amiibo Part 1

Me and my fellow Smash Bros. fan friends were very excited for Nintendo's new toys-to-life series, called amiibo.  The initial line of amiibo are based on Super Smash Bros. for WiiU/3DS, a brilliant move, as Smash Bros features characters from throughout Nintendo's considerable history.  The initial prototypes looked great.  The promised gameplay sounded fantastic.

But, upon release, my friends and I were in for disappointment.  The first thing I noticed was the released versions were not as brilliant as the prototypes.  Now, as an action figure collector, I am very used to this, with regard to paint quality and sculpt accuracy.  The difference that bothered me, however, was the stands.  The prototypes boasted small, round, and clear tubes to hold aloft the flying or jumping characters.  The actual stands were much thicker, square and all sorts of different translucent colors.  I understand the thickening of the stands; these are family toys and stands the size of the prototypes would likely snap in a 4-year-old's hands.  But why show such a drastically different stand?  Did you actually believe you could have produced them that way?  I suppose, since this is one of Nintendo's first forays into figures, that can be forgiven ... lack of experience.  Far worse than the size however, was the decision to make them colored.  Clear plastic is perfect for stands, it minimizes their appearance, adding to the illusion the figure is gliding or hovering.  By making them brightly colored, they draw attention, rather than hide it.  For the Link figure, in particular, they chose to have a pee-yellow colored stand drip from between his legs down to the base.  It really looks like a power stream of urine.

The look of these figures is only half their appeal.  You can tap them on your console and bring them to life in the game.  But, as amiibos were getting into people's hands, me and my friends hopes were dashed again, as their functionality was strange, unfun and obscured.  Firstly, you could not play as your amiibo.  You could only spar with it, fight alongside it, or watch it fight alone.  Not a huge deal-breaker, but putting time and effort into strengthening a character would be best enjoyed by playing as it, as any RPG can tell you.  They also claimed the figure would learn from the events of the battles it was in, specifically.  That you could teach it moves and counter-moves by showing them it.  It is very unclear if this is the case.  There is no way to tell how or what your amiibo has learned, or if there is any more to the "learning" system than the amount of time it has fought.  You can only gauge its strength by its level, 1-50.

By level 50, the amiibo is very, very intelligent.  This excited me and my friends; something challenging to strive for.  But, we were, again, quickly disappointed.  As it get higher in levels, it also get stat bumps, making it stronger, faster and tougher than the version of that character the player can play as.  This isn't good design - its SNK Boss Syndrome.  Making something harder by giving it unfair advantages isn't fun to overcome; it feels cheap.  I wanted to be defeated by my amiibo's honed technique, strategy and skill.  Not its ridiculous stats.

All of these problems only arise if you can actually get an amiibo.  There have been horrendous stock issues regarding amiibo since the first day of their release.  These isssues have largely been restricted to the US.  Nintendo has been notoriously tight-lipped as to why, but in Part 2, I'll give you my guesses.