Tapping in on 10 years of amiibo

Can you believe that it’s been more than 10 years since we first learnt of amiibo, they were revealed back at E3 2014 and given that E3 is no more, that ten years somehow feels even longer. We didn’t have to wait long for the 1st wave of amiibo figures to be released as they all arrived in November 2014, which is why we are now celebrating 10 years of amiibo. So, what highlights and potential lowlights have we seen in that time?

I still recall the reveal of amiibo, watching the Nintendo presentation, no one really knew what to think, here was another toys-to-life product, that wasn’t directly tied to any single game. The idea that you could buy a Mario amiibo and have it work in every game going forward, well it was crazy. But then again this is Nintendo and they tend to excel at crazy. The first wave of figures released here on November 29, 2014, and consisted of Mario, Peach, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Link, Fox, Samus, Wii Fit Trainer, Villager, Pikachu, Kirby and Marth. It was quite a line up, but they would not be alone for long, as just a few weeks later the second wave arrived and if Nintendo could keep up that release cadence, the fans were going to be in trouble.

While Nintendo were just getting ready to launch their new figures, I was already in on Disney Infinity, in fact at that very same E3 I was getting the chance to play the 2.0 Marvel game. As I had all the 1.0 figures and Disney had kindly provided me with a few 2.0 at the show, I knew that I had no space or budget to worry about getting any amiibo. Later that year I was in Los Angeles and found myself near a Toys R’ Us and thought, why not check it out and it just so happened to be on the day amiibo were released. Inside that store there was an isle loaded with the figures, and the more I looked at them, the more I attempted to justify the purchase of one or two. Here we are 10 years later and I am only missing one or two from the entire figurine line up, the giant Yarn Yoshi and the ‘Gold’ figures. So yeah, I got sucked in and while it wasn’t the plan, I am glad I did as some of the figures just look amazing, but it has taken a while to get us to this point.

That initial reveal included a Link figurine, who was in a pose that required him to have a support stick, which in the photo I took on the E3 show floor, was a clear stick. But come release, that stick was now a weird brown/yellow colour and people were not happy about that. Wii Fit Trainer was another figure that saw a big change from the reveal to release, as her foot on the base was now partially encased in a plastic boot, that somehow looked like it was made from glue. Now they were not the only ones, Fox McCloud had a blue support, Princess Zelda got a purple support inside her dress and Diddy Kong got a banana yellow support, kudos on the colour there. This would start a trend that saw a number of figures have some really incredible poses, only to then be ruined by ‘giant blobs of glue’, like the Shulk and Sheik figures. As time went on though, those supports did start to become less frequent, but they still showed up from time to time, Terry and Min Min from the Super Smash Bros series had them and even the Zelda and Loftwing figure from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD had a support running up the middle.

But those supports were not always weird opaque plastic blobs, as the Joker figure had his support made up of a blue fire effect, which suited his character. Many of the Splatoon amiibo had ink that splashed up around the figures and while some of those splashes were small, some other them, like for the Small Fry figure were really large, but they never stood out from the figure, rather I think they enhanced it. Now while many of the Super Smash Bros amiibo were based off their key poses, there were plenty of amiibo that were not and those rarely had supports, which is another plus for the original designs.

While the pea stick was an issue, there is no denying that from the ~240 amiibo figures there have been released, there are some absolutely beautiful ones in the mix and no sadly we are not talking about Qbby from Box Boy. Some of my personal favourites are the 8-bit Mario and Link amiibo, the Guardian from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the Pikmin collection figure from Hey! Pikmin and the Metroid amiibo from Metroid Samus Returns, it was so squishy. But for all the really nice ones, there were some that just felt a little meh, like Daisy from the Super Mario series, she is as basic as you can get, in fact most of that series is the same. The same can sadly be said for the Animal Crossing series, the figures not the cards, as they are just the characters standing there, with only Isabelle looking like she has any life in her.

Those meh ones though are still not the worse, for my money the worst amiibo are the ones that were coloured to look like they were gold and for some reason were limited releases, via some weird methods. The Gold Mario and Silver Mario figurines kicked off that trend and they were just the start as we would also get a Gold Mega Man, which was only available in the Mega Man Legacy Collection for Nintendo 3DS and that was only released in North America. That was at least something you could buy, both the One-Eyed Rathalos and Rider, and Rathian and Cheval figures got special amiibo in Japan only, and was a prize in a competition with the winner getting the gold One-Eyed Rathalos and Rider and the runner-up getting the Silver Rathian and Cheval. Perhaps the weirdest and also most impossible to get in Australia the Super Mario Cereal amiibo, which was a box of cereal that was also an amiibo.

Who knew that American breakfast food could also be an amiibo, but that I suppose is a suitable time to talk about the 3^rd party amiibo, because there were a number of them. The first ones were kind of and also not 3^rd party at the same time and they were the Hammer Slam Bowser and Turbo Charge Donkey Kong, both the standard and the Dark variants. These figures were also Skylanders and by twisting the base of the figure you would swap between the two modes. The first true 3^rd party amiibo though goes to Shovel Knight, with the standard blue version of the character coming out in December 2015 and 4 years later the gold version would release, along side a trio of other Knights from the series. Not counting any of the Super Smash Bros figures, the biggest release of amiibo from a non-Nintendo owned series would be Monster Hunter, which released 15 figures over the years. While they started with some figures for Monster Hunter Stories, when Monster Hunter Rise released as a then Switch exclusive, the series would release a trio of incredible figures including Magnamalo. The expansion for the game also delivered another trio of amiibo including Malzeno and a Palamute and Palico wearing armour inspired by it. The weird ones were the Loot Goblin amiibo for Diablo 3 and the Solaire of Astora (or Praise the Sun) figure from Dark Souls Remastered, heck even Yu-Gi-Oh! got a set of card amiibo as well.

That makes a nice segue to talk about the cards, because there are a lot of them. There are of course some 240 amiibo figures, but the cards dwarf that number as there are more than 600 cards and around 448 of them are just for Animal Crossing. Actually that number is just the main series, if you include the Welcome amiibo and Sanrio special cards, you just get over 500 cards. The second biggest number of cards is that of the Mario Sports series from the Nintendo 3DS game Mario Sports Superstars. There was a character card for each sport in the game, so that means 5 sports, times 18 playable characters for a grand total of 90 cards. That leaves a number of rarer cards floating around, like the Shadow Mewtwo that only came with the first run of Pokken Tournament or the previously mentioned Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

So we have talked about the figures, both the good and bad ones and mentioned the sheer number of cards available, but what about the using of amiibo. As that was the core promise, that you would be able to scan an amiibo into your game and unlock things. The use varied wildly, there were some figures like Mario, that you could use in almost every game that supported amiibo and there were others like Detective Pikachu that you could only use in the one game. What each amiibo did varied, some would provide you with items to use in game, like in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, others would unlock new suits for you to wear such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, or Yoshi’s Woolly World that let you unlock various themed looks for Yoshi and then there were the bad unlocks.

Now when I say bad unlocks, I don’t mean scanning in an amiibo into a game and getting items that I don’t want, but I mean unlocks that either are only provided if you have the amiibo or break the game if you scan one. Falling into the first category there are two, the Zelda and Loftwing amiibo from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD and the squishy Metroid amiibo from Metroid Samus Returns. The former of those two when scanned unlocks the ability to leave the ground and return to the sky at any time, as long as you are not in a dungeon and that is an ability that you can’t unlock in the game in normal play. For the Metroid Samus Returns game, scanning the squishy Metroid amiibo, that unlocks the hardest difficulty in the game and you can’t get it otherwise. The game breaking amiibo unlocks are rare, but they do happen, like in Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash, that basically turns you invincible and takes away any challenge the game may have had. There are also pointless unlocks like the “Praise the Sun” emote that you get when you scan the Dark Souls amiibo, or the Detective Pikachu that just unlocks the Pika Prompts, that is it.

Finally, I wanted to address the slowdown of amiibo releases, as when they first started, it felt like we were getting new amiibo every month and now it no where near that. In terms of releases, this how many amiibo we got each calendar year:

• 2014 – 18
• 2015 – 74
• 2016 – 34
• 2017 – 35
• 2018 – 12
• 2019 – 20
• 2020 – 4
• 2021 – 20
• 2022 – 9
• 2023 – 11
• 2024 – 7

Now those numbers are all over the place and while 2020 might seem low, it might be due to the world pretty much coming to a stop for a few months. 2021 is likely just the result of the 2020 extras finally making it out, along that years planned releases, but honestly we are seeing less and less figures released each year.

Which is honestly ok, as I feel less and less games are giving players a reason to use amiibo now, the last Nintendo made game, Mario & Luigi Brothership (at the time of writing) has no amiibo support what so ever, in fact the only game from Nintendo this year to offer it was The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and I don’t even recall it being mentioned in the lead up to the games release. So what does that mean, honestly it is hard to say as I said earlier Nintendo are crazy and there is really no telling what they will do next.

If Switch 2 or whatever it is called, releases without NFC support, then amiibo are done, however if it does, then I fully expect Nintendo to drip feed more figures for as long as they can. There are of course countless characters that have never been given a figure, most of the Donkey Kong family for example and while I doubt that will change, I still hold out hope it might.

But what about you? What amiibo memories do you have? Did you spend a full day driving around trying to find an elusive figure or maybe you started late and are shopping eBay for that last one.