Problems and imperfections
Players who get really into their amiibo will feel a sense of ownership over them, not least because of the degree to which you can customize your virtual characters. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U has a swathe of RPG elements that are brand new for the series, and they apply to amiibo characters as well as to the fighters you actually control.
When your amiibo enters battle it's marked by the letters "FP" - Figure Player - floating over its head. You can clearly see its level, from 0 to 50, at all times. Murica wasn't the only FP the company showed off during this demo - we also got to play with a Link amiibo named "Tough Link" and a Yoshi figurine they'd named "Agile Yoshi" - and they all fought differently.
But equally interesting is the way the statuettes themselves interact with the console's NFC receptor. Unlike the figures used with other toys-to-life games, amiibo don't need to constantly be connected to a physical base. You just tap them on the Wii U's GamePad controller, the game recognizes them within a couple of seconds, and you can toss them aside while you actually play.
But when you want to write data back to the figure - like if your pet Figure Player character levels up, or you give it some new equipment that you want to try out at your friend's place - you need to tap the amiibo on the GamePad again.
That's great for players who don't want to have to plug in an extra peripheral and make space in their set-ups for bulky bases, but on the other hand you might run into trouble if your game crashes or the power goes out before you have a chance to save your Figure Player's latest development, or if something happens during the two seconds it takes to write data to the statuette.
It's a potential problem area, and only hard use will elucidate just how serious it is, if at all. A more immediately tangible issue, though, is how the quality of the amiibo themselves seems to have degraded since Nintendo began showing them off earlier this year.
The figurines are of decently solid quality, and they have plenty of details, but the ones we saw this week pale in comparison with what Nintendo has showed off in promotional materials - including on its own website, where pre-order buttons sit beneath images of amiibo that are far more detailed and attractive than what Nintendo has actually produced.
In the long run that may not matter, especially where amiibo's functionality within game worlds comes in - and to many people that will turn out to be more important. But collectors in particular will likely feel ripped off when the figures they receive look significantly crappier than the ones they ordered.
Like sand between your fingers
Amiibo won't be compatible with the 3DS when they launch, but they will be when the new 3DS models with built-in NFC and an NFC peripheral for existing systems arrive next year. And a second wave of figurines, arriving in December, will add Diddy Kong, Princess Zelda, Luigi, Captain Falcon, Pit, and Little Mac to the mix, with more waves to follow that as time progresses.
The new Super Smash Bros. for Wii U has a lot of advantages that fans of the series are really going to dig. For example a new "Smash Tour" mode is like a virtual board game - hopefully at least somewhat similar to Mario Party - that has players battle each other when they land on the same square.
We also got to test the game's level creation suite, which is much more advanced than we've previously seen in the series. Smash Bros. for Wii U even has an exciting new 8-player multiplayer mode, made possible by an adapter Nintendo is releasing that will let you hook GameCube controllers up to the Wii U.
But the amiibo might turn out to be a huge draw on their own, especially for players who will itch to collect them.
And like the many Nintendo accessories that have come before them, amiibo have a lot of potential. Super Smash Bros. is not the only game that will utilize them; just the first. Amiibo support is also promised for games including Mario Kart 8, Hyrule Warriors, Mario Party 10, and Yoshi's Woolly World, not to mention Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, another upcoming game we had a good time trying out this week.
These games will only utilize the amiibo that are relevant to them, and it remains unclear how they'll use them in the first place. Therein lies the danger of investing early in any Nintendo gimmick, no matter how enticing it seems at first: some, like the Wii's motion controller and the DS's dual screens, stand the test of time, while others falter and disintegrate like sand between your fingers once they've been released into the wild.
Which will amiibo be? Even Nintendo probably doesn't know the answer to that question.
