Saturday, January 28, 2017

Got the 30th Anniversary amiibo

Wait, what...?

Yes, I've actually bought the four new amiibo that Nintendo released for the 30th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda. I've never been an advocate of amiibo, in fact there was a time, where I was heavily opposed to the practice, but once you start collecting these things, there is no turning back. So far I got all the amiibo based on Zelda and Metroid from the Super Smash Bros. series, but here I only bought Zero Suit Samus for myself, because she's my main in the game (and the butt looks nice). The others I got either from Nintendo as "review material" or as a present from a friend last year. But this got me infected and now I need to collect them all, at least all the ones for Zelda and Metroid.

And this is why I got the 30th Anniversary collection as of late:


My initial reaction, when Nintendo showed them off last year, was "no, thanks", but I have to say that they are actually quite nice, now that I've had them in my hands. Unlike the Smash amiibo with their silly support poles they all have a nice look and feel to them. These figurines are not just based on some ingame artwork poses, they were made to be amiibo:


I'm still not a big fan of the "8-Bit Link". He has a nice weight to him, but he looks clunky and not like something that's actually from a NES or Zelda game, in fact he more looks like something from Minecraft with that White Sword on his back:


The Ocarina of Time Link is probably the one with the best quality, especially the Hylian Shield and Master Sword on his back look much better than on the Smash Bros. Link. He was also the rarest of the four, I couldn't find him in any shops or for a reasonable price online. It was only thanks to a friend from another region (same one who gave me some of the Smash amiibo) that I was able to get him... But according to Amazon there will be more available in February, so I probably could have just waited.

The two amiibo from the Wind Waker are also nice, but Toon Link feels mostly redundant thanks to his Smash Bros. counterpart. Zelda looks great, though. But the Toon Zelda artstyle is quite perfect for these types of figurines anyway. Nintendo probably wished that they already had come up with amiibo in the times of the Wind Waker, because they could easily turn a majority of the Nintendo Gallery figurines into amiibo. There even have been quite a lot of these Zelda figurines from Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks in the past, which had to be assembled, but were otherwise very similar to amiibo, only years before that and without the NFC chips to rip you off.

But it doesn't seem like these new amiibo will be useful, which I don't mind, because I didn't buy them for some locked ingame DLC - I bought them, because I wanted the figurines for my collection. Anything they might do in games, is simply an extra. And you never should feel obliged to buy these figurines, just because you want all the content in a game. Nintendo might have realized this somewhat, at least with these new Zelda figurines I don't see them as a rip-off, but as a pure collectible, and the more I'm willing to support Nintendo here.

Let's see, how the Breath of the Wild amiibo will turn out...

2 comments:

Marandahir said...

Do you have / are you going to get Wolf Link?

Definitely worthwhile, given the features in Twilight Princess HD and Breath of the Wild (and also for Midna/Twili Midna in Hyrule Warriors, but I know you've already beaten both versions to satisfaction).

It's nice that they're finally selling Wolf Link amiibo to folks who didn't buy the bundle (because, say, they wanted to download TPHD to harddrive or something).

TourianTourist said...

Yeah, I got that one with the bundle. Even made a post about the record mechanics last March:

http://touriantourist.blogspot.de/2016/03/twilight-princess-hd-wolf-link-amiibo.html

If there's one must-have amiibo, it's this one.