Costco Makes PC Gamer A RAM Deal They Can't Refuse

What would you do if you walked into Costco and saw a killer gaming PC on the shelf for just $1,100? Would you be willing to spend the smallest fraction of that—five bucks—to try Warren Spector’s new game, Thick as Thieves? And what would you want to see in a third Injustice game? Welcome to Kotaku‘s Checkpoint for April 29, 2026. This is Carolyn, once again covering intro duty for Ethan who had to run off to a meeting before saying hello to all of you. I apologize on his behalf. As for my own financial decisions, I’m not sold on Thick as Thieves yet but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna fork over a solid chunk of change as soon as I get home from work tonight to experience the hellish loop of death and rebirth that is Saros, who’s with me?

A Costco customer hits the RAM lottery

You never know what you’ll walk out of Costco with. It could be a 20-pound bag of rice for $10. It could be a five-pound box of dinosaur nuggets for just $15. Or it could be an iBuyPower gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM for just $1,100. That’s the situation one PC Master Race subreddit poster found themselves in this week (via Wccftech).

“I had to instantly buy it, I don’t need an upgrade rn so I’m giving it to a close friend for the same price I paid which was rough 1175 after tax, crazy how i stumbled into Costco randomly,” they wrote.

While that’s a good deal for the chips, it’s especially good for the RAM, which would cost over $500 if purchased separately. Adding in a 2TB NVMe SSD to boot isn’t bad either. Other users speculated about why Costco would undercharge so much for the PC. Maybe it had been discontinued or was just sitting on the shelf too long? The Costco PC gaming lottery works in mysterious ways. It certainly beats dumpster diving for RAM.

Classic Rugrats games are back

Be still my beating millennial heart. Tommy, Chucky, and the gang are making their way to modern platforms. Limited Run Games announced the Rugrats Retro Rewind Collection coming to PS5 and Switch on May 15. It’ll include Rugrats: Search for Reptar (PS1), The Rugrats Movie (Game Boy), The Rugrats Movie (Game Boy Color), Rugrats: Time Travelers (Game Boy Color), Rugrats: Studio Tour (PS1), Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (PS1), Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (Game Boy Color), and Rugrats: Castle Capers (Game Boy Advance) for $35. The older games will each benefit from new features like upscaled resolutions, CRT filters, and other emulation options.

Resident Evil Requiem has a missing, phantom chapter 2 just like RE7

“I’ve mentioned in interviews before that there was a phantom ‘Chapter 2’ for Resident Evil 7 that was cut during development,” director Akifumi Nakanishi recently told Denfaminicogamer. “It was a scene where you move from the first annex to the main building. But actually, there was also a phantom Chapter 2 for Resident Evil Requiem.”

He continued, “In the process of finalizing the game’s structure, we make a lot of choices, like ‘Let’s move this scene further in the story,’ ‘Let’s cut this part out completely,’ or ‘Let’s add a different element here.'” Nakanishi said cuts are routine, not just happening at the end of development to ship a game on time but throughout the whole process to nail the pace and make the flow of the game’s story make sense.

Warren Spector’s Thick as Thieves would like your attention

The immersive sim has gone from PvPvE to solo and cooperative play, which is kind of a bummer since the multiplayer dynamic sounded like the most unique thing about it. But to get players to give it a try in the ever-intensifying Steam battle royale for attention, at launch Thick as Thieves will let folks try its introductory campaign for only $5, with additional content available to purchase afterwards.

Windrose has a roadmap but the next big update is six months off

Kraken Express is not rushing to get updates out for its hit pirate tree-puncher on Steam. While the team has outlined some future content, including a new Ashlands biome, the first major post-launch update won’t arrive until the fall. “The scope of what we want to do is rather ambitious,” the studio wrote. “So our best bet right now [is] this update will take at least six months to deliver. This might sound like a long time, but we believe it will allow us to roll out an exciting and meaningful expansion to the game of appropriate quality.”

Koei Tecmo is quietly killing it

A string of recent hits, including Nioh 3 and Pokémon Pokopia, which Omega Force co-developed alongside Game Freak, propelled the Japanese publisher to a 16-percent jump in profits for the fiscal year. That’s an even bigger jump than the last time Koei Tecmo released a bunch of games. I hope Ninja Gaiden 4 did well enough to justify its existence because I’m really looking forward to having that franchise back.

Netherrealm is reportedly working on Injustice 3

That’s according to a new report by MP1st which backs up longstanding rumors that the Mortal Kombat studio is bringing back its fan-favorite DC Comics fighting game.