Skylanders Franchise (3DS, iOS, PS3/4, Wii/U, 360/One)

**Yoshi** · 05 Jan 2014, 01:40 PM

My daughter got back from her grandmother's on Friday, and we finally got around to busting out Skylanders Swap Force this morning. She absolutely loves it, and it's more impressive than I expected. I'm still sorting through how everything works, but I think I've got it mostly figured, thanks to SSJN and reading some websites:

There are eight elements and eight abilities in Swap Force.
All of these plus a Giant (figure from previous version) are needed to unlock all of the content in the game.
There are two types of figures with the Swap Force branding: Ones that actually have swappable tops and bottoms and ones that don't. Only the swappable ones have an ability, but all have an element.
Specific retailers have exclusive paint jobs on some characters, but I don't believe any characters are actually exclusive.
The starter pack comes with Wash Buckler (water/climb), Blast Zone (fire/rocket), and Ninja Stealth Elf (life).
In order to see the whole game for the least amount of money you'd want to ensure you get the remaining five elements and six abilities in the right combinations to minimize duplications. That will require six swappable Swap Force figures plus a Giant, which is $105 MSRP in addition to the starter pack if purchased separately.
There are also figures that I believe unlock some kind of content, similar to DLC I think. An example is the Tower of Time.

In short, whoever came up with the idea is a damn genius, as the combination of quality and what amounts to an annuity of figure purchases had to be a boon, let alone doing it three years in a row and counting.

**Joust Williams** · 05 Jan 2014, 01:42 PM

Nintendo sure is taking forever with their version

**EvilMog** · 05 Jan 2014, 02:35 PM

Yeah I can't believe Nintendo isn't all over this. It's the perfect gimmicky bullshit they love. Think of all the pokeman toys they could sell.

**Yoshi** · 05 Jan 2014, 02:41 PM

Any major large franchise would work. Surely Disney is working on a Star Wars version of Infinity for example. Transformers seems like a good fit as well.

**Some Stupid Japanese Name** · 05 Jan 2014, 02:46 PM

Nintendo's answer was the god awful rumble blast u.
Skylanders, with the exception of giants has been very solid.

**YellerDog** · 06 Jan 2014, 08:02 PM

Seems like the way to go is to license the 'scanner' from either Infinity or Skylanders at this point for new franchises, I can't imagine having to juggle three or more of those bases.