At its pre-PAX Nindies at Night event in Seattle tonight, Nintendo confirmed the existence of the long-rumored Shovel Knight amiibo.

Shovel Knight amiibo gallery 6 IMAGES

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For the Wii U version of Shovel Knight, the amiibo will unlock an exclusive co-op mode, making it the only version of the game that supports two players for the entire game. On Wii U as well as 3DS, the amiibo will unlock exclusive challenge modes not available on other platforms as well as customization options (changing the look and color of your Shovel Knight) that can be saved to the amiibo.Beyond that, the details from the leak earlier today were also confirmed -- the figure will work with the Wii U and 3DS versions of Shovel Knight as well as all future games developed by Yacht Club on Nintendo platforms. Nintendo confirmed it will not work with first-party games at this time, but the feature is under consideration.Yacht Club will announce the release date and price at a future date for the Shovel Knight amiibo, which will still be sold at retail. This marks the first amiibo figure from an independent developer, and Nintendo says it's been receiving pitches from other devs since the amiibo platform was originally announced at E3 2014.Separately from the amiibo, physical copies of Shovel Knight will arrive at retail soon . The Plague of Shadows DLC is due out in early September.

Andrew is IGN's executive editor of news and would like to be an amiibo. You can find him rambling about Spelunky and EarthBound on Twitter