Nintendo’s first Amiibos are available for pre-order

By Will Fulton August 29, 2014

Several Super Smash Bros. amiibo sit on a display.

Nintendo has unveiled the first batch of its physical Amiibo figurines, which will be available for the upcoming holiday season. The initial release includes: Mario, Peach, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, Kirby, Fox, Marth, Villager and Wii Fit Trainer. Each figure will sell for a suggested retail price of $13. There is no firm release date yet — just a general promise that they’ll arrive during the 2014 holiday season — but pre-orders are now available through participating retailers.

The amiibos were first revealed at E3 2014 as Nintendo’s take on the recent popularity of integrating physical toys with digital games like Disney Infinity and Skylanders. The figures will initially work with the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Touching them to the Wii U gamepad’s NFC receptor will manifest your personalized version of that character in the game. As your amiibos fight more, they will level up and acquire personalized skills, items, and stats. You will be able to fight them yourself, team up with them against your friends, or set them to battle one another, which nets them the most experience.

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Nintendo had previously announced an upcoming peripheral for 3DS that would let users input their amiibos to 3DS games. It should be noted that the upcoming new editions of the 3DS, announced earlier today, will incorporate NFC, which will allow direct amiibo integration without an additional device.

Nintendo has also planned integration with Mario Party 10, Mario Kart 8, Yoshi’s Woolly World, and Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, though the company has not yet announced how the figures will work with those games.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

Gaming

The best traits to level first in Remnant 2

Three characters shoot at a boss in Remnant 2.

Much of Remnant 2's leveling process is based around increasing the ranks of traits that you'll discover throughout your journe. This will give you plenty of opportunities to build a character that best matches your playstyle. In the game's opening hours, however, each character will begin with just a few traits that can be leveled, and your equally limited trait points can make deciding which of those you want to invest in somewhat of a challenge. In this guide, we'll give you our opinion on which of these are best to focus on for optimizing the early part of your adventure. Here are the best traits to level first in Remnant 2
Best traits to level first in Remnant 2
When beginning the game with a new character, you'll have only five traits – one archetype trait exclusive to the archetype you've chosen and four core traits that every character begins with. Your archetype trait will level automatically as you play with that archetype, so you don't need to do anything with that trait. Instead, let's take a look at the four other core traits and discuss which ones are best to invest in.
Vigor
Vigor improves your overall health, which means you can take more damage before dying. This is likely the most important trait to pump points into, especially when first setting out into the dangerous world of Remnant 2. Enemies hit hard (especially bosses) and you have limited healing options during these opening hours, so you'll need every bit of extra health you can get. It wouldn't hurt to prioritize this trait until you get it to level 10, actually, as you'll be able to get plenty more points as the game progresses, and being able to take a few more hits against the game's first few bosses is immensely helpful. This is even more true for Challengers in team compositions where they'll be tanking and spending a lot of time in melee range.
Endurance
Endurance improves your overall stamina, which will allow you to run and roll more during combat. This is a great option to level up if you're playing a character that is focused on melee, as it will allow you to run more when you get surrounded or roll out of the way of enemy attacks without worrying as much about your stamina meter. For primarily ranged players, though, it's a bit less useful, so you're probably better putting those points elsewhere early on. As with Vigor, though, Challengers will likely benefit most from the trait due to their tendency to be a group's close-quarters combat specialist.
Spirit
Spirit improves your weapon mod power generation. This helps you to earn the ability to use your weapon mods more often in combat, meaning that its usefulness is entirely dependent on how useful your weapon mods are to your build. At the beginning of the game, your weapon mods will be most helpful during boss battles, and you're likely to end them before generating a second use of your mod anyways. Because of this, Spirit is likely better saved for leveling later on so that you can focus on survivability first. Gunslingers, however, are likely to see this as a good option in group settings because they're designed to be a DPS powerhouse.
Expertise
Expertise improves the cooldown speed of your archetype skills. This will aid you in using these skills more frequently, which can be a help against bosses and packs of deadly foes. However, like with Spirit, the usefulness of this trait in the initial few hours of the game is limited due to the already long cooldowns and the speed at which many bosses are likely to fall anyways. While Vigor should still be a priority for most classes, Expertise can be a particularly worthwhile trait for Medics who are playing with a group, as it's vital to keep their healing capabilities available as much as possible.

Gaming

This simple trick saves you $70 on an Nintendo Switch OLED

OLED Nintendo Switch

Woot has one of the best Nintendo Switch deals at the moment, provided you don't mind making one key concession. Over at Woot, you can buy the Nintendo Switch OLED for just $290, saving you $70 off the regular price of $360. Sound too good to be true? Well, there is a minor catch. It's a Japanese model which means when it arrives, most of its packaging and documentation is in Japanese. However, the console is not region locked in any way and all you need to do is pick your preferred region and language as U.S. and you're good to go. Here's what else you need to know about the Nintendo Switch.

Why you should buy the Nintendo Switch OLED
The Nintendo Switch OLED is the best Switch yet. It has a gorgeous-looking 7-inch OLED screen that truly builds on the success of the previous screen. It looks great with vivid colors and crisp contrast. As expected from an OLED panel, it can provide you with deep blacks and vibrant colors, all at the same time, so it's really delightful to look at. Alongside that, you also get enhanced audio via the system's onboard speakers so it's a great portable experience. There's 64GB of storage for downloaded games too. A wide adjustable stand makes it simple to set up for tabletop play too.

Gaming

The Playdate’s best game is coming to Nintendo Switch and PC this month

playdate new handheld console secret game weekly header 2

If you don't own a Playdate, you'll still be able to experience one of its best games. Hyper Meteor is coming to Nintendo Switch and PC on July 27 with loads of new features.

HYPER METEOR - Announcement Trailer