Nintendo Amiibo impressions: Getting friend-zoned

Woe be to the uninformed parent who hides Amiibo figurines in a child's stocking this holiday season. A giddy child will surely light up after unwrapping a beloved, cool-looking Nintendo character, and that excitement might quintuple when the kid realizes this thing is like a Skylanders or Disney Infinity figure—it'll come to life on your Wii U!

Which is good, because the figurines, while quite attractive, are frozen solid; no bendy limbs or karate-chop action here. No matter, as the box loudly advertises that fans can "battle with Amiibo in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U." That means the happy little tyke will surely slap their new Mario or Donkey Kong figurine onto a Wii U Gamepad with stars in their eyes. "My own custom Pikachu," they might emote, "maybe with cool, custom outfits or special superpowers that I can use when I 'settle it in Smash.'"

Well, not exactly. After shelling out $39 (plus tax) for three of Nintendo's new toys, we've come to learn that the Amiibo sales pitch has been worded pretty carefully to shade the truth from potential buyers. The figures come to life, yes, but it's not your life.

Villager people

On Friday, twelve Amiibo figurines went on sale for $13 a pop. Judged purely as physical objects, the price-to-product ratio seems pretty reasonable, especially compared to the Nintendo toy prices we've seen at enthusiast shops. We took a close look at the options at a Seattle big-box retailer, and we opted for longtime Nintendo heroes Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Fox McCloud (of Star Fox fame), mostly because they revealed the strengths and weaknesses of Nintendo's toy-production efforts.

The plastic molding of the figures' most intricate details, especially on clothing, is top-notch stuff. Fox is quite the showcase in this regard, complete with boots, holsters, gloves, and other details that feature impeccable painting and texturing. Meanwhile, Donkey Kong's plasticky fur design has looked cool ever since it debuted on the Super Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country, and his Amiibo preserves that impressive look.

Yoshi, on the other hand, has little in the way of tricky, tiny details. Instead, that character's design mostly consists of solid, single-colored swaths over smooth textures. We picked through every Yoshi Amiibo box to find one without blemishes or weird color dimpling; the one pictured here was the best we could find. That's not to say its molding or paint job are disastrous, but figures that lean in that aesthetic direction, including Pikachu, Kirby, and Animal Crossing's "Villager," were our least favorite to look at.

Most of the Amiibos come with some sort of plastic support to keep them upright and stable, and they all stand on Smash Bros.-branded discs that measure nearly two inches in diameter. They're quite heavy for their size, standing at nearly four inches in height. While their limbs show breaks in the plastic, their joints are frozen, so don't expect good news if a child pulls or snaps at an arm to try and make their Amiibo play in real life. Ultimately, if you want some quality, official replicas of Nintendo characters to keep watch over your computer desk, these will do the trick.

My buddy? Not quite...

What happens once you tap an Amiibo to the Wii U GamePad? That depends on the game. Amiibos don't work on a base system level, so don't tap them on your Gamepad and expect something funny to happen in the system menu. As of launch, three released games are compatible: Mario Kart 8, Hyrule Warriors, and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.

We'll start with the last of those, since the figurines are based on Smash Bros. character designs and have the most impact in that game. Dig through Smash Bros.' menus until you find the "Amiibo" option, then hold your Amiibo onto the Wii U Gamepad's NFC sensor, which is marked by two little boxes.

We say "hold" because Amiibo communication is surprisingly sensitive. In some instances, you'll need to hold the figures down for nearly a full second without moving them at all. That's made doubly difficult if you rest the Gamepad on a table, causing the NFC point to angle downward enough to be annoying. Namely, if you try to rest an Amiibo on the Gamepad by itself, it will slide off and fall almost immediately. If the pairing goes wrong at all, you'll see alerts about corrupted data and needing to reset your Amiibos, which is kind of terrifying. We have yet to actually lose any data as a result of this, at least.

Once you've paired an Amiibo to a console, the resulting character will pop up on your screen, letting you give it a nickname and pick a preset color. At that point, you can customize your character slightly, just as you would already tweak a "custom" Smash Bros. character by giving it unlocked items and maneuvers (this is new to the series in this year's Wii U and 3DS editions). In the Amiibos' case, however, the stat-boosting items are consumed, so after you attach, say, a "Super Power Badge" to your Yoshi figurine, it's gone forever.

The best analogy for your relationship to your Amiibo is that of a Pokemon trainer to his Pokemon... only with less of a direct relationship. You don't get any control of your Amiibo characters. None. Instead, you can tap them to the NFC sensor when you start a local multiplayer "Smash" battle, at which point your Amiibo-based pal joins the fight lobby as a computer-controlled fighter. At that point, you can either battle your own little critter, or you can switch to "team" mode and have it fight at your side. (The instructions go so far as to encourage you to tap multiple Amiibos in a game lobby and have them fight each other while you sit and watch.)

Nintendo added a hook to try and make this interesting: Your Amiibos "level up" by fighting, and they supposedly learn techniques from their battles. However, we engaged in a few rounds with our three Amiibos, and we didn't notice any appreciable changes to their fighting techniques beyond those we'd expect from jacking up the computer difficulty slider.

Basically, you get an AI pal that "grows" in difficulty over time—though that time doesn't take long. We took Nintendo's advice and had our Amiibos fight each other in three 10-minute bouts; after such a short span of time, they'd already reached level 40. (Their level cap is currently 50.)

We could have probably swallowed this can't-control-your-Amiibo issue if we could have loaded the characters in the game's special co-op modes—so that lonely little Timmy could have someone help him beat two-player challenges—but Nintendo didn't enable that! The only thing we really like about Amiibos in Smash Bros., at this point, is that they unlock trophies and items when they fight. We're too old to grind through this game for its zillions of bonuses, so we're probably going to just leave our Amiibos to beat on each other in 30-minute, computer-only matches and load our pockets with coins. It's like running a cockfighting ring, only cuter.

We hope you like outfits

The other games' Amiibo content is far simpler. Tap your figurine while running Mario Kart 8's new Amiibo option screen, and you'll unlock a character-specific outfit for Mii racers. That's pretty redundant for Mario Kart standbys like Mario and Yoshi, but racing in the guises of series outsiders Fox McCloud and Metroid's Samus Aran is spiffy enough, if you're into virtual outfits. And in Hyrule Warriors, your Link and Zelda Amiibos can unlock one new weapon each, though that game isn't hurting for additional weapons, really.

More games are coming with Amiibo functionality—including 3DS games next year, so long as you buy an additional NFC adapter for that system—but that doesn't entirely warm our hearts. We're particularly concerned by one detail in the Amiibo instructions: Namely, that they can only save one games' worth of progress. Should another game allow you to bring your figurine to life, it will have to forget all of its Smash Bros. progress—which, admittedly, isn't all that much, but still.

For now, come for the cool-looking figurines, but don't stay expecting a significant bonus or tweak to your Nintendo gaming.