Mad Bodgin’ Mage (Amiibo SMASH) Log: Varia Zero Amiiduo

This is a bodge I had in mind since I bodged Samus without her helmet a few months back.

While working on that bodge, I thought it would be neat to attempt a “battle damaged” version of Samus that could represent both of her forms in-game.

Now that Zero Suit Samus is available, we can see if it was a viable idea or not.

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As a quick aside before getting into the bodge proper, ZS Sam doesn’t need a stand:



We just need to patch the leg afterward, and then repaint it:

With some heat (I used boiling water) and a decent prying tool (used a flat screwdriver), she comes off pretty easy. I recommend starting near the bottom of her standing leg, and work it from there. The hard part is removing the stand itself from the base.

The important part is that it CAN be done 😀

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Now… on to the bodge.

First things first. I needed to open the bases, and see what the limitations of the NFC chips were. That would determine how I went about the project.



I sorta made a mess of the Varia base trying to open it, but Zero went without a hitch. Think it was a poor choice of tool for the first one. If you’re gonna open these, use a strong, thin screwdriver (or multitool). After some experimentation, I found both chips can be read with this arrangement if you tilt the base to read one or the other:



This was a great result, as any of my other plans involved trying to conceal a NFC elsewhere on the amiibo.

It woulda sucked.

After that, I modified the grooves on the inside of the base that make the two halves fit together better. They were taking up space that was going to be used to accommodate not one, but TWO NFC chips. I arranged them so that the NFC chips wouldn’t stick together, and wouldn’t get folded and/or damaged in the process of putting the base back together:



I then added some greenstuff to make a better contact point for the glue.

With the viability of the project confirmed, now came the painful part:



I know she’s holding the pistol with her off-hand but I wanted to represent both versions of her arsenal.



When I got this far, something felt off. It turns out that I botched the merge point between the two figures, and it made for what looked like two sets of hips. It’s kinda tricky getting it right, and it turns out that the Varia suit is about as roomy as the Zero suit, and the differences in the poses wasn’t helping.

I ended up putting some bits back on, and lopping off some others to fix it:

With that patched up, it was time for paint & putty to finish:



360 view:



Here’s a video showing that the NFC chips still work:



For fun, I’ve been only using them to fight Team Battles.

Now that I know this works, it means that a Zelda/Sheik combo needs to happen (whether by my hand or not remains to be seen).

T’was a bodgin’