Skylanders games are for me a great encapsulation of the effects of the digital age on childhood: you get to play with a toy, just like the olden days, but instead of imagining that toy coming to life, digital technology does that for you by bringing the toy into a fully-interactive 3D world. And if, for a person my age, Skylanders is an entertaining curiosity, for children it is an absolute, all-enveloping passion. Today, Activision has added another reason for children to get hooked on Skylanders by announcing Skylanders Superchargers, the latest game in the series that will unleash all kinds of vehicles (land, sea, and air) into your living room.
For those who don’t know much about Skylanders (also known as people with no children or nephew/nieces), you first buy a wireless base, a custom wireless controller, and plenty of plastic figures and vehicles. You then place, for example, a plastic plane onto the base, and voila, the plastic figurine gets metaphorically sucked into a digital world where you get to enjoy flying or driving it in third-person. Superchargers will expand the franchise’s gameplay variety by adding water tracks, air races, and much more, forcing parents to spend $75 for the Starter Pack and then probably many times the $15 that each individual vehicle will cost. Skylanders had already conquered Earth; in September the game will leave no place untouched as it conquers the air and sea too.
