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Format:
PS3
Genre:
Adventuring
Style:
Physical
Cooperative
Competitive
Singleplayer
Sharedscreen
Further reading:
Skylander Characters
Skylanders Stats
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Novel Gamer (PS3)
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Family Gamer (Wii)
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Family Podcast (Wii)
Collecting Gamer (Wii)
Skylanders Spyro's Adventure figure statistics and availability are perfectly poised to create the collectors dram: the "must have" and "hard to find" status that creates the thrill of the hunt.
As Christmas approaches and parents start to stock pile presents for their children, we can see which Skylanders figures are more popular and which are most likely to sell out. By working through the different Skylander Characters I (along with help from readers like Nathan Beitler) have put together my definitive Skylanders Stats page.
For those who are less avid about their Skylanders figure collections, what this means is that we now have a clear picture about which characters have a stats advantage over their monstrous peers. This combines with their relative scarcity to enable us to predict which will be increasingly hard to find in store.
Firstly let's consider the more familiar factors of availability and scarcity. Currently the follow figures have not been released. This means that when they hit shelves (no comment from Activision when this will be currently) they will sell out fast - not least because these are the characters stopping played from completing their elemental sets and gaining that all important stat boost.
Earth Characters:
Dino-rang
Fire Characters:
Sunburn
Air Characters:
Lighten Rod
Warnado
Water Characters:
Slam Bam
Wham Shell
Magic Characters:
Double Trouble
Tech Characters:
Drobot
Drill Sergeant
Life Characters:
Zook
Camo
Undead Characters:
Hex
Cynder
Along with the scarcity and demand that usually drives up prices before Christmas, there is also how the toys function in the videogame that will affect demand -- each character of them have unique statistics. Now that we have stats in for the majority of the available characters we can see which ones perform the best.
Here is a table that totals up each available character's statistics. As you can see there is a quite a discrepancey between the top characters (at around 280) and the bottom characters (at around 220). In the game you also need to consider the effectiveness of their weapons, but this is a good guide to begin with.
Str Def Agl Lck Total Legendary Spyro 75 55 90 60 280 Legendary Chop Chop 65 100 60 40 265 Legendary Spyro 60 50 90 60 260 Stealth Elf 60 30 100 70 260 Ignitor 100 65 40 50 255 Chop Chop 65 100 60 20 245 Legendary Bash 85 100 30 25 240 Flame Slinger 40 25 90 80 235 Boomer 70 50 40 75 235 Whirlwind 65 65 30 75 235 Zap 30 70 65 65 230 Eruptor 80 85 25 35 225 Bash 85 90 30 20 225 Terrafin 70 80 25 50 225 Ghost Roaster 60 85 40 40 225 Sonic Boom 50 60 60 55 225 Trigger Happy 40 20 60 100 220 Gill Grunt 70 60 40 50 220 Drobot 40 75 60 45 220 Stump Smash 90 70 20 40 220 Prsim Break 75 90 10 45 220 Voodood 75 50 60 35 220
As you can see the Legendary characters have received a substantial stats boost over their non-legendary counterparts. Add to this the fact that these characters come together in a Toys R Us exclusive and you have the makings of a Christmas must-have and sell-out toy.
My advice however is not to be overly swayed by this panic buying of Skylander toys. Spend some time looking through the Skylander Characters and decide which ones best suite your play style. Along with this you should ensure a good spread of Elements to gain access to the majority of the game - and those all important Hats and Soul Gems. Finally, have a look at the craft of the real figures -- my personal favourite is still Stealth Elf, as much for the way she looks as how she performs in the game or how much she is worth second hand.
Steph Flemming writes the Collecting Gamer column.
"There are as many way to collect games as there are to play them. I want to bring together old, new, classic, rare, sealed game collectors together in one place, and make sense of it for us everyday people."
Here are the games I've been playing recently:
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