Three years on from Link’s excavation beneath Hyrule, the final piece of official Tears of the Kingdom merchandise turns out to be a posable-armed plastic robot.
The Mineru’s Construct amiibo arrives at the official Nintendo Store on 17 September, priced at £24.99, with pre-orders already live. Scanning the card summons the construct inside your copy of the game.
There is nothing more to it than that. For a title Nintendo has otherwise left behind, though, this is about as close to DLC as Tears of the Kingdom is ever going to see.
The sequel that never got its own moment
Breath of the Wild absorbed the headlines and never handed them back. Its 2023 successor never generated the same volume of noise, yet it still carved out a spot in the series.
The premise is familiar in the way Zelda premises always are. Link sets out in search of Princess Zelda. Ganondorf intends to wipe Hyrule off the map. Link disagrees.
Everything in between those two poles is what changed. The open world came across from Breath of the Wild, but the building systems recast players as amateur engineers, bolting together machines that trundled over the dirt or soared above it. Islands drifting overhead. Vast, unlit caves underneath. The entire game pulled you along a vertical axis.
Reddit did what Reddit does
Reaction on r/nintendo was broadly warm when the amiibo was revealed earlier this year.
“That actually looks cooler than I expected. The arms look even more flexible than the Guardian!” reads the top comment. Another: “I thought this thing was never going to be released.”
The tone over on r/zelda was frostier, and the sticking point was cost. “How do you guys feel about the Mineru Construct amiibo costing $35? It looks really cool, and it has posable and flexible arms. I want to get it, but… I don’t like the price,” one user asked.
Responses divided neatly between collectors and everyone else. “If you’re a Zelda collector, then definitely, but otherwise, way too much. I’m personally getting it because I collect the Zelda amiibo, but otherwise, I’d skip it,” one reply said.
Someone else was harsher about how long this had taken. “There are much better amiibos out there, at least for me. Given the age of the game already, it has lost all hype for me, I don’t understand why they release this so late.”
Nintendo’s attention is somewhere else
That complaint lands, because the publisher has visibly moved on. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake is headed to Nintendo Switch 2, and the marketing oxygen is being spent there.
All of which makes this small figure an odd parting gift. Amiibo are interactive collectibles, typically bundled with a card that unlocks in-game content, and this card unlocks a construct in a game the majority of players wrapped up two years back.
The window to make up your mind is two days wide. If flexible robot arms for £24.99 doesn’t appeal, the Ocarina of Time remake lands later this year, and nobody is going to fault you for holding out.
Somewhere on r/zelda, a collector is buying one regardless. They admitted as much themselves.