Amazon Will Not Take Pre-Orders on Next Wave of Amiibo
Online retailer Amazon is maintaining its release approach with the upcoming wave of Nintendo's Amiibo figurines.
In keeping with the system they've been working with, Amazon will not be taking pre-orders and will instead release them on launch day.
"We're going to be putting them up the day they launch (9/11/15). They'll go up during normal business hours," an Amazon representative clarified on Reddit (via My Nintendo News). "We've been pretty successful doing it this way for wave 4 and Palutena, so no reason to change what's working for us."
Daily Deals: Star Wars Rebels, Anchorman, Fallout
Star Wars Rebels Season 1 Just Dropped $10
Star Wars Rebels is great (we gave it an 8.5), and the perfect thing to hold you over until The Force Awakens hits theaters. It's normally $40, but you can grab it for $30, a new low price.
Nintendo Voice Chat: Celebrating Super Mario Bros.
Download Nintendo Voice Chat Here
IGN's Nintendo show is supercharged to suit your podcast needs. Art by Pandamusk.
IGN's Nintendo show returns with a special guest! Last week, USGamer's Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Parish joined host Jose Otero, Peer Schneider, and Kallie Plagge to discuss making stages in Super Mario Maker and the 30 year history behind Nintendo's biggest mascot. The crew also discusses the big news from PAX, including the announcement of a Shovel Knight amiibo and what that could mean for the future.
Penny Dreadful: Season 3 Adds Dr. Jekyll
Showtime's horror series Penny Dreadful will add Dr Henry Jekyll to its lineup of literary characters in Season 3.
Shazad Latif (Spooks, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) will play the famed character from Robert Louis Stevenson's book The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Shazad Latif as Tariq Masood in BBC's Spooks.
Meanwhile, Patti LuPone, who last season guest-starred as Joan Clayton, the Cut-Wife who helped Vanessa along on her path in a flashback episode, will return as a series regular in the new role of Dr Seward, a therapist who treats Vanessa with an unconventional new approach. For now, it remains to be seen if LuPone is truly playing a completely different role or if, as seems likely, there will be a connection revealed between Seward and the Cut Wife.
App Store Update: September 1
Every day hundreds of new apps make their debut on the App Store, and hundreds more are updated or reduced in price. We have sifted through the noise and highlighted those select few that might be worth your attention.
Note: The prices and deals compiled below are accurate at the time we published this story, but all are subject to change.
Age of Cavemen – (Freemium)
Multiplayer strategy battling taking place back in the era of Cro-Magnon men:
Syfy’s Killjoys and Dark Matter Both Getting Season 2
Syfy has announced that both Dark Matter and Killjoys have been renewed for a second season.
Dark Matter will receive another 13 episodes, set to premiere in 2016.
Dark Matter averaged 1.8 million viewers in its first season. The series, created by Stargate franchise writers Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, follows six people who wake up on a derelict spaceship with no memory of who they are or how they got on board. It's based on a Dark Horse graphic novel of the same name.
Killjoys, meanwhile, will air 10 episodes once more for its second season in 2016. It averaged 1.5 million viewers in its first season.
Next Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Detailed
The next big Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament will be the DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca in the Romanian city's Sala Polivalenta sports arena, set to take place October 28th to November 1st with a $250k prize pool.
Eight pro CS:GO teams will compete against eight challenging teams determined by online regional pre-qualifiers, a process which will conclude at DreamHack Open Stockholm with a studio and stage offline qualifier in the Annexet Stockholm Globe Arenas, in front of an audience of at least 2,000 people.
The DreamHack Open in Romania will be much larger, seating about 10,000 people in the audience. It will also include a 4-day stage show.
As always, the event will be streamed live. According to the ESL, over 27 million people tuned in to the ESL One Cologne 2015 tournament, with concurrent viewers peaking at 1.3 million. That competition ended with Fnatic emerging victorious over EnVyUs on Cobblestone 16-7.
Collegiate Hearthstone Tournament Offers $100k Prize Pool
Starting this fall, eligible college players will be able to compete in a Hearthstone tournament for their share of a $100,000 scholarship prize pool.
Not unlike the Heroes of the Dorm event taking place earlier this year, this tournament is open to current college students and will be conducted as a 3v3 team format, where each team plays a single deck for the best of five matches.
The tournament will begin on September 28, with the grand finals taking place in January. Anyone interested in signing up can see if they qualify to register via TeSPA's website.
New Star Wars: The Force Awakens Toys Coming
If you've been feeling a great disturbance in the Force, it's doubtless because millions of tiny, plastic figures are anxiously waiting to be released from their packaging during Disney's global live YouTube unboxing event to reveal new Star Wars: The Force Awakens toys and collectibles. That's right, starting in Sydney, Australia and jumping to one of 13 other major cities once an hour, the Countdown to Force Friday will see notable unboxers and Star Wars personalities opening up product for the world to see via live stream. This will be our first look at every Force Awakens toy that will be available for purchase this Friday, September 4.
We Cut an Amiibo in Half and it was Almost Impossible
If there’s anything we’ve learned from trying to split one of Nintendo’s amiibo in half, it’s that they’re damn tough. This was supposed to be a simple assignment - cut an amiibo in half, and document the results for the world.
We've since learned the hard way that Nintendo's line of interactive figures are made of near-impossible to cut polystyrene mixtures, unless you’ve got a hacksaw, some pliers and a lot of willpower.
Lucky for us, we had all of the above:
