflated price. This has made searching for amiibos very frustrating, as scalpers have become more persistent in their practices and have even began scalping up some of the easier to find figures as well.
About $4000 worth of amiibo purchased by a scalper (taken from their Twitter account). The Marth amiibo (blue-haired dude with the sword) alone can fetch up to $60-80 on eBay thanks to his rarity.
Currently, Marth (blue-haired dude with a sword), Villiger (the normal looking dude with brown hair) and Wii Fit Trainer (the super pale avatar from the Wii Fit series) fetch up to $60-80 on eBay. Sadly, this has been the only way to obtain these three amiibo as well as a few others as Nintendo has not made any plans to re-run waves of previously released amiibo until they either re-run them as collector’s cards or as limited-run figures.
This presents a massive problem to the consumer, as scalpers have created an artificial scarcity that Nintendo has no control over. As an amiibo collector myself, I have yet to come across any of the listed figures in stores although I have been lucky with Fox and Captain Falcon which as of this writing are rare. When I was at the store, there was only one of each. There after, I never saw another one in stock after that.
Closing Thoughts
If you like a specific Nintendo character and you see one in stock, then you should purchase the amiibo. Even if you don’t have a console compatible with the figure, the figure itself is a rather cool piece of Nintendo merchandise that looks great on display and reflects the high quality work Nintendo is known for. Scarcity problems currently plague the amiibo line as of this writing, so as personal advice from a Nintendo collector, don’t go searching for every single amiibo released as of this writing. You will only come back empty handed or empty pocketed from overpriced scalping markets.
If a character you like is Unicorn status in terms of rarity, I strongly recommend following Reddit’s amiibo subreddit. A dedicated fanbase of the figures posts in-stock updates as well as cool things you can use the figures for.
Thanks for reading my blog post. What do you think of Nintendo’s new amiibo line of figures? Will you buy one even if you don’t own a console or game that uses it? Are scalpers the worst people on Earth? Let me know in the comments!
Also, I have an entire library of amiibo photographs of my personal collection, and this will be uploaded at a later time. This purely photograph post will not count towards a new blog post, but as an extension to this post.
-Post link will appear here at a later time, as well as on the front page of the blog-
Happy gaming!
Sean Gibbons
Now You're Playing With Power! 