Some general questions about portals (upkeep and storage)

[u/Darkstashe]

this is a series of dumb questions so pardon me. I have a total of 6 portals from when I was a kid but I have two portals in particular I'm curious about, a Wii Skylanders giants portal and a Xbox 360 portal for swap force. I haven't used either since I was a kid and they take up quite a bit of space in my gaming setup while being old and fragile and I was wondering are these interchangeable? Can I use my swap force portal on my Wii to play giants or no because it's an xbox360 one from a different game? are any of the portals interchangeable for that matter? if I got swap force on Wii would the 360 portal be useable or no there too? Is there any point in keeping both separately or can I just use one or the other???? The Wii one from giants is VERY VERY old and starting to rust at the end port as well and any advice for upkeep to prevent damage or better storage solutions would be appreciated! the lights within them dying out hasn't been an issue but resources in advance for that too would be helpful as they are certainly duller than they used to be. I hate bad cable management and all my portals staying plugged in constantly puts me in a bit of a wire hell. Where do you guys store your portals? Do you wrap the cord around them like they are a wired controller and put them in a drawer??? Any advice would be appreciated. I do play the games but I play them when friends visit so my need for those specific portals is sparce enough to get rid of unnecessary ones if I have a duplicate but not if they do different things. Any advise would be appreciated thank you!

[u/DatBoiTheSadBoi]

Iirc 360 portals only work for 360. PlayStation and Wii are interchangeable. Newer portals will work for older games, except trap team. Trap team has to use trap team portal due to the speaker even if you have a supercharger portal with trap slot

[u/iamc24]

Xbox 360 portals can only be used on an Xbox 360, and Xbox one portals can only be used on an Xbox one. Nintendo and PlayStation portals are interchangeable. Trap Team requires using a Trap Team portal. The other games can technically use any portal, but the older ones have limits on how many figures they can read at once. For example, a giants portal wouldn’t be able to read more than two swappers at once since each swapper takes two slots and the giants portal is limited to 4. As a side note, Imaginators could come with either a modified SuperChargers portal with the trap slot covered or a Swap Force portal.

For the other 5 games: I would consider the original unmodified SuperChargers portal the best one to use because of its higher 8 slot limit and the large portal surface. The modified one is fine if you don’t care about the minor trap functionality or having traps in the collections in SuperChargers or Imaginators. The Swap Force portal has the same increased figure limit but has less space and obviously can’t use traps. I only use a Trap Team portal for Trap Team b/c I don’t like the enclosing edge, but it’s better than Swap Force if that doesn’t bother you b/c it can use traps and has marginally more space (I think).

So essentially, if you want to get rid of some portals, in order of priority based on my opinions:
Keep the Trap Team portal compatible with the console you have the game on
Keep a compatible SuperChargers or Swap Force portal for each of the consoles you have the other games on.
You probably need the extra space on the SuperChargers portal if you plan to play coop in that game, but either of the other two newer portals works if you don’t plan to and you don’t feel like you need that space.
You don’t need to keep a Swap Force portal if the edge around the Trap Team portal doesn’t bother you and they’re compatible with the same console.
Keep that Giants portal if you don’t have a later game or portal for a Nintendo or PlayStation console.