Edison

Price matched TRU at Best Buy Sunday to pick up the 360 version (didn't even know that BB had an exclusive 'Volcanic Vault'). Got a snicker out of the associate when he asked if we needed a gift receipt, and my wife said "no, it's for him" (although my daughter wants to play it too). I plan on grabbing the 2 add-on level packs, and probably the other 3 elemental characters from TRU B1G1 free after Thanksgiving sale. I found this Youtube video that shows the items from the 2 level packs in use, as well as one of his figures not working correctly.

Looking up all things Skylanders I have found now there are 2 other add-on level packs (Empire of Ice, and Dragon's Peak) supposedly coming does anyone know the release date for these?

dsa_shea

It sure is a pain in the ass to find the figures for this right now. Everyone online is trying to scalp these figures for much more than they are worth and the store shelves are barren. Fortunately we bought our daughter like 6 packs before Christmas during that buy 1 get 1 free at Toys r Us. Anyone else looking for these right now? Anyone have the whole collection? We are trying to find a wind/air character or two.

Edison

I have most of the ones I want right now (that are available). I seen a rumored "release list" on one of the forums that has the rest of the figures appearing over the next 9 months.

You only have 2 choices for wind/air Sonic Boom, and Whirlwind (currently a Target Exclusive). I've been watching the stock finder for Whirlwind since early November, and one (out of the 5 stores in the area) got a shipment in before Christmas but were sold out by the time I noticed. According to the rumor list though Whirlwind is going to be in a 3-pack released in January (Double Trouble/Whirlwind/Drill Seargent).

Draven

My son got the starter pack plus Drobot and Chop-Chop for Xmas. Got him Eruptor and Dino-Rang from the store the other day. I'll keep my eyes open for others out there, but it's ridiculous how much they are going for on Amazon and other places.

Really wish I had jumped on more characters when they were available but I wasn't sure my son would even like it. Boy was I wrong about that

dsa_shea

I was surprised how much my daughter would like it as she is actually playing with the figures right now like toys. At least we are going to get our money's worth out of it.

dsa_shea

Here is a pic of our collection so far. I put it in spoilers as it is big.

MoviePage

How is the game itself? I noticed that these were flying off the shelves at my local stores over the past couple of weeks and now I'm intrigued.

dsa_shea

It's a fun little game. It is a level crawling/combat game. You can put whatever characters you own in the game whenever you want. Grab the starter pack while it is on sale and see if you like it. If you don't then I'm sure you know someone that you could gift it to.

Decker

That's a little bigger than our collection. Santa brought my son a three pack of Stump Smash, Flameslinger and Drobot, the Pirate Adventure pack with Terrafin and Zap for Christmas. We previously had one figure for each element, so together that brings us up to 13 figures.

We still have a Sonic Boom figure we were hanging onto as a bribe for him at some later date, but if I can get $20 for Sonic Boom on eBay, I might have to go that route instead...

Groucho

My seven year old got this for Christmas, and I played a few levels with him. At it's root, it's a dungeon crawler, with some lite puzzle elements in there as well. Obviously, there's a cash grab element (it's perfectly possible to complete the game using the three included figures), but considering that people on this forum were lining up around the block to buy horse armor, at least there's a physical/collecting aspect to it as well.

dsa_shea

The only element we don't have a figure for right now is the wind/air element but we have a 3 pack on the way from Amazon. I should have grabbed Hex yesterday from Best Buy but I didn't and now they are sold out. I am not going to pay any extra money to sellers that are looking for desperate buyers as these characters will be restocked sooner than later.

dsa_shea

Someone is trying to sell the Whirlwind character on Amazon for 199.99. Ridiculous!

Groucho

How long until people begin buying these up and stockpiling them as a "college fund" like they did with Beanie Babies?

dsa_shea

Looking on EBAY you would think that people were told that there would be no more made.

edstein

I played as second player today with my son. We played about four levels. He got a few achievements but I didn't get any. Shouldn't all players get the same achievements?

dsa_shea

Are you talking about trophies/achievements? If so then wouldn't it be the person's account you're playing under the one getting them?

edstein

Yeah, I was signed into my account and my son has his own. Are there achievements tied to specific skylanders?

Michael Corvin

I'm watching my two daughters play for the first time and yeah, looks like player one only gets the cheevos.

Draven

I hit a Target today that was supposed to have Whirlwind in stock, but no luck. I got my son a 3-pack with Sonic Boom, Stealth Elf (he needed an air and a life, so that's covered) and Wrecking Ball. Haven't given them to him yet (Xmas obviously over, and his birthday is in mid January) but I'm glad he has one of each. Not going to get too crazy with buying more but if we see one he likes, we'll grab it too.

I'm finding it shockingly fun to hunt for them. I used to collect toys back in college and just after...brings me back to those days.

dsa_shea

That Whirlwind is going for 50 plus on Ebay alone and someone on Amazon is asking 200 bucks for one. I did hear, although I'm not sure it is true, that there will be a second release of Whirlwind sometime in January.

DaveNinja

crazy. my kids got the Wii starter pack and Whirlwind and Stealth Elf for xmas. we went out to target and toysrus and they hardly had any figures left. My daughter wants Zap but we also need at least one fire, earth and undead character. I dont want to pay more than retail since i know the high demand wont last.

I find the game to be pretty fun. some characters are better than others (i.e. Gill Grunt sucks). I completed 4 of the heroic challenges to buff my the guy i usually play, Trigger Happy. they were tough but do-able.

dsa_shea

We found two individual characters today at Gamestop. They are Zap and Dino-Rang and I got them for 7.99 apiece. We also have a 3 pack coming from Amazon with Wrecking Ball, Stealth Elf and Sonic Boom. People are crazy to pay more than retail for these when we will probably see the shelves full of them once again in a week or two.

Decker

Ah, Activision. Your legal department gives us so much material.

Activision delivers cease and desist to Skylanders tinkerer
Dec. 28, 2011 (2:48 pm) By: Russell Holly



One of the more clever things about the rising Skylanders game franchise is the models you need to play the game. Not only does is re-ignite the urge to “collect ‘em all” but it also binds experience and items to the individual models. When graphing calculator tinkerer Brandon Wilson discovered that the Skylanders communicate with the base that comes with the game via RFID, he decided to do a little bit of looking to see how that worked. Like any of his other digital projects, he posted the notes of his existing research on his website. Days later, Wilson was greeted with a letter from Activision demanding he cease all of his research and remove his work immediately.

Too often in the tech sphere does the mighty take down notice get used incorrectly to scare those who behave in a way that a company doesn’t approve. Often times there’s not a real legal leg to stand on, but the fear inspired by the letter is enough to get the content in question removed. Brandon Wilson was greeted at the front door of his home, moments after coming home from work, by a hand-delivered cease and desist letter from Activision’s legal council [PDF].

The letter accused Wilson of violating the anti-circumvention provisions section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by attempting to publishing data that would allow others to decrypt and circumvent the RFID encryption that protects the data on the Skylanders models. The end result of this, according to Activision, would be to change the stats and equipment of the Skylanders without actually playing the game. Or, potentially, use something a little smarter than a Skylander model to allow the user to switch back and forth between Skylanders they didn’t own.


skylander on base

There’s just one slight problem with the accusation in the DMCA notice: almost every accusation fails to apply to Wilson in any way. In his response to the notice, along with his statement of compliance, Brandon Wilson points out that none of the examples pointed out in the take down notice, including a link to a website where Wilson supposedly published his findings, aren’t his work at all. Wilson continues to note that the only thing he had was a zip file with the file dump from one of the Skylanders, which wasn’t made publicly available and wasn’t announced when it was put on his website.

Despite all of that, Wilson removed the information from his website, and replaced them with the take down notice and his response. Wilson commented that since he replied, he had not heard anything from Activision except their acknowledgment of his compliance. A spokesperson from Activision was not available at the time to comment on this situation.

I can understand wanting to keep people from “stealing” Skylanders or to keep Skylander information from being tampered with. However, as a parent of a budding Skylanders fan, I would personally like to have rapid access to a list of Skylanders my child owns on my phone. My phone, with its NFC reader that is clearly aware that these Skylanders are something worth playing with, could really benefit from being able to just tap the Skylander to the back of the phone and have it saved to a database app on my phone. As far as I can tell, Activision isn’t planning on doing that anytime soon, so its a good thing they tinkerers like Brandon Wilson who aren’t doing anything wrong can be thanked for their efforts with cease and desist letters.

Read more at www.brandonw.net

Michael Corvin

I'm kicking myself for not trying for the B1G1 on Black Friday, but yeah, stores will be flooded with them eventually. Until then the 4 they got so far will be fine.

dsa_shea

I grabbed 6 packs in total during that sale and wish I would have grabbed a couple extra. However, I don't see the joy in taking people for everything they got to buy some of these packs from you.