amiibo

Submission 44,282

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About

amiibo are near-field communication (NFC) figurines created by Nintendo, which can communicate with the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U gaming consoles in conjunction with various video games, including Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U.^[1] Since their unveiling at the 2014 E3, the toys have gained a substantial following online.

History

During Nintendo's E3 press event held on June 10th, 2014, amiibo were unveiled as a line of figurines capable of using NFC to interact with and unlock content in specific games, including Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U, Hyrule Warriors and Mario Kart 8.

On November 21st, 2014, the first wave of amiibo were released, consisting of twelve Super Smash Bros. figurines, followed by six additional models the following month. In February 2015, deceased Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata revealed that the company planned to released a series of amiibo NFC trading cards. In March, a Super Mario series of amiibo were released.

Online Presence

The same day amiibo were revealed on June 11th, 2014, the subreddit /r/amiibo was created as a discussion place for the figurines. ^[3] On the following day, the amiibo Wiki^[20] was created, which garnered more than 150 pages over the next year.

Reception

Production Quality

On October 26th, 2014, the gaming news site Kotaku^[11] published an article about fan disappointment with the quality of the figurines compared to earlier prototypes. Figures for the characters Marth and Link received the most notable backlash for appearing significantly poorer in quality on release than people were led to believe from pre-release photographs (shown below).

Factory Defects

Soon after the first wave of amiibo were released, several customers reported receiving defective amiibo toys. On November 22nd, 2014, Redditor Adamantium126 shared an image of a Samus Aran amiibo with two arm cannons on the /r/gaming^[4] subreddit. The figure was subsequently auctioned on eBay^[5] for $2,500. In December 2014, a legless Princess Peach amiibo was auctioned on eBay for $25,100.^[7]^[8]

Custom Amiibo

After the first wave of amiibo were released, many hobbyists began to customize their figures and shared photographs of the results online. In 2014, the website Custom Amiibo was created for photographs of the creations, along with an accompanying Tumblr^[10] page.

Rosalina Amiibo Controversy

On December 21st, 2014, YouTuber mariotehplumber uploaded a video entitled "How to make money off Nintendo Super Smash Bros. Amiibo 100+ Rosalina Preordered", in which he claimed to have pre-ordered over one-hundred amiibo of the character Princess Rosalina, citing his hatred of the Super Mario playable character as the reasoning behind his actions.^[12] On January 9th, 2015, video game news site Destructoid^[13] published an article about the video, which was subsequently reported by the news sites Arcade Sushi^[14] and Examiner.com.^[15] YouTuber mariotehplumber later confessed it was a hoax,^[17] but later recanted and claimed he did actually pre-order the Rosalina amiibo.^[18]

Amazon's Esteban

On April 6th, 2015, an image of a "possibly fake" web chat with an Amazon customer service representative named Esteban was posted to the /r/amiibo subreddit (shown below). In the chat log, Esteban tells the customer that preorders for amiibo would go live on April 9th at noon PST. The screenshot was widely reposted, with additional screenshots featuring purported chats with other Amazon reps. On April 9th, the official Amazon Video Games^[19] Twitter account posted a photograph of a chicken statue with the caption "Meet Esteban" (shown below).