At Comic-Con in San Diego we got the opportunity to take a closer look at the latest additions to Skylanders with Skylanders Trap Team. While we had already gotten a peek at the title, there were still some awesome announcements behind the game along with some great insight from the designers as well.

First came the announcement of the Skylanders Trap Team Dark Edition Starter Pack. Like last year’s SWAP Force Dark Edition, the set will come with some special dark paint variants of characters. Unlike last year’s though, there will be only three new Trap Team members without any sprinkling of classic characters.

It will also come with a new Portal of Power which will have a new feature in addition to a new look, the ability to use Traps to capture villains in game and use them while playing. The Dark Edition will come with a limited edition over sized trap allowing players to capture Chaos.

Only a few weeks after Disney decided it was time to shoot a volley in the smart toy war by introducing the Avengers to Disney Infinity, Activision has fired back with a premiere for the latest Skylanders sequel. Again, focusing on innovation with gameplay implications, Skylanders Trap Team is coming to systems in October.

As you’ll see in the trailer below, Skylanders Trap Team introduces a new element to the series. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out this means traps. But it isn’t just a matter of trapping defeated foes. This game encourages players to take those villains and use them for good. Boasting 60 new Skylanders and 40 trappable villains, this could be the largest release of Skylanders to date.

It’ll be interesting to see how the traps work but it the trailer hints that specific traps work on specific enemies which means to catch them all, you have to buy them all too. How they are packaged will be interesting though. Skylanders may come paired with a trap or maybe a trap pack will be created with four or five traps sold together. Regardless, Activision has just renewed their license to print money.

Though they haven’t given us the release date yet, the big day keeps looming closer for Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U. It may end up being what makes me care about my Wii U once again but like I said, the release date wasn’t announced. What was announced though was the addition to the Super Smash Bros. roster of Little Mac.

This is one for the nostalgia freaks out there as Little Mac was the main character in the classic Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (or as Nintendo now just calls it Punch-Out!! after all of the… unpleasentness). Kids today don’t understand the torturous boss battles we had to endure back in the day with pattern memorization and Punch-Out!! was the king of memorized sequences.

Another big hitter was focused on yesterday at the first Nintendo Direct of 2014 was Mario Kart 8. Rather than worry about silly gimmicks like two person go karts, Nintendo has stuck to their roots with the successful franchise and is expanding its roster.

In possibly the biggest single day roster expansion announcement ever since the franchise’s beginning, Mario Kart 8 adds seven new playable characters with the Koopalings. Iggy, Larry, Lemmy, Ludwig, Morton, Roy and Wendy will not only be playable in Mario Kart 8 but it will be the first time the lot of them has ever been playable on any game on any platform.

In what could be considered a pretty unpopular and controversial statement founder of Atari Nolan Bushnell says that he thinks Nintendo may be shoot themselves in the foot. Freshly behind Nintendo’s recent Nintendo 2DS announcement, Bushnell spoke to the BBC during the Campus Party developer event and gave his thoughts on Nintendo’s place in the market.

Bushnell stated, “”I don’t think handheld game-only devices make sense anymore. Not when you have an iPod or an Android microtablet.

“When it comes to the console market, I think the market is truncating. Nintendo always had a soft spot for young people–they sort of did the 12-and-under pretty well, and the other guys did the 12-and-over.”

As much as we love Disney and a lot of the things they do like Wreck-It Ralph, even we notice that they don’t always come up with all their own concepts. Usually it is something that has been successful in the past and they put a Disney twist on it to turn it into an even bigger success. Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast and tons more are all examples of this. So, it’s no surprise that Disney and Avalanche Software would be following the success of the toys to video game combo of Skylanders with the announcement of Disney Infinity.

Using a special hardware base accessory, players will be able to unlock new in game content and characters for Disney Infinity. Sounds familiar right? Disney Infinity will be following a model similar to that of Activision’s Skylanders franchise. Players will be able to take purchased toys and put them on a base that will read the figure and unlock characters and items in the game.

In the trailer below, you’ll see characters from Pirates of the Caribbean, The Incredibles, Monsters University, Cars, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy Story and more that will most likely be on the list of playable characters and toys coming out for Disney Infinity.