For Wii U, Nintendo Announces More Amiibos Than Games

Nintendo

Nintendo had another “Nintendo Direct” live-streamed presentation this morning, with different, simulcast versions for the U.S., Europe, and Japan. None of the streams had much to say about new games for its Wii U console.

But… would you like to buy some Amiibos?

Thus far, Nintendo has released 18 of its $13 interactive character figurines, which work with Super Smash Bros. and other Wii U games. It’s had serious trouble keeping them in stock in America, where the figures with lower production runs have disappeared from stores instantly, never to return, only to show up en masse on eBay minutes later for inflated prices. Figures with higher production runs like Mario and Yoshi are easy to find, but other figures had one shipment and disappeared. (Nintendo of America said today it would produce more of the “Marth” Amiibo, which currently sells for upwards of $150 on eBay, later this year.)

With Nintendo’s new announcements today, it seems it may be even tougher in the near future to collect all of the Amiibos. It already planned on releasing 11 more figurines in the Super Smash line in February. Today, it said it would release another 6 character figurines for that game: Wario, Pac-Man, Ness, Robin, Lucina and Charizard. Then, on March 20, it’ll put a whole new wave of Super Mario-branded Amiibo onto shelves, with new sculpts of Mario, Yoshi, Toad, Peach, Bowser and Luigi.

So if you’re counting, that means in just over two months’ time there will be 41 (!) different Amiibo figurines on shelves. At $13 each, that’s a cool $533 before taxes.

Anybody Got Any Games?

Nintendo’s cutesy third-person multiplayer shooter for Wii U, Splatoon, in which players take on the role of adorable octopus-children and squirt colored ink instead of machine guns, is on track for a May release around the world, Nintendo said.

Mario Party 10, which will work with all of the Mario-series Amiibo figurines, is due on March 20.

And the release date of Kirby and the Rainbow Curse was delayed by 7 days to February 20, probably to avoid coinciding with the launch of the New Nintendo 3DS XL here in the U.S.

But so far, that’s the extent of the game release dates that Nintendo will commit to for the U.S. for the first part of 2015.

Nintendo supplemented its announcements with new content for existing games. It will add new playable characters Young Link and Tingle to last year’s Hyrule Warriors. And using the Toad Amiibo figurine on Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker will unlock a new objective in each of the game’s levels — a “Pixel Toad” character for players to find.