One of the most peculiar things about the new Wii U version of Super Smash Bros. is the compatibility with the “Amiibo” figurines that are sold separately.
During the run-up to release, I’d misunderstood their reason for existence, assuming them to be a means of effectively customising an individual fighter to your liking, then being able to take it around to a friend’s house and use your own custom character in multiplayer battles.
I had my concerns about this; any time you introduce an element of customisation to something — particularly if said customisation involves “growth” of power and abilities — you run the risk of giving an unfair advantage to anyone with the customisations, and a disadvantage to anyone playing with stock characters. I had a vision of someone coming over with a level 50 Amiibo and repeatedly kicking my arse with it, not necessarily because they were actually any good with the character, but because they’d simply levelled it up enough.
I needn’t have worried, because Amiibos don’t work like that. What they do instead is provide you with a computer-controlled opponent that plays alongside you, learns over time and levels up its abilities, gradually becoming stronger and more powerful. You can customise it by feeding it equipment and choosing the special moves it is able to use, and level it up simply by allowing it to participate in games — be it as an opponent in a free-for-all multiplayer battle (you can even go one-on-one against it) or as a teammate in cooperative or team-based modes.
What’s interesting about this is that because there’s a physical object involved as well as persistence — after you’ve finished a play session, you write the data back to the Amiibo simply by plopping it on your GamePad for a moment — there’s a much stronger relationship between you and this small lump of plastic. I’d even go so far as to say you may well develop a kind of rivalry.
It sounds odd, but it’s absolutely true. Andie and I were playing some multiplayer earlier, and we had the Amiibo as a third player for a while — although I took it out for a bit when she started winning pretty much every match. After Andie stopped playing, I brought the Amiibo back in for some one-on-one battles, and it’s actually been a lot of fun trying to figure out how to beat her, because as she’s levelled — a process which is pretty quick up until about level 30 or so — she’s gradually become better and better at playing, and is now a rather challenging opponent that I can still beat, but who certainly doesn’t go down without a fight. Victories against her feel somehow more meaningful than a battle against random computer opponents.
While I’m not sure how much the Amiibos add to the experience as a whole — I’m interested to take mine over to my friend’s house to bring her into his game and see how that works — they’re an interesting little twist, and the figurines themselves are attractive and eminently collectible. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll collect them, but they’re inexpensive and decent quality, so I’m not ruling out maybe a couple more, particularly if a Shulk one decides to make an appearance any time soon…
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So the Amiibo is a figurine, with a computer chip in it? It interacts with your computer screen/game? You said you ‘plop it on your GamePad for a moment’ to back up the data from the game session (computer) to it – by WiFi? The you put it in your pocket (where you can caress it if inclined 😀 ) and take it to someone else’s computer for a game session – like you would a thumb-drive? It’s a thumb-drive in figurine shape? Sounds cool, if so. 😀 Or am I once more a Jabberwocky who has it all back to front, inside out, upside down, through a mirror.
No, you’ve pretty much got it right there, though they don’t use Wi-Fi. They use a tech called Near-Field Communication, or NFC, which allows you to simply put two things close together and them be able to read information from one another. It’s similar to how things like contactless credit cards and those adverts you can tap your mobile phone on work.
In this case, the GamePad (the Wii U’s main control device, which is a bit like a mini-tablet) has an NFC reader which you put the Amiibo figurines on when prompted, and this in turn communicates with the main Wii U system that the Amiibo is present and ready for use. Once you’re finished playing with it, you touch the Amiibo to the GamePad again and it sends any changes to the figurine’s data (in this case, its experience level and abilities) back to the figurine itself. It’s not quite the same as a thumb-drive in that you can’t choose what you store on it, but it’s similar in principle in that it has some of its own flash memory inside to store information.
Thanks Pete. Nice to know I was on the right track. 😀
Sounds like a pretty cool idea. It adds another dimension to the old D & D board game with figurines.
So which one/ones did you pick up? The ex toy collector in me in fiending for Amiibos like they’re a controlled substance. I very narrowly avoided buying Peach and Kirby while I was at Target last night. I’m saving my allotment for Mega Man (and maybe Shulk) in February.
I grabbed Wii Fit Trainer, not for any particular reason other than curiosity to see what they actually did. They’re cool little figures; don’t know if I’ll end up collecting many of them, but they’re certainly pretty neat.