Toys

For a team that came together due to a special event, A-Force made more of an impact than the short life of their solo series would have you believe. The all-woman team of Marvel heroes got their shot during Secret Wars, and then spun off into their own series the Marvel U proper following the end of that event. Though A-Force may not be on Marvel's publishing schedule anymore, Hasbro saw the promise in a team comprised entirely of women and delivered one of the year's most excellent box sets in the Marvel Legends collection.

Trypticon is the latest Titan Class character to get some love, and the Decepticon dinosaur/ship/city is as glorious a dinosaur/ship/city as you're likely ever to see.

With a big cast of characters, colorful scenery, fairly clever joke writing, and pick-up and play gameplay, Skylanders: Imaginators feels like a playable Saturday morning cartoon where you can insert your own hero into the fray.

Now back again one year later with a wealth of new content, Lego Dimensions is poised to cement itself as the preeminent toys-to-life game.

How do you take one of 2015's most successful and fan-favorite games and improve on it for a sequel? Well, if you're Lego Dimensions, you just don't make a sequel. Instead, you spend all that time just adding to the formula that got the original incarnation of Lego Dimensions so much acclaim and attention. In addition to implementing some slight tweaks to the foundation you built less than a year ago, you go bigger and more outrageous with the content as well. Not only is Lego Dimensions bringing the same tested gameplay back, without the need for new portals or game discs, it's also adding a crazy number of new characters and worlds to the base game without skipping a beat.

Nintendo is trying to make up for the frustrations of the past and releasing another round of its harder-to-find amiibo figures.

Skylanders Superchargers is the latest iteration of the popular toy-to-game series coming out of Activision and Vicarious Visions. In addition to the 117 fully playable characters from the previous entries of Skylanders comes 20 new characters, some brand-new and some favorites re-imagined, for the new adventure in Superchargers. The most notable update is the inclusion of 20 new vehicles that bring road, water, and sky-based levels and travel to your battles against the villainous Kaos. Superchargers supplies a distinctly unique and refreshing change to the usual Skylanders game, though this adventure isn’t quite the entirely fine-tuned ride it set out to be.

While at first Lego Dimensions appeared to be yet another NFC figure game built to cash in on the success of Activision's Skylanders series, but in the months since it's been revealed to be a game built to cash in on Skylanders' success with some interesting improvements to the formula. With the concept of having to actually build all the figures and vehicles, Lego Dimensions offers enough difference from its competitors at the onset to make it appealing. Factor in the inclusion of just about every license under Lego's belt, and you've got a game that lets you team Scooby-Doo and Batman with Doctor Who, while they try to stop an invasion into Springfield. After months of lead-up, the arrival of the ultimate fan fiction mash-up game is almost here.

While Activision and Nintendo managed to make amiibo/Skylanders hybrids out of Bowser and Donkey Kong, Kirby and Star Fox were originally planned.

Shovel Knight is officially the first indie game to have its own amiibo and offer amiibo support for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.