Skylanders toy sales “two or three times” Activision’s expectations

Activision hasn’t ruled out the possibility of taking the franchise trans-media with a movie or TV series, either.

“Activision is absolutely going to make the franchise trans-media with a movie or TV series.”

That’s really great.

I knew it would be awesome because it’s Toys for Bob. Pop-culture pseudo-hipsters who fetishise their testosterone-ridden manshoots aside, it’s not hard to understand why this game did well.

Toys for Bob are the Star Control guys, and it has to be said that Star Control II was a bloody fantastic game with some of the best and genuinely funny dialogue I’d ever seen in a game. And it remains so to this day, from the insult matches with the Shofixti, to Captain Fwiffo’s adorable cowardice, to “Goodbye, Slylandro gasbags!”, “Goodbye human watersacks!” it’s almost unmatched.

Also pootworms.

Just look up Star Control II on Youtube, see for yourself.

And not only did it have grand dialogue, it also had some really fun gameplay which allowed for a lot of strategy, exploration, discovery, and diplomacy with alien races. It’s actually free and open source at the moment, if you’d care to try it out. The moniker it currently resides under is ‘The Ur-Quan Masters,’ because ‘Star Control II’ is a copyrighted name, of course.

It was the saddest of days when Star Control III came along, not developed by Toys for Bob, and thus having lost all of its charm, humour, and enjoyable gameplay. So if someone hears Star Control and frowns at the name, that’d be why. Star Control III was a phoned in cash-in.

So yeah.

These guys are Legendary, and they have some other fantastic titles under their belts too, but I won’t go into that. Usually though, if I see ‘Toys for Bob,’ I take that as a guarantee of great dialogue and fun gameplay. And Skylanders really does continue the tradition.

I hope these guys continue on, with more Skylanders, new IP, and maybe even a true Star Control sequel, eventually. (Hopefully just pretending that Star Control III never happened.)

What, so it’s a good game then?

The only thing putting me off it is the fact you have to buy the toys. I have no room for more peripherals.

@3 It’s really not that good. It’s like a soulless version of a Mario game, but it’s got a pretty strong gimmick.

I bought my nephew a pack for his DS, but gameplay wise it’s like a cheaper version of a Nintendo platformer.

I think it’s very cool that you can transfer your saves between all the platforms though. Pretty nice for kids who might not have the same console.

I think this will be an even bigger megaton hit on WiiU, i mean putting those toys on the gamepad, changing or alterating the game, it will sell like hotcakes, believe me.