What If Amiibos Worked With All Your Favorite Nintendo Consoles?

Aside from being adorable and addicting collectables, Nintendo's Amiibo figures are also able to interact with certain Wii U and 3DS titles. We've already made some predictions about what Amiibo we'd like to see in the future, but what if Amiibo had been around in gaming's good ol' days? Here are a bunch of classic Nintendo games that, with a little imagination and suspended disbelief, would have been able to unlock the full potential of Amiibos.

Super Mario Bros 2 – NES
The ability to play as different characters was the second most memorable part of Super Mario Bros 2, right after the nightmare-inducing Phanto. While Amiibos will never be able to protect us from that terrifying flying mask, they could change up the character-swapping mechanic. By tapping an Amiibo, players would be able to jump between the four playable characters on the fly, where previously players were only able to switch between levels. Amiibo integration could have taken it one step further and equated characters to lives, similar to how things work in Skylanders. Instead of getting a game over when Toad dies, players would be forced to rely on the other three characters to beat the level. Run out of characters and it's curtains for the Mario crew.  

Bust-A-Move – SNES
Bust-A-Move deserves a line of Amiibos based on cuteness factor alone. The game is filled with adorable puzzle solving dinosaurs that would fit into anyone's collection. Amiibo functionality could work perfectly with the game as well. Level 100 of Bust-A-Move featured a boss fight that tasked players with simultaneously destroying colored orbs and shooting the boss directly. With Amiibos, players could experience more battles like that boss fight. Each Amiibo would include a new set of themed stages, with a boss modeled after the character featured on the figure.

Pokemon Stadium – N64
Amiibos could have brought a lot to the Pokémon Stadium series or, at the very least, streamlined what was already in the game. If Pokémon Amiibos had been around during the early N64 era, Pokémon could have been transferred from your Gameboy Color Pokémon games right into Pokémon Stadium without the need for one of those bulky Transfer Paks. In the same way, players could have saved their favorite Pokémon teams directly to an Amiibo and simply taken that figure on the go when competing against friends on a different console.

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask – N64
Tracking down rare Amiibos might feel oddly familiar to anyone that managed to obtain every single mask in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Just like the masks in game, Majora's Mask Amiibos could expand on Link's abilities. Amiibos could have been used as a quick-swap for the three primary masks in the game. Rather than keep a mask in a precious item slot, touching a Deku, Zora, or Goron Amiibos to the receiver could transform Link to the proper form. Existing Amiibos could be used with the game as well through the inclusion of an in-game Amiibo mask. A new mask would be purely cosmetic, but could change appearance depending on which Amiibo players used last. It'd be awesome to see Link running around Clock Town wearing a mask modeled after Mario or Captain Falcon.  

Luigi's Mansion – GameCube
Luigi's Mansion was filled to the brim with ghosts to capture and rooms to explore, but Amiibos could add even more goodies to the mansion. Touching an Amiibo to the receiver could deliver a ghost version of that character into the mansion. Luigi could then track down the spectral guest, vacuum them to submission, and add their smiling faces to Professor E. Gadd's gallery alongside the other Portrait Ghosts in the game. Taking down a Bowser-based ghost might offer Luigi some sweet justice, but nothing would scare Luigi quite as much as facing the ghost of his brother.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles – GameCube
The multiplayer in Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles was easily one of best parts of the game, but getting it set up was a chore. Every player was required to use a Gameboy Advance connected to the GameCube as a controller and any pre-existing characters had to be imported into the game from memory cards. Amiibo integration could have made this process leagues better. Rather than haul a precious, save data-filled memory card from house to house, players could to save their Crystal Caravanners directly to an Amiibo modeled after one of Crystal Chronicles' primary four races. But even then, not everyone has a full party of four willing to couch co-op a long RPG like this. In that case, using an Amiibo during single player could drop an A.I. companion into the game with you, making the miasma-covered battlegrounds feel a little less lonely.  

Animal Crossing: City Folk – Wii
Animal Crossing has a history of using Nintendo's weird peripherals - namely the eReader and GBA link cable - to unlock additional content in game. If Amiibos had been around when City Folk rolled out, there's no doubt Nintendo could have done something similar. Amiibos could be used to do a ton of different things in Animal Crossing: City Folk. We've talked about how cool it would be for Amiibos to send Nintendo characters to your town to deliver items in another feature, so that idea is too perfect to not mention here. Taking things one step further, Amiibos could even be used to unlock new, character based hairstyles at Shampoodle in the city. Animal Crossing-specific Amiibos could also be used to unlock new locations or shops in the game, similar to how connecting a GBA gave players access to the Tropical Island in the original Animal Crossing.