It seems like each subsequent wave of amiibo gets more complicated and more difficult to get and Wave 5 is likely going to continue that trend in the US. The first part of Wave 5 was revealed as coming in July back in the April Nintendo Direct and as we are about to move into July, we still have no idea when they are coming.
Wave 5 is being split into two waves, though 5a is only made up of Dark Pit and Palutena for some reason. Other regions also have Ganondorf and Zero Suit Samus in this first part, but they aren’t coming until September with a total of 11 Smash Bros. amiibo in one month, likely on the same date.
While the Nintendo Digital Event during E3 revealed these additional amiibo coming as part of 5b, they didn’t even utter one word about the two scheduled for July.
Tomorrow is the beginning of July and the only sign of either is Dark Pit showing up in Best Buy’s system in the past. This led many to believe he would be a store exclusive with him missing form the amiibo kiosks and being in their system.
Dark Pit was then removed entirely from the computer system in-store, but a listing popped up online for him at Best Buy late last week that listed a release date of July 31. This could be assumed to just be a placeholder date as the last day of the month and him supposed to be coming in July. However, that does happen to be a Friday and Nintendo almost exclusively does Friday releases with amiibo.
Why is Nintendo holding back on this release date is the real question? Before Dark Pit popped up on the Best Buy website, I was really beginning to think maybe Dark Pit and Palutena could be pushed back to after the September wave to go alongside the Yarn Yoshi amiibo in October. However, I think that is unlikely with them being announced prior in the first place.
A slight delay to August is always possible and it would be nice if they announced that Zero Suit Samus and Ganondorf were being pushed up to August alongside them to make us have less to go after in September, but I doubt that will happen. If Dark Pit and Palutena are both store exclusives as many have speculated, it could be possible we see completely different release days across July, as we also saw in Wave 3 with Meta Knight, Rosalina, Shulk, and Lucario having release dates all to themselves.
Hopefully Nintendo of America will give us some answers soon, because this is really getting frustrating with not knowing. With the Best Buy listing up for Dark Pit too, he could go up for pre-order at any time, so make sure to keep an eye out for him as he will likely go very fast.
