DAY 20- Amiibo, Wave 1

January 20th, 2015. Day 20 of 365.

What.

A.

Mess.

There's no other way to describe Nintendo's handling of the Amiibo line-up since launch. Figures being discontinued without any warning, and multiple conflicting reports from Nintendo themselves. Compatibility being announced for games without even saying just what the compatibility actually is, ranging from the kinda cool to the kinda underwhelming to the outright laughable.

The construction and materials of the Amiibo line so far feels ultimately solid, but where I could brag about the specific paint and sculpt victories of the line, the way the entire gimmick collapses solely due to incredibly poor distribution and release of anything from the line other than Mario, Luigi, Peach and Link is a big enough issue that a lot of the good points of the line are super overwhelmed by the negatives.

And ultimately, that's kind of a big deal. Unlike the majority of other toylines, even competing Toys to Life genre lines, content is never hidden behind SPECIFIC toy releases outside of the rare expansion or the characters themselves.

And that's something Nintendo doesn't quite understand yet. For Mario Kart, if you want to unlock all the costumes, you have to hunt down the various Amiibos to completely 100% the game's unlockables and to do that you'll have to hunt down several of the harder to find releases in the line.

Speak of the devil.

For the upcoming release Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, you want to unlock three extra abilities for Kirby himself? Better hunt down the three Kirby series Amiibos in the Smash series. What's that? The Metaknight is exclusive to a single retailer in North America and preorders closed out long before this compatibility was even fully revealed, let alone hinted at? Oh well.

Pleased to learn that Amiibo support is coming to Hyrule Warriors? Maybe your Legend of Zelda themed Amiibos will have extra support for the game? Well... actually that one turned out right, to a degree. By using the Link and upcoming Toon Link Amiibos, you can unlock the Spinner weapon for Link in the game. Scanning any other Amiibos however? It gets you random items, to as little as a single rupee.

頭皮ないでください。

And that's just the tip of the iceberg about Amiibo. Functionality-wise, I did in fact buy them specifically for Super Smash Brothers for Wii U, and I guess it wouldn't be fair if I didn't talk about how they work in that game.

"That ain't Falco."

In Smash Brothers, while the Amiibos don't unlock anything they DO unlock the ability to create and train an A.I.-controlled version of the specific character your personal Amiibo is. What this means is over time and usage, the various Amiibo will learn from their defeats, copy your personal tactics and abilities, and continue to get smarter and smarter over time to the point that at a certain tournament a single Amiibo entered as a joke to fill the bracket nearly won the entire thing.

The Amiibo usage in Smash is admittedly extremely clever and could possibly lead to some amazing ideas as time goes on, especially as the learning and training aspect is begun to be applied to possibly even more Nintendo properties.

But that success of the evolution of the good parts of Amiibo can only rely on Nintendo learning from the negative experiences of the line... More on that tomorrow.

Day 20 Complete. 345 Days Remain.