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  • GameStop Wants You To Start Trading In Your Valuable Pokémon Cards

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    A Charizard card appears in front of GameStop.

    Photo: Heritage Auctions / Bloomberg (Getty Images)

    The market for high-end collectibles like rare Pokémon cards has exploded in recent years, and GameStop seems to want a piece of it. The gaming retailer told some store managers this week that it would begin testing buying Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) graded trading cards later this month as it flails around for a new business strategy while its meme stock shenanigans continue.

    “Exciting news,” read an internal message shared over on the GameStop subreddit yesterday. “We are happy to announce that we are officially getting into Graded Collectibles. Starting tomorrow, all associates will have access to the Main Menu Learning Course around accepting PSA Graded Collectibles (Just Trading Cards for now).” The company said the program’s rollout would begin next week in just 258 stores to start, including some located in Texas where GameStop is headquartered.

    It’s not clear yet how the program will work, if GameStop plans to resell the cards in-store, or what the limit will be on the prices it can pay. Some self-identified employees on the subreddit have speculated that the stores will only be allowed to buy collectibles graded PSA 8 and above. Still, the prices for those can run from, say, $50 for a Raging Bolt Ex from the recent Temporal Forces Pokémon set to over $29,000 for a rarer Charizard from the original base set.

    The backbone of GameStop’s business once upon a time was used video games. After players completed a new release, they could sell it back to the company for a fraction of the MSRP, which GameStop would then turn around and sell to a new player for almost the full cost of the new version of the game. This “circle of life” propelled GameStop to huge profits in the early 2010s, but has fallen apart as the majority of game purchases have gone digital.

    More recently, the company has doubled down on branded merchandise and collectibles like Funko-Pops and statues of video game characters to make up the shortfall. Despite raking in $1 billion thanks to a meme-fueled stock bonanza, GameStop’s pivots to cryptocurrency, PC gaming gear, and even TVs hasn’t yielded a new path forward for its ailing business. All along the way, GameStop employees have born the brunt the company’s excesses, failings, and resulting cuts.

    It’s unclear if GameStop’s longstanding reputation for poor trade-in deals will extend to its new collectibles program. “10% market price take it or leave it,” joked one person on Reddit. “5% market price cash, 10% market price in store credit, and they sell them at 500% market price.”

              

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    Originally posted 2024-05-11 02:25:00.

  • Amanda The Adventurer Coming to Consoles and Mobile This Year

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    The team at MANGLEDmaw Games and DreadXP are set to release viral hit Amanda The Adventurer on all console platforms, iOS, and Android devices this year.

    In this title, things kick off with Riley Park inheriting their Aunt Kate’s house. From there, players will set out to explore this abode. From there, players come across a stack of VHS tapes next to an old TV set, featuring an early 2000s era children’s cartoon.

    A short yet intricate single player horror title, Amanda The Adventurer will feature a number of animated tapes that tell an unsettling story. Along the way, players will come across a number of different challenging, escape room style puzzles that feature clues.

    Originally launching last year for the PC release and amassing 9.3 million views, learn more with the Amanda the Adventurer trailer below:

    Amanda the Adventurer OUT NOW

    Amanda the Adventurer is also available for the PC via Steam, with a 35% discount from now until May 16. A demo is also available.

    Players can stay up to date on all things Amanda the Adventurer via their official Twitter/X channel, and can also join the conversation via the official DreadXP Discord channel.



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    Originally posted 2024-05-10 04:23:37.

  • Nioh’s William Is Hiding In Rise Of The Ronin, And Here’s Where To Find Him

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    Over 60 hours into Rise of the Ronin and I still haven’t discovered everything that Team Ninja’s latest open-world samurai adventure game has to offer. And now, outside of all the cats to collect and fugitives to kill, there’s another secret connected to Nioh that I only just came across. That’s right: William Adams, the protagonist of Nioh, is lurking in Rise of the Ronin. Here are the details, including where and how to find the “Blue-Eyed Samurai.”

    On March 31, the PlayStation UK X/Twitter account revealed something I suspected was in the game: William Adams, the protagonist of the first Nioh and the first non-Japanese samurai, is in Rise of the Ronin. Well, not exactly. Since Nioh takes place hundreds of years before the events of Rise of the Ronin, he’s called the “Blue-Eyed Samurai” here, reminiscent of the excellent Netflix anime with the very similar name. Anyway, William—I mean, the Blue-Eyed Samurai—plays a small role here, a mere sub-boss encounter as part of the open-world photography activities, but crossing swords with him is very much worth the effort.

    You can find him in the Shiba Prefecture in Edo, which is the second major city in Rise of the Ronin. If you pop open your mini-map and head toward Shiba’s bay, you’ll notice a photo objective called “View of the Bay at Shiba.” You don’t have to complete this activity, but snapping a quick pic of the waterfront will give you silver coins to purchase extra Intellect skill points. Just left of where you’d take the picture is a little alcove with a dimly lit fire illuminating the entrance. Saunter in there.

    Image for article titled Nioh’s William Is Hiding In Rise Of The Ronin, And Here’s Where To Find Him

    Screenshot: Sony / Team Ninja / Kotaku

    Image for article titled Nioh’s William Is Hiding In Rise Of The Ronin, And Here’s Where To Find Him

    Screenshot: Sony / Team Ninja / Kotaku

    The rest of the way is blocked by a poorly constructed wooden barricade, which you can destroy by blowing up the fire barrel just in front with either a bomb or a gun. Once you’re inside, take the only left at the end of the short, narrow pathway, and William—dammit, the Blue-Eyed Samurai—will be standing there, just waiting for you to try him. And try him you must, because this isn’t one of those encounters where there’s a bit of dialogue before the blades get inevitably soaked in blood. He aggros the moment he spots you, but it’s not a particularly difficult fight, especially if you’ve played Nioh. His moveset is identical to the standard attack pattern you see when wielding a katana in Team Ninja’s 2017 Japan-set Soulslike, so that familiarity should make the fight easier to manage. Anyway, go ahead and lay him out.

    After the fight, you’ll earn some pretty sweet rewards. The first is a set of armor themed around Yasuke, the first Black samurai whose name is the title of another excellent Netflix anime. Then there’s the real prize, the Nioh-ryu combat style. It’s the same sword technique that the Blue-Eyed Samurai, and Nioh’s William Adams, use, and it’s great. See, there are four overarching combat style types that the myriad combat styles in Rise of the Ronin fall under: Ten, Chi, Jin, and Shinobi. Each of these four is strong against certain weapon types and weak against others, but Jin is the most well-rounded combat style of the bunch because it’s effective against sabers and other lightweight weapons. The Nioh-ryu is a Jin-based combat style, which means, since most enemies in Rise of the Ronin use either katanas or sabers, you’ll essentially always do more damage. Sure, there are a handful of enemies that use other combat styles which can effectively counter a Jin-based one, but even then, because Jin is a jack-of-all-trades, it can still cut through even the heaviest of weaponry, such as clubs and odachi.

    I love little details like this, optional objectives that connect a studio’s games together in interesting and entirely missable ways if you don’t know where to look. The nice thing about Rise of the Ronin is that if you happen to miss anything in the game, there’s a feature that lets you replay whole areas and entire missions for totally different outcomes. So, if you wanted to see what would happen if you saved an anti-Shogunate official instead of killing them, you could bend time to see what happens. Unfortunately, once you murk the Blue-Eyed Samurai, he’s dead for good.

     

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    Originally posted 2024-04-09 02:11:00.

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