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This Amiibo can stay usable proudly standing while still inside its box.

The eternal question for the modern Nintendo collector: Do you leave that hard-to-find Amiibo in the box to maximize its long-term value, or do you take it out so you can actually scan it to unlock new features in select Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games? Thankfully, players don't have to make that decision with Yacht Club Games' new Shovel Knight Amiibo. It was purposely designed to be usable even while it's still in its packaging.

Shortly after the US launch of the Shovel Knight Amiibo last week (and the early December launch in Europe), sites like Siliconera and YouTubers like Nintendaan quickly discovered the NFC readers in the Wii U and New Nintendo 3DS can scan the figure even while it's still in its packaging. That makes it different from every other Amiibo released so far, all of which include a small piece of protective material to prevent the base from being scanned from inside the box.

Some assumed Shovel Knight's lack of a protective covering was an oversight or a cost-saving measure implemented for the new Amiibo, which is the first to be produced by a third-party outside of Nintendo itself. But Yacht Club games recently told Polygon that the design is actually an intentional decision.

Choice Provisions

The interstitial art between rounds of Tharsis is pretty sick.

4 more images in gallery

A lot of dread accumulates during an average playthrough of new digital board game Tharsis. To some extent, the feeling is fostered by the game's lonely, hopeless setting on an interstellar outpost. In other ways, it's thanks to the zillions of disasters that befall the astronaut crew you're attempting to help dig their way out of seemingly endless crises. A lot of virtual death comes along the way, yet the game itself is incredibly approachable thanks to a mix of board and dice game mechanics—as if Yahtzee met the resource-management world of games like Alien Frontiers.

Sheer accessibility is possibly this game's scariest aspect. As in, we're addicted, and we're not sure if that's a good thing. It's fair to call Tharsis's combination of punishing difficulty, strategic depth, and hair-pulling emphasis on luck the devil's triad—the kind of game you might find while walking through Satan's most brimstone-loaded casino. We're ever so thankful that the designers didn't attach any microtransactions to its nearly impossible journey to Mars. Otherwise, we may be broke.

Having the pilot for dinner

The game opens aboard the space station Iktomi, staffed with experts in fields such as engineering, medicine, and piloting, en route to the first manned landing on Mars. Each gameplay session begins with an unexpected meteor destroying a vital station compartment weeks before the landing date, which sends the rest of the four-person crew on a dizzying, 10-round journey to keep both the ship functioning and its crew members alive.

Did a piece of the Lunar Prospector fly around in space for 17 years before crashing back into Earth? (credit: NASA)

In November, an approximately 1-meter piece of space junk burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere and fell into the Indian Ocean, making a fiery spectacle of itself. At the time space scientists weren't sure about the origin of the object, named WT1190F. Since then, there has been a flurry of activity to try and trace the trajectory of the debris back to its origin.

Now according to a report in Nature, scientists have a leading candidate. The space debris appears likely to have come from the translunar injector of Lunar Prospector, a spacecraft launched by NASA in 1998. This part of the rocket would have boosted the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and toward the Moon.

By comparing observations from telescopes since 2009, scientists found the object had a stretched out path that brought it beyond the Moon's orbit, which was consistent with a Moon rocket. They believe the object only could have survived in the Earth-Moon system for a decade or slightly longer. Additionally, spectra from the debris showed the presence of titanium oxide and hydrogen, which were consistent with the injector's titanium case.

Razer isn't slowing down, even after releasing a slew of products at last week's CES. The company announced a huge sale on all of its peripherals—50 percent off—for one day only, starting at 6PM PST on January 14.

There are a few rules you'll need to stick to if you want to buy stuff: the sale is limited to one item per customer, and only Razer Insiders can participate. If you're not already a member of the Razer community, you can sign up for an account at any point (and Razer even gives you step-by-step instructions on how to do so). Razer also has a handy micro-site with countdowns to the sale for different time zones, just in case you have a hard time deciphering when you can start buying.

Unfortunately, the sale is on peripherals only—Razer mice, keyboards, headphones and other accessories. Razer systems are excluded from the deal. So no, you can't get the new Blade Stealth gaming ultrabook for half price. Nevertheless, it's a great sale if you're in the market for a new gaming mouse or glowing keyboard.