Added: 16.07.2015 18:24 | 21 views | 0 comments

1. Legless Princess Peach

Nintendo's Amiibo toy figurines have become quite the rage in the collectible market. While the typical retail price for an Amiibo is only $12.99, their relative scarcity has caused prices to skyrocket. For example, this legless Princess Peach, the result of a manufacturing defect, sold for $25,100 on eBay.

2. Dual Cannon Samus

Metroid's famous bounty hunter, Samus, gets a serious price upgrade when she dual-wields her iconic arm cannon. For thrifty shoppers, two-can Sam can be found for a mere $2,500–ten percent of the cost of her compatriot, legless Peach.

3. No-Lefty Luigi

Rounding out the collection of top-tier manufacturing defects, this Luigi Amiibo showed up on eBay missing his left hand. The auction winner is now out $500. Beyond Peach, Samus and Luigi, though, most defects don't seem to positively impact the value of Amiibo figures.

4. Villager

If you're not into factory mistakes and want to focus on collecting intact Amiibo, finding the Villager from Animal Crossing is a quest in itself. Unless you spot one in the wild, expect to pay upwards of $70 on auction sites to grab the little guy.

5. Greninja

Good luck grabbing a pre-order for the elusive Pokemon ninja. As is often the case with Amiibo figures, Greninja sold out long before he even hit store shelves.

6. Little Mac

Little Mac became one of the most popular Nintendo fighters after his inclusion in the new Super Smash Bros. That new stardom led to his Amiibo becoming a hot commodity, too. Pro tip for winning him in an auction: Dance like a fly, bite like a mosquito.

7. Gold Mario

He's not quite worth his weight in gold, but if you manage to find a Gold Mario Amiibo, he's currently valued at around around $60. Mama mia.

8. Marth

Marth's come a long way. He flummoxed many players in his first Smash Bros. appearance, but after the surprising success of Fire Emblem in the West, Marth has received a huge popularity boost. Acquiring his coveted Amiibo will cost you more than $50.

9. Pit

After languishing on the sidelines for more than a decade, Kid Icarus has officially made a comeback, thanks to the tireless efforts of Nintendo designer Masahiro Sakurai. Some Amiibo figures are rare because they're relatively unknown. Other characters, like Pit, are rare because they're so loved.

10. Wii Fit Trainer

That's it, feel the burn ... in your wallet, that is. Considered a rare unicorn by serious Amiibo collectors, the Wii Fit Trainer still goes for more than three times her retail price.

11. Ness

In a more just universe, the words "rare" and "Earthbound" would never appear together, but sadly, this is the timeline we inhabit. The consummate yo-yo artist Ness is an upcoming GameSpot exclusive. If you didn't pre-order, though, you'll need to cast PSI Hypnosis to persuade someone else to fork him over.

12. Meta Knight

Meta Knight got an avalanche of nerfs in the recent Smash Bros. game, but his weaker range didn't affect his popularity as a toy. Rumors abound that he'll be restocked in stores, but expect to pay close to $40 until then.

13. Ike

If you've kept your ear close to the ground, then you know the mercenary Ike is rumored for a summer restock. The smart bet would be to wait out his current price spike–$40–until then, just in case this royal bodyguard becomes a mere commoner.

14. Shulk

Behold the power of the Monado! Thanks to his rabid fanbase, Shulk's Xenoblade title became a bonafide hit in the West, and his Amiibo proved just as popular. Unfortunately, like the Wii game from which he hails, Shulk is a difficult man to track down.

15. Captain Falcon

Winning isn't about being lucky. It's about being bold. And you'll need to be bold to hunt down your very own Captain Falcon figure. Once you do, he'll cost you close to $35.

16. Rosalina

Who knew Rosalina would become such a lightning rod for controversy? One collector managed to frustrate the entire Amiibo collecting community by purchasing huge numbers of Rosalinas simply to keep her off store shelves. Luckily, the truly committed can still find her for around $30.

17. King Dedede

For the longest time, Dreamland's king has been unfairly maligned. Maybe Nintendo fans are finally celebrating his heroic nature, because his Amiibo has been one of the most popular.

18. Lucario

A well-trained Lucario can identify creatures more than half a mile away. We wish we had the same telepathic ability to spot which Toys "R" Us has the fabled Amiibo in stock. Expect to pay twice his retail price for a Lucario in the wild.

19. Fox

Fox McCloud may have what it takes to save the Lylat Galaxy, but you'll have to find him first. He's not impossible to discover, but he still remains one of the less common Amiibo originals.

20. Dankey Kang

What's a collector to do after tracking down the rarest and most valuable Amiibo figures? Well, there's a cool niche market of custom painted Amiibo characters to explore. Creators offer unique spins on classic characters, like the famous Jeopardy-themed meme "Dankey Kang," pictured above. While not officially produced by Nintendo, a custom painted work can be truly one of a kind.

Added: 15.07.2015 23:15 | 2 views | 0 comments


CIG claim Smart was a troubled user, Smart responds they have no cause to terminate his RSI account.

Added: 14.07.2015 19:44 | 12 views | 0 comments


The Kid Icarus and Super Smash Bros. character joins her Wave 5 companion Dark Pitt in becoming a retailer-specific figurine.

Added: 14.07.2015 17:20 | 16 views | 0 comments


Save $5.00 on Nintendo Amiibo Super Smash Bros Ganondorf Character Figure! The price of Nintendo Amiibo Super Smash Bros Ganondorf Character Figure has been dropped by $5.00, order now from ozgameshop.com with free delivery to Australia and New Zealand.

Added: 14.07.2015 17:20 | 10 views | 0 comments


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Added: 13.07.2015 20:15 | 13 views | 0 comments


"Pitched as a blend of Super Smash Bros and Guacamelee, Sombrero looks to be a strong addition to this growing niche. Developed by New York-based PixelMetal, Sombrero is a 2D multiplayer brawler that sees up to four players take on the role of spaghetti-western warriors and do battle across a number of stages and modes." -Fergus Halliday(Resident Entertainment)

Added: 13.07.2015 16:35 | 32 views | 0 comments

With the passing of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, the video game industry has lost one of its most bold and inspiring luminaries. To honour Nintendo's fourth CEO, GameSpot has put together a short gallery chronicling Iwata's career, starting from aspiring developer to iconic president. Images for this gallery were found on the official GDC Flickr (http://bit.ly/1O0S20D)

Satoru Iwata was born on December 6, 1959 and raised in Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido, the largest and northernmost of Japan's 47 prefectures. Iwata’s love of gaming began at a very early age, as did his ambition to develop them. According to Iwata, the first game he ever played was Pong, which he “loved.” This spurred him to buy a Hewlitt Packard Pocket Calculator, which he used to program a baseball video game.

Iwata joined the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1978 and enrolled to study engineering and computer science. At the time, game programming was not commonly taught. Despite being unable to study game programming, Iwata’s innate desire to create games pushed him to independently seek out avenues through which he could realise his dream. Instead of studying, he travelled to a Tokyo department store--the first in the city dedicated to PCs--and met like-minded people with dreams of game design and development.

With the friends he made hanging out at the PC retailer, Iwata moved into an apartment in Akihabara, where he spent nights designing and programming games. The group would eventually form a company called HAL. Though Iwata didn’t know it at the time, this studio would deliver some of Nintendo’s most cherished video games including Mother, Kirby, Smash Bros., and more. HAL was named after the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Following the completion of his studies, Iwata became the fifth full-time employee of HAL. By his own account, he joined “the smallest company of any graduate in [his] class.” At HAL, he was a programmer, an engineer, designer, and also marketed the team’s games, “ordered food, and helped clean up.”

The small team at HAL eventually began hearing whispers about a project at Nintendo which involved the development of a machine “capable of incredible new graphics.” Convinced the hardware would be the platform for HAL’s breakout success, the team arranged a meeting with Nintendo. Its first task, however, was a rescue mission. Iwata and his colleagues were put to work with helping bring a game that had fallen behind schedule to completion. That game would eventually be released as NES Pinball.

HAL’s consistency earned it a close relationship with Nintendo and, over time, it was given the opportunity to develop franchises that would go on to become Nintendo icons, such as Kirby. However, its early days were spent doing work-for-hire arcade ports. In between it released numerous entries in the Eggerman series (known in the West as the Adventures of Lolo). As well as this, members of the HAL team took on consultancy work to keep the company afloat.

HAL would go on to work with Shigesato Itoi, a renowned Japanese writer, on his first game: Mother. The role-playing game would eventually be released in the West as Earthbound and, thanks to its unique visual style and mature themes, amassed a passionate cult following.

In 2000, Iwata became head of Nintendo’s corporate planning division. Two years later, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had served as company president since 1949, retired and Iwata succeeded him as the fourth Nintendo president. He was the first Nintendo president who not part of the Yamauchi family through blood or marriage since it was established in 1889 as a Hanafuda card company.

Iwata’s appointment as the head of Nintendo came in the heat of a crisis. At the time, the Nintendo GameCube’s performance was being eclipsed by its main competitor, the PlayStation 2, and faced stiff competition from Microsoft’s first ever console, the Xbox. It was around then that Iwata began to think about distinguishing Nintendo’s consoles from its rivals, and also appealing to a wider audience by creating approachable, creative experiences.

Iwata’s vision for a successful new Nintendo was defined by “lateral thinking with seasoned technology,” a principle developed by Gunpei Yokoi, father of the Game Boy, Game & Watch, the modern day directional pad, and creator of iconic franchises such as Metroid. It posited that a creative person could take mature technology and find radical new ways of using it to create transformative experiences. The first fruit of this ideology was the Nintendo DS which, in the face of adversity from Sony’s slicker, more powerful PSP, went on to sell over 150 million units, making it the second-best selling console of all time.

At E3 2005 Satoru Iwata took the stage and proudly held a diminutive black box aloft, proclaiming it a gaming revolution. That same year, at Tokyo Game Show, Iwata reiterated the company’s ambition to expand the gaming audience and speak to a wider market and revealed a new controller that “attracts those who aren’t playing games and offers new sensations to veteran” would be the key. The Wii outsold the competition from Sony and Microsoft by a considerable margin and became a bona fide sensation. Importantly, it achieved Iwata’s ambition of placing video games firmly in the mainstream eye and attracting a wider audience. At the height of its popularity, Nintendo’s stock became the second most valuable in Japan.

Iwata’s most recent years were spent trying to maintain the momentum achieved by the Nintendo DS and Wii. Given the magnitude of the success, many would argue this was an impossible task. The follow-ups to both of those devices, the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U, marked a downturn in the company’s performance. At the heart of these missteps was marketing that failed to distinguish new hardware from old, and a slowness to properly capitalise on the move towards mobile and tablet gaming. Despite this, Iwata remained a shining beacon of Nintendo’s ambition and an unwavering leader, famously refusing to lay off staff.

Satoru Iwata 1959-2015