August 2025 now has as many Skyblivion developer diaries as there are modern The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion reimaginings: two, which in both cases remains a weirdly high number. But while last week’s Finishing Skyblivion focused on one volunteer’s attempts at getting the ambitious Cyrodiil-in-Skyrim mod over the line, this other vid makes a very specific pitch to those whose interest may have been diverted by Bethesda’s official Oblivion Remastered, showcasing how Skyblivion looks to more aggressively expand and rework the original RPG.
Scarlet and Violet 151 is still shifting fast too. Charizard ex, Blastoise ex, and Venusaur ex are climbing, but the Illustration Rares of Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle have dipped, which makes this a solid time to grab those before prices settle again.
Outside of trading cards, there’s some fun stuff dropping today. I’ve already preordered the Vault Boy Fallout Pop Vinyl, but I’m tempted to pick up the rest of the lineup now that they’re all available for $14.99. If you’re into mini PCs, there are a couple of solid builds going for under $175. They’re perfect for work-from-home setups, light gaming, or just keeping your desk tidy.
Pokémon TCG Price Check
Whilst there’s a couple of savings on Amazon today, TCGplayer is knocking big box retailers out of the water. The White Flare binder box is a couple of dollars cheaper on Amazon, but looking at older sets like Destined Rivals show a clear gap in market value and the notorious Amazon mark ups of 2025. Destined Rivals Elite Trainer Box is currently sat at $85 on TCGplayer, for example, which is cheaper than the Amazon sale price last week of £88.
Pokémon TCG Crashers and Climbers
Scarlet and Violet 151 card prices continue to shift, with Charizard ex, Blastoise ex, and Venusaur ex SIRs climbing steadily thanks to standout artwork, competitive playability, and high collector demand. Charizard has jumped to $210, Blastoise is up 28% to $84.99, and Venusaur is up 27% to $69.99. Zapdos ex and Alakazam ex are also on the rise, with Alakazam seeing the biggest gain of 35% to $44.98.
On the other hand, prices for Kanto starter Illustration Rares like Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle have dipped as more product floods the market. Charmander is down 14% to $44.44, Bulbasaur is down 18% to $32.20, and middle evolutions like Charmeleon and Wartortle are following the same trend. While the final evolutions remain the most sought-after, now is a good time to pick up the earlier stages at a more reasonable price.
Magic: The Gathering Deals
Once again it’s TCGplayer and the secondary market values saving MTG players and collectors a small fortune over Amazon. Even sale pricing of the Fallout Commander Deck – Science! is $4 cheaper, with my favorite deal in this lineup being for the four pack bundle of Fallout Commander Decks. Amazon works out at $47.07 per deck, with TCGplayer massively undercutting here at $41.56. That’s well over $10 saving per deck, with even more savings compared to Amazons single pricing overall.
Fallout Funko Pop Preorders
Dropping throughout December 2025, these Fallout Pop Vinyls focused on the Fallout TV series should drop around the same time as Season Two. There’s also chances to get a random rare variant, which is about as much Funko hype as I can handle. I’ve preordered Vault Boy already, but I might get the whole lineup before preorders run dry.
Mini PC Deals
Mini PCs are great for a work from home setup, a bit of light gaming or just saving some space. Both of these models have decent specs whilst being good enough to run Minecraft and your day-to-day productivity apps. Plus they’re dirt cheap, so there’s nothing to loose.
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
We enter week one of RPS Post-Graham. The office Slack echoes like the Great Hall of Durin after a Balrog teaparty. Horace coils about the foot of the Treehouse like a sullen Viking serpent. The Maw seems peevish and incontinent, spurning any news we offer it. The wifi network keeps changing its name to “Execute Order 66”.
It is time to smash the emergency glass and bust out a few favourites from my personal collection of morale-boosting videogame intros. Here’s Red Alert, to put some spring in your step; Okami to let the light in; Colony Wars for the WRAAAOW noise at the end. And here are this week’s most interesting new PC games.
Financial service giants Mastercard have denied accusations that they sought to influence the recent removal of adult/NSFW games from Steam and Itch.io, claiming that they have “not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms,” and that they allow all lawful transactions. It’s a brief and unequivocal statement, but Valve themselves have since suggested it might not be entirely accurate, telling PC Gamer that Steam’s payment processors objected to the availability of law-abiding adult games by citing one of Mastercard’s specific rules.
And it’s still releasing this year, according to Nintendo!
We are all pretty excited for Metroid Prime 4‘s arrival at this stage, we think you’ll agree. In fact, apart from the ever-elusive Silksong, we can’t think of another game that’s got us biting on our furniture as we wait for further information about when we can actually play the bleddy thing again, as we loved it so much first time around. Deep breaths.
Now though, Nintendo has just gone and casually announced that lucky gamers who happen to be attending Fan Expo Canada at the end August, will be able to get a hands-on and play the game. They’ve also, just casually mind, reconfirmed that Samus’ latest outing will see a release in the year of our lord 2025. Which is the same year that we are currently in. Hooray for that!
As fans continue to wait for a final release date, Nintendo has reaffirmed that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is still on track for 2025.
After a long and bumpy development that has stretched much of the past decade, fans are eager to hear when the highly-anticipated Switch and Switch 2 exclusive will arrive.
But as the months roll on and gossip spreads of the game needing more time than initially expected, Nintendo has now re-stated that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will still launch before the end of the calendar year.
Indeed, in a news post advertising the company’s upcoming preseence at Fan Expo Canada, Nintendo has stated that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will be playable there ahead of it becoming “available later in 2025.”
It’s unclear if this hands-on opportunity is a new demo, or the one made available to members of the public who attended the Switch 2’s pre-launch tour. Still, it’s a positive sign the game and its launch are in Nintendo’s sights — and still coming at some point within the next five months.
The statement comes amid online discussion surrounding the fact that Nintendo has not released new details on the game or fresh footage of it for a little while. The last new Metroid Prime 4: Beyond trailer uploaded to the Nintendo of America YouTube account comes from the company’s Nintendo Switch 2 full console reveal back in March. Since then, the biggest news about the game’s launch has been the advertising slip-up that saw the game promoted as being “Out Now” in a billboard on the London Underground. If only!
At the same time, Nintendo leaker KiwiTalkz had prompted concern among fans that the game was originally due sooner, closer to the Switch 2’s launch, but has been held up due to last-minute snags. This, just days after Nintendo’s recent third-party focused Partner Direct (where Metroid Prime 4 would not have featured anyway) has contributed to a sense of unease among fans over the game’s arrival.
It has been a long wait for a new 3D Metroid game, lengthened further by Nintendo taking the decision to reboot the project’s development back in 2019 after an earlier incarnation being made by Bandai Namco did not meet Nintendo’s expectations.
Nintendo’s current Switch 2 release schedule for the remainder of 2025 includes Drag x Drive (August 14), Kirby and the Forgotten Land — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World (August 28) and Pokémon Legends Z-A (October 16), plus Kirby Air Riders and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which do not have set dates.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Following a leak earlier on, Capcom has now officially released the teaser trailer for the next Street Fighter 6 DLC character.
The secret agent C. Viper, who originally made her debut in Street Fighter IV, is scheduled to arrive in Street Fighter 6’s World Tour, Battle Hub and Fighting Grounds on Autumn 2025 for all platforms including the Switch 2.
Ahead of EVO 2025 later this week, Arc System Works has finally shared an update about the Switch version of Guilty Gear Strive, which was released at the beginning of this year.
At the Evo 2025 fighting game tournament, Guilty Gear Strive developer Arc System Works revealed a first look at Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and confirmed an August 21 release date for the DLC guest character.
Lucy is the final playable character from Strive’s Season Pass 4, and is lifted from the hugely popular Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Netflix anime that followed the release of CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077. And anyone who’s played the game will instantly recognize the hacking mechanic we see in the gameplay trailer, below.
Time pauses as Lucy selects from a number of Quickhacks, such as Algorithm Malfunction, Optics Inhibition, and Energy Siphon, using Cyberdeck Ram in the same limited fashion you do in Cyberpunk 2077.
We then see Lucy’s opponent afflicted with the hacking debuffs via icons that display above their character. These icons are the same from Cyberpunk 2077, and appear to clear quite quickly.
So, does Lucy mark the end of DLC for Guilty Gear Stive? Four years after its launch, it seems more is to come. Arc System Works tweeted to say Guilty Gear Strive “will continue… we look forward to your continued support.”
That message came alongside a video that revealed Strive has had 3.5 million players since launch, and announced Guilty Gear Strive 2.00, coming at some point in 2026. What that means for gameplay is anyone’s guess right now. Perhaps of more interest, the video teased two new characters, which fans are speculating are Robo-Ky and Jam Kuradoberi.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Invincible supervillain Omni-Man is a playable character in fighting game Invincible VS. The announcement came as part of the EVO tournament alongside a first look at gameplay.
Invincible VS is the upcoming 3v3 tag fighting game set in the Invincible universe. It’s developed by Skybound Entertainment’s first in-house game studio, Quarter Up, and already has a number of confirmed playable characters, including Mark Grayson (Invincible), Atom Eve, Thula, Bulletproof, Rex Splode, and Battle Beast. Now we can add Omni-Man to the list.
Here’s the official blurb on Omni-Man:
A versatile and brutal fighter, Omni-Man is an excellent pick for or against any team composition. His versatile move set offers options at all ranges: he can apply pressure from a distance with his concussive blast, punish reckless advances with anti-air tools, or close the gap in an instant with his sudden and devastating takedowns. Balanced, efficient and relentless, Omni-Man is a top-tier “point” character for players who want to set the pace from the very first hit.
Of course, this isn’t Omni-Man’s first foray into the world of fighting games. He was a popular guest character in the equally gory Mortal Kombat 1, which included some of his iconic scenes as Fatalities.
So, we now know seven playable characters in Invincible VS. There will be more, of course. But just how many? Based on comments from Invincible creator Robert Kirkman in an interview with IGN at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, Invincible VS will have a massive roster.
Fresh from his SDCC 2025 panel where he announced Battle Beast for Invincible VS, Kirkman told IGN that if fans are wondering if a specific character from either the Invincible comic or the Prime Video animated series will be in the game, there’s a “99%” chance they will be.
“There’s so much care being put into being true to the Invincible universe,” Kirkman began. “So if you’re a fan of the comics or the show and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a fighting game coming, who would I like to be in that fighting game?’ There’s a 99% chance they’re going to be in the game. I’ll just say that. That’s a spoiler. I might get in trouble for that. I don’t know.”
Kirkman continued: “The lineup is going to be absolutely insane. I’m so glad that we announced Battle Beast. You can’t do an Invincible fighting game without having Battle Beast be one of the playable characters. There are other characters like that that will more than likely be in the game. So we’ll see. We’ve got a lot of announcements to roll out. There’s a really great team working on this and I can’t wait for people to see everything is going into it.”
Who would you like to see playable in Invincible VS? Let us know in the comments below.
As for when Invincible VS will be released, Kirkman said 2026, which we already knew, but then he added: “Sooner than you may think… But next year. I’m not being specific.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
