The 5 Most Fun amiibo to Train and Fight

by Doc – Owner, Founder, Amiibo Stethoscopes are Expensives

I’ve been training amiibo since Day 1 of their existence, and I’ve trained every amiibo character that exists in every Smash-compatible game.

On a separate note, I’m a virgin.

Anyway, I’m very familiar with amiibo training in Smash, and I’ve got a few personal favorites. You ought to consider training a few of these the next time you boot up the game – they’re fun whether you train with a guide or not!

Mega Man amiibo

Call me biased, but my Protoman amiibo is near and dear to my heart. He was one of the first amiibo I made significant discoveries with, and I still unwind by training a new Mega Man every once in a while.

Mega Man amiibo are fun for a few reasons:

• It’s relatively humanlike, no matter how you train it. It won’t be doing crazy-specific combos outside of a select few, but otherwise it feels like an opponent at your level
• It’s simple to train thanks to its built-in AI. Mega Man will always be doing a few specific behaviors, and you can decide how closely you want it to stick to those behaviors.
• Mega Man has a wide variety of possible playstyles. If you use our Mega Man guide, you’ll end up with one that sticks to aerial combat and physical attacks. If you train one normally without trying to get a specific playstyle, he’ll do a lot of projectile work with his specials. And if you Nothing Method him, you get combo bait!

You’re not going to end up with an unbeatable monster if you train a vanilla Mega Man, and the Raid Boss options are largely similar to a vanilla amiibo, but that’s okay. Mega Man just feels… satisfying.

Ryu amiibo

I’m not going to lie to you – the Ryu amiibo is a knuckle dragger. But that doesn’t matter, because he’s your Ryu amiibo. Vanilla Ryus are decent opponents on their own, and if you set up a Stamina match on Omega stages, Final Smash Meter on, you can have a moderately convincing 2D fighter with your amiibo. And of course, it works with Ken and Terry too.

If you’re looking for a fun long-term opponent, and the 2D fighter option doesn’t particularly appeal to you, Ryu Raid Bosses are… actually quite thrilling. Here’s what I recommend for a Raid Boss Ryu:

• DON’T use Slow/Super Armor or Armor Knight. Ryu is already heavy, and making him into a tank gets boring after a few matches.
• Landing Lag Down
• Air Attack Up
• Fire Attack Up

Ryu’s got a few built-in chains here and there, and just going straight for the balls-to-the-wall tankiest amiibo possible kinda ruins that.

Sheik amiibo

Yes, I’m well aware that the Sheik amiibo is kinda bad in tournaments, but man is it fun to play against. Sheik’s got a lot of easy-to-train combos that it’ll pick up whether you intended it to or not, so you’re pretty much guaranteed a good time. It’s a challenge, but not ridiculous. And the AI is flexible, too!

Unfortunately, Sheik’s kind of a bad character. Sheik does no damage and has limited kill options, so if you want it to be a reasonably difficult fight you’ll need to slap some stats on the amiibo. I recommend putting on about 1,000 Attack and 500 Defense when it’s at Level 1, and then spend the rest of its early levels just training it normally.

Oh, and try to teach it short-hop-Forward air chains, those are really fun. The AI can Forward air you across the stage if you train it to do so.

Donkey Kong amiibo

Now we’re getting into tanky amiibo territory. I’m assuming, if you’re interested in amiibo training, that you’re familiar with “Hard DK”. If you are… then I have good news for you, and bad news for you. Let’s do the bad news first.

The bad news is that most of the footage of Hard DK is pretty heavily edited. The good news is that doesn’t matter – every Donkey Kong amiibo can do the crazy stuff that Hard DK pulls off. No, really, if you train a Donkey Kong amiibo you’ll see him doing Ding-Dongs and edgeguards, or whatever kids these days call those.

As with most heavies, Donkey Kong is already fun to fight when vanilla, but he’s fairly easy to beat if you know a string or two. If you’re a beginner Smash player, or you’re not looking for something very intense, then don’t mess with Spirits. But if you’re feeling like you’ve got some hutzpah to bring to the table, here’s my Raid Boss recommendation.

• Slow Super Armor – it’ll make him slow, and he’ll ignore knockback under a Falcon Punch (at 0%)
• Pick a second slot spirit
• Put 3000 Attack and 1200 Defense

What you’ll find with Donkey Kong is that while he’s very slow, he’s also very scary. That’s really what you want out of a Raid Boss Donkey Kong.

Fox amiibo

If you can tell me what Youtube channel the above image is from, I’ll give you +3 Stud Points.

I like Fox. I like Fox a lot. I like playing him in Melee. I like playing him in Ultimate. His amiibo plays wicked cool, and if you train one, you’ll see what I mean. Much like Mega Man and Sheik, Fox has a host of built-in strings that feel very natural to connect, especially out of Dash attack.

The Fox amiibo doesn’t play Fox the same way that a human would, okay. But he also doesn’t play Fox the way you’d expect a computer to play – there’s some weird sweet spot that Nintendo managed to hit with this amiibo to make him a real pleasure to train and fight against.