Super Smash Bros. has been a top selling franchise since the original N64 incarnation. If you have been living under a rock for the past sixteen years, or just dislike Nintendo, Super Smash Bros. is a loosely balanced fighting/party game featuring characters from Nintendo’s biggest selling games: The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Metroid, Pokémon, etc.
The game has a cult following and has become a staple in the EVO (professional fighting game circuit) scene since Melee, the second game in the series on Nintendo GameCube. Many deem Melee to be the best based on the balance it offers over the previous title and latter ones as well. Solid (!) Snake and Sonic the (Blue Blur) Hedgehog…What? Are they duking it out with Nintendo’s biggest mascots? Brawl added third party characters and a storyline that can make anyone who remembers the great “Console Wars” of the 90s shed a tear.
The Wii, despite many quips and processing inferiority, had a gem with this. The director, Sikarai, announced that this would be the last in the series. The year is 2014 and Nintendo’s 3DS handheld gold mine has taken off, though WiiU is not as popular yet. Not one, but two new Smash Bros. games hit the shelves. Along with the WiiU version, an awesome new toy line is released to go along with it. As for the games, Smash has never looked, felt, or sold better. This game has brought the WiiU out of fiscal ruin singlehandedly and rightly so. It is amazing!
IN THE WILD: Nintendo’s all new “toys-to-life” figures are amazingly detailed. With an MSRP at $12.99 USD and also containing trace amounts of DLC, make them a great deal. Ever feel like owning a Star Fox toy? How about a small replica of the default villager from Animal Crossing? Do not even pretend that as a kid you had not always wanted a Little Mac (Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out) that you could fight against on your home video game console. At roughly 8.1 cm. x 4.2 cm and packed with more detail than many other top quality PVC figures, these little guys are super slick and fun to collect. I cannot stress enough how great I think these things are. I may be biased, though, because I love just about anything that Nintendo puts its’ branding on.
However….
There is a slight problem in finding certain ones and it does not seem to be getting any better. That amazing Little Mac Amiibo I mentioned sells at a low point of $70 USD on most resell websites. Keep in mind that the MSRP is $12.99 USD. That is the case with any good figure, but not within a week after launch, or in the case of Ness from Earthbound, even months before launch. There is a serious collector’s market for Amiibo and this line of beautifully crafted PVC figures will not be going away any time soon. Long live “Big N”.