darkSpyro

I know I'm part of the minority here, but I was never into Spyro the Dragon games until Skylanders. I remember seeing the toys before the holidays and thinking it was an excellent scheme by Activision in order to make more money off parents and children. I thought it was brilliant really, but it didn't personally appeal to me.

Then one day, less than 2 months back, I found out Toys R Us was having a big $39.99 sale on starter packs. At the time, I was looking for more 3DS games to buy, so I browsed some quick reviews and the common theme was that the 3DS version of the game was fantastic, superior even to the console version, so I went on youtube to find some more gameplay videos.

It was then that I discovered Classic Game Room HD had tons of completed reviews on Skylanders and their figures.

• Individual character reviews
  
• Console version review
  
• Handheld version review
  

It was after watching a few of those videos that I made my decision to give Skylanders a try and although my wallet disagrees with me, I don't regret it one bit. It's a shame that when I tried to get others into it, they're resistant since it's viewed as a kid's game.

Anyways, it'd be awesome to hear some interesting stories, I'm sure some of you have some great ones...and most likely, if you're going to be posting a reply, it's very likely you're into Skylanders/Spyro, so a more appropriate question would be...

Question: How and when did you get into Skylanders?

Spyro.

Got into it WHEN i saw the trailer
HOW...well, it was cool lookin'

The transfer from every system, to every system, and the characters, themselves

It just grew on my, after a while

I have played the original Spyro but I had little interest in Skylanders until my brother bought it for my birthday... he can be a little hit-and-miss when it comes to presents (I'm looking at you Kim Possible for DS and that Zippo lighter (I don't smoke)) but this was deffinately "hit". I love the game but I'm sure I could have lived without the bank balance damage lol. Though he did give me £30 cash in my card too so that paid for Pirate Seas and one of my singles.

Best present ever Jono!

It was given to me for Christmas. Likely because the fact I'm a pretty long time Spyro fan (The first game I ever brought.. was Spyro The Dragon u_u. Only Spyro game I haven't played is Dawn of the Dragon because I don't like the trilogy enough to pay £15 for it preowned)


Aaaand well.... since then I've been caught up in the hype

well:
-i liked pokemon so i want catch them all
- my gamestop sold it for 30 €
- i didn't find the game i wanted (kirby adventure) for christmas

My step-son asked for it for Christmas. He had bought himself just the starter pack for wii with birthday money. I was dubious about spending that much additional money on video games periperals. So I insisted we play together for a while to justify my Christmas expense. I ended up buying him 11 additional characters and had so much fun doing so I started getting them for myself. This was just before Christmas when thy were still findable. Now I own all the released ones and he has 16 (13 of which me and his mother bought) with an additional 4 sitting in my closet waiting for a special occasion.

I hopped on because of Spyro but I fell in love with the other characters.

Honestly its mind boggling how not even 10 months ago there was like zero spyro merchandise anywhere, and now his name is plastered on everything. Its great.

Why else? It's a Spyro game. Unless a Spyro game is particularly terribad I at least give it a try.

voodude i know where to find it if you have a 3Ds you can get it at the shop on the DSish game thing


anyway i got into skylanders because my friend had it and i tried it and i loved it and got it for christmas

THE END.

Because I am a masochist and I hate having all this money in my bank account and wallet.

-VM

I saw the pre-release video demonstration of it at E3 and I was like...HOLY CRAP THAT IS THE COOLEST THING EVER.

So then it came out and I didn't buy it. I was just like Meh. But then Toys R Us had a special where if you buy the starter kit you get the Legendary 3 pack for FREE. And then if you spend over 100 in video games you got a $40 gift card.

My brother got me Skylanders and he bought himself a game. We got $40 plus the Legendary pack for free. We split the gift card so my pack was technically only 50 + Legendary pack for free. And his game was technically 20 less also.

It was an amazing deal. Then the next week or two they had Buy 1 get 1 Free on all Skylanders items. So I bought the two adventure packs and two character packs. That gave me 6 new characters (now a total of 9) two adventure packs (with 2 more character so it brought my total to 11).

Then obviously once I got into it I REALLY got into it (I have collecting addictions...if i collect one thing I want ALL related things.)

For us (Me, Wife and Daughter), we were in Wal-Mart In late October and came across a display for the game. They had a full wall full of the charcters so we tried each one on the portal to watch their preview. We then looked at the price and decided it would cost far too much to spend on one game (Me being a completionist for stuff like this, I knew I would at LEAST have to buy one of each character... knowing nothing about legendaries and variants lol). My daughter still liked that idea of the game though, and about a week later said she wanted to use her allowance she had been saving up to buy the game for PS3. We ended up splitting it and buying a couple of extra characters... and it has been crazy ever since.

We now have a total of 32 skylanders (including duplicates), and we all enjoy the game. My daughter has recently started playing the Skylander's Universe online portion and has a bit of fun with that as well.

As for my wife and I, we took our time with the game and only recently beat Kaos for the first time... but we are 2 levels shy of all 3 stars and have almost all our characters 'complete' (I actually built an excel spreadsheet to track what challenges they have done, what level they are, what upgrades they have bought and how much money the still need to finish upgrading). Suffice to say we are trying for 100% Completion in both game and trophies (although some of the trophies sound like they will be a pain to get).

I stumbled across a huge thread on another online forum last October. I read through the thread and it sounded perfect for my five-year-old daughter and I to play through together. Within 2 hours of reading that thread, I replied to that same thread with the following photos of my initial purchase:

My gamer coworker told me about it pre-christmas, but I brushed it off. Then on Dec 23rd, my wife and I were doing last minute shopping for the boys. TRU was doing a special, buy the starter pack, get the adventure pack for free. So we bought the Xbox Starter, Pirate Seas, and one extra 3 pack (hex, zap and dinorang). Christmas morning come and my kids go NUTS! But we shortly find out we can't get into certain areas without the other elements. On the 26th, we head out to find more Skylanders, and to our disbelief, there were none to be found. I must have checked 10-15 stores.

Then the collector in me started to kick in. The scarcity made me hellbent on finding more...by whatever means possible. Bestbuy had the "MegaPacks" which included Eruptor, Chop Chop and Bash along with other items I ended up selling on ebay for profit. They also had the 3DS starter set where I took the characters for myself and sold the game and portal at a small loss. Then it came down to being in the right place at the right time. I started to find the rest of the Skylanders piece by piece until I had them all. The only ones I'm missing are the Gold/Silver and Toy Fair exclusives.

I also decided to purchase a 2nd set to remain sealed for my personal collection. May be worthless, but I'll take that risk. 3 more Skylanders and then I'm done!

I seen in at Walmart had no idea what it even was???
I was listening to some pod-casts and they were started mentioning Skylanders.
So I just took a chance and bought it one day! Then I got hooked!

it was made by toys for bob, the guys behind the star control franchise
of course i was going to support it
also consumer RFID tech, something that had been promised for years but never quite made it

That purple dragon.

I played Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage shortly after it came out and thought it was the coolest thing ever. So I followed the series wherever it went (including TLoS) and read about how "Spyro's Kingdom" was supposed to come out and had cool toys and awesome technology and whatnot. (Spyro's Kingdom was the initial name for Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.)

My son was invited to market research for the game and came home with an Eruptor a couple of months before the game released.

I personally reckon that it was more marketing than market research as I don't think any/many changes would have been made to the gameplay, at that stage?

Quote: jennacat4

voodude i know where to find it if you have a 3Ds you can get it at the shop on the DSish game thing

don't worry i bought it after one month

It was October 16th I remember because I worked that day. We just got them in stock and they sat there. We heard (I work at GameStop) that the TRU next door was having a person come over and demo the game, but at this point it hasn't really developed any excitement outside major Spyro Fans. We even had a few Spyro fans come into the store, look at the game and be all like "Pfft this isn't a real spyro game!".

I came home from work and told my girlfriend about it and that was that.

Saturday, my day off we go to TRU. I was curious about the demo event and wanted to see how TRU handled it. There was a guy there, who was enthusiastic but not very knowledgeable about the game. My girlfriend saw the game and say the toys and video and she said "You never told me it was like Pokemon!" I said "That's because its not really like Pokemon at all." She wanted to pick one up and try it out so we got the 360 version which is her game system of choice. At this point TRU was still stocked with figures. It doesn't look like they were selling well yet. Also the games dialogue cleared looked geared towards 9 year olds. That's not really a downside, but sometimes can be indicative of shallow gameplay.

So we get home and she tries them out and squeals about how cool and cute they are (She also Collects littlest Pet Shop toys) and starts playing. A few hours later she states that we have to go back to TRU and get a couple more. I roll my eyes thinking great the marketing ploy got her. We go to TRU and the guy from activision is gone and it looks like the the only thing sold was the box we took home. She grabs a cart and proceeds to grab one of every Skylander. I was shocked! At initial release that had like half of their total count available! Luckily TRU had a buy one get one half off sale this weekend on Skylanders! They also at this point have not price gouged yet. We check out and my wallet fits a little better in my pants pocket now.

Shes home and goes online and makes sure she got everything available at that time. She did but she finds out that Walmart and Target are going to have exclusives...

Anyway she goes back to play but asks if I want to play with her. Co-op? Hmm. That sounds pretty good, I love co-op games as there are not that many, especially ones you can play on the same system. So I sit down and pick out a guy. Drobot looks cool! Half dragon half machine! To set this story short after staying up to near 5am playing, the next day I knew I was hooked.

I went back got the 3DS version for myself and raved at the bored sale clerk how cool this game was! That it has a satisfying level mechanic. Simple but fun! To him I probably look like I'm crazy having only slpet 5 hours and coming back to drop even more money on these crazy little toys.

Monday I go back to work and rave to co workers and people who come into the store!

And that was that!

Oh and also I do work at Gamestop but other than Empire of Ice I have never been able to actually get a figure from here. We get very few shipments in and they are usually the older stuff. This last shipment we got on the 28th was a lot but we got in one Cynder and Double Trouble the rest being the older guys that are easy to find. If we do get the new guys in its usually weeks after they have already come out and after my girlfriend has already hunted them down. I also think they ship out the toy count based on Skylander sales and we don't sell that many, due to the fact we are close to 2 colleges and sports games and FPS shooters are our top sellers.

I have most Spyro games so I decided to add this one to the collection.

Because Spyro was part of my childhood and I hated the LoS series so I wanted him to have a better chance.

When I heard about Skylanders and saw the design, I just threw my hands up and said "That's it, Spyro's done". Then I spotted the Legendary 3-pack in Toys R Us one day and decided "You know, this doesn't look that bad". Bought it and then I was hooked.

Because the first Spyro, was the first game I ever played. Also it looked fun.

I played the old Spyro games back on the PS1 and loved them. I believe I was in college at the time. So I always enjoyed Spyro to start. But I was visiting my brother in the midwest and I went to Target and they had a whole section of them. I hadn't seen them in store really because I ordered all my games online. So I saw the display, thought it was a cool concept and I suggested to my brother who is a industrial designer, that he should invent a toy that expands on this. He chuckled at me and said that they are stupid and there isn't enough of a market for them. Little did I know that back where I live, everyone was buying up everything in stock. So the collector in me wanted to find them. So I found some on craigslist for 60 dollars for 15 of em and the xbox 360 game. And I was hooked. I then got a used edition of the 3DS one and my collection just kept on growing. Then I decided I wanted to grow this collection not for me, but to give my brother and his son a game to play together. It is his first video game. So after he got set one, my brother thought it was pretty cool and liked the figures, and even goes out looking for new ones that I don't have to return the favor as I collect my 2nd set. I am pretty much done with my 2nd set, and have finally been playing the game, but the main reason why I am into them, is collecting, it is a nice hobby to occupy my free time (Plan to possibly buy a set to custom paint) and it is a toy that turns into a video game. The ultimate idea from my childhood...and it took this long to get there.

So there ya go. Thanks all for sharing your stories, it's fascinating.

I got into this game because it is 2 addictions rolled into one and because it looked like Activision hit the mark on this one. Another franchise called Bakugan, which I was previously collecting, was attempting to do this but failed miserably because they could not get the video game right. The toy had a solid following but once they got into video games, they could not successful implement the gameplay that we enjoyed with the toy.

I had bought my son Rock Smith for the #^) because he wanted to play guitar like daddy, and he wasn't getting what I was trying to teach him. After pouring his little heart into int for four days and getting frustrated to the point of tears I took back his four hundred dollar guitar and case. When I went to sell back the game at gamestop I asked the cashier "What's that?" She explained it to me and i said "Give me one of everything you have." The had just gotten in a shipmemt and were in the process of unboxing it so i got darklght, pirate seas, eoi, zap/hex/Dr, drill sarge three pack cynder, robot and a bunch of other singles. That's when the nightmare began. I guess I kind of lucked out because I found almost all of waves one through three in one sitting, if you can call this gigamtic money pit lucky I suppose...

My thanks to everyone who has shared their stories so far! I look forward to hearing more if anyone else has one. Please, keep them coming!

I got into it because I saw the reviews and was intrigued, however I was out of the country at the time and wasn't sure how well the figures would handle the ride home. My family had all had versions of the game and kept telling me how GREAT it was. When I returned to the States, I happened to arrive the week someone had all the starter packs on sale for 34.99 - so I asked the clerk there which was best, and they said to buy the 3DS since at that point that was the ONLY way to get those figures. I had LOADS of fun on 3DS, and eventually got a Wii version and Wii portal off evil-bay so I could play that version too. Managed to get lots of figures, simply due to being in an area that has lots of stores which carry Skylanders, and being in a different time zone so I'd be up at screwy hours and was able to catch a few amazon restocks.

I do think, however, after seeing the figures that I did the right thing by waiting until I got back to the US. 18 hours bounced around in a suitcase probably would have snapped a few bits and bobs off of them, especially figures like Whirlwind and Cynder.

My brother saw it on TV, and he liked it but he didn't tell me, he also played the LoS Series so, yeah. Then we got to Walmart on Black Friday and we mixed money and bought it

I read about it in GameInformer and NintendoPower. I thought that the concept of combining toys with video games was a unique and interesting idea. Plus I like collecting things and Spyro was my first Playstation game.

I work at Toys R Us, so the promotion early on for the game drew me in. We had a monthly training video just based on this game alone, after viewing it, I really got into the idea.

Now I'm sitting here with an almost complete set save for the last 3, including Legendary characters and Dark Spyro.

I've been able to luck out and get many characters for half price or free due to promotions, although I know I've spent A LOT of money on this.

I get teased by my coworkers about buying the game, but they acknowledge the game's success.

I consider it the new Pokemon, but with an ACTUAL "hunt" game to it, as in, finding the figures.

When i first saw this game i really didnt want it.
Then i got it for Christmas and It was soooo fun.

The display blew my mind. I had to buy them all.

I hadn't followed the game at all, and then I noticed all this negative commotion about it. I thought it looked interesting, so made the investment, managing to drag several people along with me on the way.

I bought my daughters an Xbox for Christmas, and loaded up on Kinnect games. Shortly after that, I realized that they would want to play something that didn't require them to jump around in front of the TV. After talking to my girl at Game Stop, I decided to go with the Skylanders Mega Pack at BB. They LOVED it, and I was hooked within a couple of days. I am at 100% completion, and helping them get there as well. I am now a bigger Skylanders nerd that they are...... Great game!

I have loved Spyro ever since the kids were little and got one of the Spyro games. Before Christmas I saw commercials for the game on tv. I mentioned that I might like it, but didn't go get one because I didn't want to fight the husband and kids for a turn at the tv with the consoles attached.
Come Christmas eve, my husband still hadn't gotten me anything, and asked the kids what I wanted. I had been in Game Stop earlier in the day with the oldest (20) picking up something for the 18 year old, and told her "hey there is that game I was telling you about. Too bad there are already three people fighting over the consoles."
So she texted her dad and told him to get it for me. When I opened it and said I would never get a chance to use it, she said I could move her Wii into the bedroom, but that I would have to get my own when she moves out, LOL.
When I found out that you needed one of each element the quest began. Everytime my husband went into Game Stop trying to get the different elements, if they didn't have an element I didnt yet have he would get any character I didn't have. By the time he got me a Life, two weeks ago, I had two thirds of them. See no reason not to get them all now.

been following the spyro series since the first game came out, and skylanders looked so cute and fun, and reminded me of the old games

my kids asked me for the ps3 starter set for xmas. thought it was just another kiddy adventure type of game, but then when i started watching them play then playing myself i really got into the game as well...now we are all enjoying it in a big way

I have never been into spyro even though I knew who he was. My brother got skylanders for Christmas, but I thought it was a waste o time. It's when my brother got his first non starter pack figures is when I became interested. Now he rarely plays and I'm the one in the house asking my siblings to play. My mom says I'm crazy and that I need to quit and that I have enough skylanders! Wait till I get Giants!

i was on youtube when an advertisement came on so i clicked on it cause i liked spyro and it looked like a really cool game ( I thought all of the figures would have been released at the start though :-( )

i saw the display way before it came out and thought it was awesome idea. and my birthday was around the time it came out. so i took advantage of toys r us's special at the time, buy two get one free, and got 2 3 packs 1 adventure pack, 3 single packs. which set me up pretty good to play the game, having one of all the elements. and the game was so fun, i hated when i was done with it, and then i got the 3ds version the next time they had a big sale on the starter packs. and the 3ds was super fun too. and i loved all the characters (almost) so thats why i got into it. the toys r us in store display. before it was released.

i Saw it in nintendo power And it suited all of my needs. Also played classic spyro

My wife saw it before Christmas and told me we should get it for the kids, I barely had a passing interest. Then 2 days later my Mom called and said that she had just gotten it for the kids, so my wife and I bought them a bunch of figures. Christmas comes and the kids do the present schtick, then play Skylanders nearly nonstop for 2 days, happily playing and sharing and having a grand ole time while us old folks watched in awe. Well, then I had to play ....then I had to collect. Let's just say "the kids" have a sweet collection of figures now.

Have always been a big fan of Spyro, and even though I hated his new design I decided to see if the game was fun. Now I'm obsessed, and can't stop buying new figures.

I've always loved Spyro really, but I actually hated Skylanders when I first saw the trailer. But then I told myself, don't judge a game by it's looks, and hope it was better than TLOS. But now I love it, though, I still don't like Spyro's new look.

When i first saw the trailer during E3 i thought hey ya know this looks pretty interesting fast forward to release day of them game (i didnt buy it release day) i was in gamestop to pick up a different game and saw the starter kit picked up looked at the box then sat it down and walked out. fast forward again to news year eve where i finally got to play the game at my brothers house and then i immediately got hooked and ended up buying the game and figures after my tax return came in and its been all downhill sense lol.

Original Spyro.

found it in a toys r us magazine thought it was dumb then looked it up now i am glad i looked it up

also it reminded me of my favorite game (neopets petpet adventures the wand of wishing)