Reactions/Nintendo News: April 2015 Nintendo Direct: “amiibo Madness” Part 1

Hello everybody,

today I will be writing about the direct that came a little over 2 weeks ago. I know this is probably old news to many of you already but, I keep telling myself, “Better late than never.” So here I am! In this particular part I will be covering Nintendo’s most major news including the Super Smash Bros DLC, Mario Kart 8 DLC, and all the amiibo news (there is a lot). In future parts covering this Direct I will be listing off the huge list of Indies that will be hitting the eShop throughout 2015 as well any other news such as the newly announced Fire Emblem game!

First on our list would be the Super Smash Bros DLC announcements. The Direct began with a nice trailer showing off Mewtwo, a new fighter that was promised to be added to the game in the form of DLC some time ago. For people who have a Club Nintendo account and have purchased both copies of Super Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS, you should have received an email from Nintendo containing two download codes for Mewtwo for free on April 15th. For everybody else, you will be receiving the new Pokemon fighter on April 28th. In addition to Mewtwo, Nintendo unexpectedly announced the arrival of a new Fighter: Lucas from the Earthbound games! He will be coming out sometime in June.

Along with these new fighters there will be a new update to the game itself. Mii fighters will now have even more costumes. Some of these new costumes include various animal full-body suits (cats and monkeys, to name a few) while others include costumes from some of our favorite Nintendo video game series like Megaman and Zelda!

To wrap up the Super Smash Bros. content, Nintendo announced that they would now be accepting votes for possible fighters to be added to the game! I found this particular news tidbit very interesting and somewhat uncharacteristic of Nintendo but, I am happy to know that I have a way of voicing my opinions. The Super Smash Bros Fighter Ballot, as it is called, is now available on the official Super Smash Bros. website. You will be able to anonymously submit any character you think should be added to the game. Lets make good choices guys and avoid putting characters like Shrek in…

Nintendo confirmed that the new DLC characters (Mewtwo and Lucas) will have their own amiibo as well.

Speaking of amiibo, this Direct was packed full of amiibo news. As predicted, the Wave 4 amiibo have received their release date… finally. It’s only been 3 months. The Wave 4 amiibo, which includes Charizard, Pac-man, Wario, Jigglypuff, Greninja, Robin, Lucina and Ness are planned for a May 29th release. Not only that but a brand new line of amiibo was announced: The Splatoon amiibo line! This particular amiibo line might be the smallest in all of amiibo land. It currently includes three amiibo in all: Inkling Girl, Squid, and Inkling Boy. For the first time ever, Nintendo is grouping these three amiibo into one set for the lovely retail price of 35 bucks (you save 4 bucks in total). The Inkling Boy and Girl can be purchased separately for the regular amiibo price of 12.99 (unless you’re at Toys-R-Us in which case they’ll probably be a couple bucks more) but the Squid is exclusive to the set (at least that’s how they made it out to seem). This amiibo set will also be released on May 29th along with the Splatoon game which it will be compatible with. The amiibo are said to unlock special weapons and clothing for your Inklings. They also unlock challenges that bring on a whole new layer of fun. More recently there was news reporting that the amiibo will unlock 20 additional pieces of content for the game. It’s unclear if that’s 20 each or 20 for all. Looks like May 29th is going to be a very exciting day…or a very disappointing day.

(Skip this entire paragraph if you’d rather not hear anything more about Wave 4 amiibo.)

Soon after the Direct, Gamestop said they’d be opening up for preorders the next day at 12pm PT. There was an article saying that they’d only be accepting online preorders (so please don’t come to our stores). It was the silence before the storm because the next day, chaos ensued. At 11:45am I was at home, geared up and ready to go. I even had a friend video chatting with me on my laptop so that we could better communicate through the excitement. By 11:55am, the Gamestop website was already slowing down. Things did not look good. By 12:10pm, the website was down “for improvements”. I ended up rushing to a local gamestop. My amiibo of choice were Robin and Lucina (plus the Splatoon amiibo) however, within an hour and a half, the two Fire Emblem characters were sold out. I managed to get the Splatoon 3 pack but, I will honestly say I am saddened by what’s happened. The computers were very slow even at the Gamestop stores so I had some time to speak to the cashier. I was surprised to hear that Gamestop was never planning on opening with online preorders. They were planning to only do so after 2pm if there were any preorders left (which there weren’t). This amiibo episode definitely angered a lot of people (and for good reason). They sent out an article saying they’d only accept online preorders and according to some people I’ve spoken to, also tweeted about it. I certainly hope Nintendo or Gamestop (whoever is to blame) can get their act together before everybody decides it’s just not worth it (which is already happening).

As if all this amiibo stuff wasn’t enough, there are still three more amiibo announcements! The most adorable one would be the announcement of the Yoshi yarn amiibo which are compatible with the new Yoshi’s Wooly World game coming out for Wii U. They are coming in three lovely colors: green, pink, and blue. They are just too cute to not have. This poses a potential problem… Will there be enough to go around?

The next two waves of amiibo for the Super Smash Bros. series have also been announced:

Wave 5 will only have two amiibo: Lady Palutena and Dark Pit. These will be scheduled for a July release.

Wave 6 will be released in September with Pikmin & Olimar, Bowser Jr., Dr. Mario, Zero Suit Samus, and Ganondorf.

As the last bit of amiibo news, Animal Crossing will also be getting their own line of amiibo but, in the form of cards (seen below)!

They will be compatible with Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, a new game for Nintendo 3DS that will basically be you building different rooms for different villagers and then watching them talk to each other in the rooms that you just designed…I ain’t impressed. This is currently planned for a Fall 2015 release.

For those people who own the regular Nintendo 3DS and are missing out on the amiibo action in amiibo compatible 3DS games, you’ll be happy to hear that Nintendo will be releasing an NFC reader in Fall 2015 (supposedly the same day as the amiibo cards). The NFC reader will allow you to scan your amiibo and play with them with your Nintendo 3DS.

To wrap up this post, lets discuss the Mario Kart 8 DLC. Months ago, Nintendo anticipated a May 2015 release. To our pleasant surprise the DLC pack will actually be coming earlier than expected! The new date is April 23rd, 2015. The pack is priced at $7.99 and will include three new racers (Villager, Isabelle, and Dry Bowser), 2 new cups (8 tracks in all), and 4 new vehicles (City Tripper, Streetle + 2 more). In addition, Mario Kart 8 will also receive an update that adds a 200cc class as well as 9 new compatible amiibo costumes for your Mii racers: Megaman, Pac-man, Sonic, Toad, Wario, Villager, Rosalina, Bowser, and Olimar. That’s a lot of new costumes!

Anyway, that’s all for now. I will be covering the next part of the Direct in my next blog post. Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

7

Images Used: Splatoon Feature Image || Fighter Ballot Image || Splatoon amiibo Image || Wool Yoshi amiibo || Animal Crossing amiibo Cards || Mario Kart 8 Compilation Image