We've all been through the maddening experience of playing a fighting game against someone who knows that one move that gets you every damn time. And once your opponent learns that one move, they never stop using it. Now, imagine if you were fighting against an Amiibo instead. Terrifying, or amazing?
YouTuber Chadtronic put the Amiibo's self-actualizing powers to the test recently with a hilarious and provocative experiment: what if you tried training a Pikachu Amiibo (or Pikamiibo, maybe?) from scratch using a single move—in this case, the iconic thunderbolt-from-the-heavens? I don't want to spoil it for you, so if you can watch the experiment yourself, check out the five-minute video here:
Ok, for all the lovers of text out there, here's what just went down in the video. Chadtronic takes the Thunder Pikachu (he names it "Thunderp) all the way to level 50—the highest an Amiibo can currently go. After all his diligent fighting and training, he pits the awesomely powerful Pikamiibo against Toon Link, one of his best characters.
Toon Link proceeds to get crushed by the awesomely powerful Thunder Pikachu Amiibo. The takeaway from Chadtronic's experiment comes at the very end when he quips: "I've created a monster."
Interestingly enough, Thunder Pikachu doesn't solely rely on his master's training—as the video also shows. The Amiibo fighter might use Pikachu's thunder attack prodigiously, but it also uses other attacks along with standard evasive maneuvers whenfacing other opponents. It's more a question of the frequency of a particular technique, or specific attack, than anything else. In a direct comparison to a CPU level 9 Pikachu and the Thunder Pikachu Amiibo, Chadtronic found that his custom Pikachu used Thunder upwards of 50 times more than the standard AI-controlled version would.
So, yes: the way you train your Amiibos really does have a profound influence on how they behave. Now make sure to only use this power for good. Or, go and create some more monsters like Thunder Pikachu. That'd be pretty great too.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to be busy preparing to defend myself from the all-arbor-day-attack Villager Amiibos some players on Reddit said they were preparing after seeing Chadtronic's video.
via Reddit
To contact the author of this post, write to yannick.lejacq@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.