If you’ve played a lot ofNintendogames over the past decade or so, you’re more than likely familiar with amiibo — little figurines that you may collect and scan for bonuses in compatible games, includingSplatoon,Super Smash Bros.,Legend of Zelda, and even some third party titles likeMonster Hunter.
When Nintendo revealed amiibo to the public in 2014, the company was following the trend of toys being brought to life in games, like Disney Infinity and Skylanders. But Nintendo decided to approach the angle a bit differently than those games by integrating the featureintotheir games, rather than making a game that required them (although it did end up doing something like that with Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival). Amiibo were a major success for Nintendo at the beginning, and the company is still making and selling out of some to this day — but there’s still an underlying issue with them.
As the trend of toys-to-life in games has died down, it seems the magic of amiibo has gone along with them. Nowadays, many people don’t buy amiibo for their scanning functionality anymore, only collecting them because they look nice on shelves or in their boxes. For something that was meant to make gaming a little more fun, it’s a shame that amiibo are hardly used in games anymore. Part of this issue comes from Nintendo leaning into this mindset with their amiibo over time by limiting their functionality.
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They started off great from their debut title, Smash Bros. The toys-to-life concept worked best for it due to the game’s lore, being that the fighters are actually toys. This was integrated into the amiibo for the characters by having you scan them, bring them into the game, and train them up to adopt your own playstyle. Splatoon’s amiibo were handled differently but still really well. You scan the character and have them come to life in an amiibo box in the game. They’re mostly bought for the extra gear you get for each one, but the ability to save and load your equipment and settings gives players a reason to consistently use them if they have differing playstyles.
These games and others have seen the highs of amiibo, but there have been a few that have seen its lows. The worst recent example is Metroid Dread’s amiibo of Samus and the E.M.M.I. robots. The only benefits they give you are maxing out your HP and refilling your ammo. The average Metroid fan prefers the game not be easier, so this already turns most away from buying it. But it’s also not great for people that do want those perks, because it only works once every 24 hours. Fire Emblem: Three Houses only gives you music tracks and random items with each amiibo scan. Even the Pokémon series only has one amiibo outside of Smash, with its Detective Pikachu amiibo, and it only allows you to replay cutscenes in the game.
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With amiibo functionality becoming so minimal, it gives the impression that Nintendo doesn’t really care about them as much as it used to. Nintendo will still make amiibo for its games, but it’s not offering much incentive to have the figures used in them. This can be attributed to the hype of the trend dying down, but having a game’s amiibo compatibility boil down to random items or features that should be in the base game isn’t going to excite people to scan the amiibo in the first place.
Nintendo should incentivize people to use amiibo once again. Smash Bros., Splatoon, and Animal Crossing had great implementations of amiibo because their functions closely resembled the toys-to-life mechanic that made amiibo so popular to begin with. Bringing that back into recent games would be the best way to go about it. It doesn’t even need to be anything extra, but just something that brings the characters from the figures into the games somehow. One good idea would be to build upon the foundation for Animal Crossing’s Amiibo Festival game, making it into something that doesn’t require amiibo but would be much more fun with them.
Nintendo is a company that likes to innovate, whether that be in its hardware or its games. Amiibo figures were a great spin on a popular craze, but they were one that Nintendo didn’t seem to put much thought into after the craze was over, which is disappointing. Amiibo have the potential to be much more than they are now, and it’s saddening that Nintendo seems content with reducing them to simple collectibles.
