Skylanders: Alternate Universe, Mega Mash-Up Edition

I was late to the game, but I love Skylanders. What I really love is the figures, and to be honest that was what first attracted me to the game. I had a little Spyro, Zap, Gill Grunt and Trigger Happy even before I picked up a cheap second hand Portal of Power and the Skylanders: Giants Booster pack for £7.20 (bless you HotUKDeals). Now I have Swap Force and a little army of Skylanders looking incredibly awesome huddled around the USB powered plastic glowing circle that puts them in and out of the videogame world. Of course, my collection of Skylanders pales in comparison to the many other video game related statues and figures that dominate my shelves. I have a healthy range of BioShock figures, some Kotobukiya Lost Planet mech suits, even some Virtua-On robots that I managed to liberate from Akihabara in Tokyo on my last visit. Seeing all the great statues I have dotted around my room, I can’t help but think how awesome it would be to be able to put those figures into Skylanders.

Who would bother with buying the frankly shocking looking Spy Rise Swap Force figure if you could just drop the UBI Art statue of Sam Fisher into the game, or even my Solid Snake action figure (hey, all my sexy lady figures have to have at least a couple of handsome dudes to party with Toy Story style when the lights go out). Even better, what if the portal of power worked so that you could drop the Skylanders figures into any game? I for one would like to see how Spyro deals with Necromorphs if you dropped him into Dead Space, or how Thumpback would react to Plasmids if he happened to find himself dropped into BioShock. Isaac and Big Daddy both made appearances in PlayStation All Stars, so it could happen.

As much as Skylanders and Disney Infinity seem to be the latest way to suck money out of the wallets of parents and Frandroids alike (I really want to get the Elsa from Frozen figure even if I don’t want the game… damn, that’s how my Skylanders obsession started) at least you get something decent out of them. Figures are better than micro-transactions. I am a bird lover and often angry but I hate Angry Birds, but even I think that the little Telepods you can buy for Angry Birds Go are kinda cool. OK, PlayStation All Stars would pretty much suck if you had to buy all the characters you fought with, but on the other hand, how cool would it be to get some decent Skylanders or Disney Infinity style figures of Isaac, Parappa the Rapper and even Kat from Gravity Rush? Then again, think about Microsoft’s free-to-play model for Killer Instinct. You get two characters free, and then you have to pay to unlock the other characters. It’s something I might think about doing if I got an Xbox One, but if I could get a small Fulgore or Orchid statue, then I wouldn’t even have to think about it. The world needs a grown up version of Skylanders, because think how cool it would be to have awesome little statues of gaming characters you really love. I mean, both franchises are making so much money that it has to be inevitable… please. Someone tell Nintendo that they have to release a free-to-play version of Smash Brothers with awesome little Link and Yoshi statues; I would literally be unable to stop myself from buying a Wii U.

In fact, imagine what it would be like if the whole Skylanders concept had been thought of when you first started playing games. Sonic and Knuckles had the ‘plug through’ cartridge that generated bonus levels from other carts, but imagine if instead it had come with a portal and Sonic, Tails and Knuckles statues. You put the awesome little collectibles on the ‘barcode battler’ style scanner (just imagining how the technology would have worked then) and an awesome pixilated version of your statue appeared. I never played Sonic Chaotix that much, but I would have bought the hell out of those characters if they had been available. In fact, the fact that I don’t have a little Skylanders-style statue of Cloud and Barret from Final Fantasy VII is making me a little sad inside. Someone needs to invent a trans-dimensional passageway so I can have them now. If they can program the passageway so that I can also head into a universe where the little statue of Cloud could also appear as a playable character in Sonic, I don’t think that I would ever leave.