Toys-to-life emulation

Toys-to-life is a gimmick where the player uses special physical figurines that have a circuit chip inside and place them on top of a USB-wired figurine-reading base wirelessly to perform certain actions in specific games, like summoning a playable character. Toys-to-life games are bundled in starter packs containing the base game, three figurines, and the figurine-reading base, while additional figurines can be purchased separately. This feature is required in a lot of toys-to-life games. Emulating toys-to-life can be very challenging since that there are so many figurines to collect.

Notable exceptions

• U.B. Funkeys
• Skylanders Portal of Power
• Disney Infinity Base
• Amiibo
• LEGO Dimensions Toy Pad

U.B. Funkeys

U.B. Funkeys is an MMO game and figurine lineup produced by Radica and Mattel. It is the first known toys-to-life lineup. Unlike its precursors, which all of them can be used on consoles, it can be used on PCs. There aren't any U.B. Funkeys emulators at the time.

Skylanders Portal of Power

Skylanders is a series and figurine lineup produced by Activision. It is the best-selling known toys-to-life franchise and lineup. It has produced five sequels for up to five years, containing new Skylanders, unique gimmicks, and revised previously-released Skylanders as a new series lineup.

Emulators that support Skylanders Portal of Power

Nintendo 3DS
Main article: Nintendo_3DS_emulators#Hardware_features
Wii
Main article: Wii_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
Wii U
Main article: Wii_U_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
PlayStation 3
Main article: PlayStation_3_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
PlayStation 4
Main article: PlayStation_4_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
Xbox 360
Main article: Xbox_360_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
Xbox One (X/S)
Main article: Xbox_One_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals

• Cemu can communicate to the USB device directly if you have the Skylanders portal even though currently it has minor issues. Thanks to pull request, Cemu supports Skylanders portal emulation from now on, or you can use this unofficial modified version which has an emulated portal of power included.
• Dolphin supports emulation of Skylanders Portal of Power.[1]
• Citra (PabloMK7 fork): there was a pull request for this but it's closed.
• RPCS3 supports of Skylanders Portal.[2]

Disney Infinity Base

Disney Infinity is a toys-to-life lineup produced by Disney and developed by Avalanche Software. It mainly focuses on Disney, Pixar, and other products that are owned by The Walt Disney Company. The series got two sequels for up to two years. Disney Infinity 2.0 introduced Marvel, and Disney Infinity 3.0 introduced Star Wars.

Emulators that support Disney Infinity Base

Nintendo 3DS
Main article: Nintendo_3DS_emulators#Hardware_features
Wii
Main article: Wii_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
Wii U
Main article: Wii_U_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
PlayStation 3
Main article: PlayStation_3_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
Xbox 360
Main article: Xbox_360_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
PlayStation Vita
Main article: PlayStation_Vita_emulators#Hardware_features
Xbox One (X/S)
Main article: Xbox_One_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals

• Cemu can communicate to the USB device directly if you have the Infinity Base.[3] Thanks to pull request, Cemu supports Infinity Base emulation from now on.
• RPCS3 supports emulation of Disney Infinity Base.[4]
• Dolphin supports emulation of Disney Infinity Base.[5]

Amiibo

Amiibo is a longest-running figurine lineup produced by Nintendo, which stores and relays various information for related video games via near-field communication (NFC). It was supported on the Wii U and the Nintendo Switch, as well as the Nintendo 3DS (natively on new 3DS, with an add-on peripheral on old models via hardware update).

The figurine had some unique data about its type, sometimes some user save data, but its size is too small to hold any true add-on game content. When read by the game during in-game prompts, it would unlock various bonuses and content already on the disc (just like on-disc DLC), depending on the figurine's type and various other conditions.

Nintendo also produced Amiibo Cards, which are basically trading cards with Amiibo functionality. A notable exception of Amiibo Card usage is the Animal Crossing series, which in the main games, the cards are used to invite villagers into the player's town.

Unlike traditional toys-to-life games, Amiibo do not require a USB figurine-reading base and Amiibo are not mandatory in games that support them.

Emulators that support Amiibo

Wii U
Main article: Wii_U_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
Nintendo 3DS
Main article: Nintendo_3DS_emulators#Hardware_features
Nintendo Switch
Main article: Nintendo_Switch_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals

• Cemu has partial Amiibo support. While Amiibo dumps (.bin) can be loaded and read in-game to trigger their appropriate effects, they can't be written back to. This affects, for example, the Wolf Link figurine, that's supposed to store the number of hearts for Link from Twilight Princess HD's save file, and summon in Breath of the Wild a wolf with as much HP. With the way Cemu's implementation is, this never happens and the summon only has a default of 3 hearts. Nevertheless, this can be circumvented by writing to the Amiibo on real Wii U hardware, dumping it, then using that dump with BoTW.
• yuzu added Amiibo support. It has full amiibo support
• Citra added Amiibo support in late 2018.

Amiibo Emulation Homebrew that Runs on Consoles with CFW

• Wumiibo for 3DS
• re_nfpii for Wii U
• emuiibo for Switch

Amiibo Cloning

These are little more than NTAG215 NFC tags. There are multiple ways to dump, store and fake these. Their common format accepted by emulators is .bin files. Additionally, there are some complete sets shared online that regularly get updated.

Do note that (on retail systems) the appropriate areas of a tag must be permanently locked after programming, for the tag to be recognized as valid.

• TagMo: An open-source Android mobile application that can be used with NTAG215 NFC tags to store and relay the same information as any given amiibo (provided they have the appropriate encryption keys). Download
• N2 Elite (formerly Amiiqo): A commercial kit consisting of a little puck capable of emulating multiple tags, selected sequentially at the push of a button, and optionally of a USB NFC adapter.

LEGO Dimensions Toy Pad

LEGO Dimensions is a toys-to-life lineup produced by The LEGO Group, published by Warner Bros. Games, and developed by Traveller's Tales. The toy pad, minifigures, and gadgets are basically made out of LEGO pieces so they must be assembled by the player manually, excluding the toy pad base.

Emulators that support LEGO Dimensions Toy Pad

Wii U
Main article: Wii_U_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
PlayStation 3
Main article: PlayStation_3_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
PlayStation 4
Main article: PlayStation_4_emulators#Hardware_features
Xbox 360
Main article: Xbox_360_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals
Xbox One (X/S)
Main article: Xbox_One_emulators#Hardware_features_and_peripherals

• Cemu can communicate to the USB device if you have the Toy Pad, there is a pull request which is merged before 2.4 version, so emulation of the Dimensions Toy Pad also supported now. So, there is no need for using LD-ToyPad-Emulator for this anymore.
• RPCS3: There is native support for Toy Pad emulation[6], or if you have the Toy Pad, RPCS3 can communicate to the USB device directly (but only exposed devices that have been whitelisted). Lastly, even though there is no need to use this now, you can use LD-ToyPad-Emulator.