Have you ever taken one of your Figure Players to a friend’s house and thought they played odd on your friend’s Switch? It may not be a coincidence. For the entirety of the amiibo competitive scene’s lifespan, there have been occasional mentions of unusual behavior when amiibo are sent to tournaments or used in arenas. Why would this be the case? Well, no one knows for sure, but I have proposed a theory as to what may be responsible for this.
Please note that this is only speculation based on observations – nothing presented here is definitive or proven.
It’s no secret that the production of amiibo figures has slowed to a crawl. In 2021, we received a rather generous eight brand-new figurines! These include three from the Super Smash Bros. series, as well as two each for Metroid Dread and Super Mario 3D World. The Zelda & Loftwing amiibo was released for Skyward Sword HD as well. In 2022, we’ve received just one new amiibo figure — Min Min.
Between figurine delays and possible cancellations, the future of amiibo is looking rather thin. Today, we’re going to look at the reasons why this may be — and we’re also going to accept the reality that amiibo may be dying (we offer free therapy sessions in our Discord server).
At the time of writing, there are well over 200 different kinds of amiibo figures (and counting)! A good chunk of those are long out of stock, out of print, or just extremely difficult to find. It’s easy to see why, too — even before the pandemic, Nintendo didn’t reprint many of their rare figurines. Now that the pandemic has hit, amiibo production has slowed down even further. As a result, it’s highly unlikely that every single amiibo figure ever released will become available again. We’ve gathered some of the rarest amiibo in existence, plus a little history lesson about each one! The list is current and up-to-date as of June 2023.
Nowadays, it seems the Pokémon Company can’t get away with showing off any new video games without significant backlash and criticism from the Pokémon community. In some cases, this is justified — of course, you have scenarios like Sword & Shield’s infamous Pokédex cut and such. Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl were criticized for a different reason, though: its graphics. Rather than going with a fully-upscaled remake of Diamond & Pearl in a modern style, ILCA (the developers this time around) decided to remain “faithful” to the original games by sticking to a strange chibi style.
Though Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl absolutely looked rough in the first trailer, they’ve been cleaned up quite nicely for the final release. I’d go as far as to say that these are the best main series Pokémon games on Switch — but perhaps that’s just new toy syndrome speaking. Please note that this review is aimed at trainers who have played the original Diamond & Pearl and are on the fence about the remakes. For more information on how the region and Pokémon are designed, please check out our review of the original games!
Welcome to our Metroid Dread review! To start off, I’ve never been a fan of Metroidvania-style games. That’s not to say I dislike them — I just get lost very easily and more often than not I wind up wandering around for hours, completely stumped. By all means, I thought that would remain the case for Metroid Dread – and I was right – but I wound up very much enjoying this game nonetheless. Please note that this review is directed toward newcomers to the series; those of you who have played a Metroid game will absolutely love this one. We won’t be going over any spoilers, either, so no need to worry!
