Complete Guide to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate amiibo Compatibility

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has a roster that spans decades of Nintendo history, but unlocking every character takes time. There's a faster path: buy the amiibo. Scan one of these figurines into your Switch, and the character materializes in your game as a Figure Player—a trainable fighter that learns and grows stronger the more you use it. The stats live on the amiibo itself, which means you can carry your trained fighters to a friend's house, to another Switch, anywhere, and they'll be exactly as you left them.

The appeal is straightforward. You don't have to grind through the game's unlock system or spend money on DLC to access your favorite characters. If you want to play as Min Min, Steve, Sephiroth, Pyra and Mythra, or Sora, you can simply buy their amiibo and have them ready to go. The figurines function identically to their in-game counterparts—same moves, same mechanics—but they're yours to train from the ground up. Every time you battle with an amiibo fighter, it absorbs the experience and becomes more formidable.

One of the quieter strengths of the amiibo system is that Nintendo doesn't lock you into a single version of each character. Yarn Yoshi scans in as Yoshi. The various Link amiibo all work the same way. This means collectors who prefer the aesthetic of a particular variant—whether it's a special edition, a themed design, or a limited release—don't have to choose between what they like and what's functional. The figurine you want to display is the figurine you can use.

Nintendo has been releasing new amiibo in waves to fill gaps in the roster. Characters who didn't have figurines when Ultimate launched are gradually getting them. Min Min, Steve, Sephiroth, Pyra and Mythra, and Sora are all in the pipeline, though as of late 2021 Nintendo hadn't announced specific release dates for all of them. The staggered rollout means staying current requires attention—if you want the complete set, you'll need to watch for announcements and move quickly when figures drop.

That urgency exists because older amiibo have become scarce. Some figurines have been out of production for years, and the secondary market reflects that scarcity. Prices for discontinued models can climb well above their original retail cost. For serious collectors or players who want a complete roster of amiibo fighters, the hunt can become expensive and time-consuming. The window to buy at retail prices closes fast, and after that, you're competing with other collectors in a shrinking pool of available stock.

What makes amiibo valuable as a long-term investment is their portability and persistence. Your trained Figure Player doesn't exist only in your game file—it exists on the physical object. You can take it anywhere, use it on any Switch, and it retains everything you've taught it. That's a different kind of ownership than a digital unlock or a DLC character. It's tangible, transferable, and it doesn't depend on your account or your console. For players who care about that kind of permanence, amiibo offer something the game alone cannot.