Club Nintendo

[Dat Matt]

Anyone here heard of Club Nintendo? No? Here's how it works.

When you buy a new game from club Nintendo you get a voucher code to redeem on their website. Key in the voucher, take a quick survey about the game and you account is redeemed with points or coins depending on your region. Redeeming a game in North America gets your 50 coins, while in Europe it earns you 250 points. Codes cannot be transfered between regions so coins stay in America, while points stay in Europe.

Sounds dumb you say? Somewhat, but the vouchers stack up and can be redeemed for prizes on the website.

North American Club Nintendo offers games monthly that can be redeemed via coins. For example, on the 3DS for this month you can use 150 coins to get "Kid Icarus of Myths and Monsters" or 200 coins to get "Number Battle". One redemption code equals 50 coins, so the codes required 3 and 4 codes respectively to obtain.

Along side these monthly games the North American region has "Status". Depending on how many coins you redeem you earn status on club Nintendo. Earning 300 Coins earns you gold status and 600 coins earns you Platinum status. Each of which at the end of the year (I believe is in August). Gets you a free reward from the site like Posters, Soundtracks or Games.

Europe doesn't have anything fancy like the status or free games, but we make up for it by having better physical rewards than the Americans. For example, 1700 points (7 games) will get you one of these Pikmin 3 Keyrings while 5000 Points (20 games) can get you a Mario Kart 7 Trophy. Unfortunately the more expensive items sell out fairly quickly, so you'll be lucky if you see an expensive items for more than a week.

The concept of Club Nintendo is rather expensive, as the redemption codes are only located inside new games. Meaning to get the 5000 points needed to get a Mario Kart Trophy, you need to get 20 codes at £30-£40 per game. So the item can cost about £800 each. It's a good system so long as you are buying the games anyway, or have friends and family that buy games but don't use the codes.



Is anyone here a member of Club Nintendo. What items have you redeemed from the website? Anything you wish you could get?

[Aulayna]

I gave up with it as it's stupid that the points expire. Back in the Gamecube days I got Pokémon Box, Zelda Collector's Edition and Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories out of it. But these days there's never really anything that interests me, and I usually end up being short by 3 games - or my points expire. So, meh. I don't really buy many Nintendo games anymore either, mostly because I don't have a long commute anymore so the bulk of my gaming is done on my PC. When I had an hour and a half journey to, and then from work, I used to plough through DS games like there was no tomorrow.

[Slothy]

I'm not really the type this is aimed at. I've bought exactly one Nintendo game brand new since the GameCube. What could I get for buying one game in the last ten years?

[Pike]

I'm signed up for this but I never use it.

[Dat Matt]

The thing with the site is that you need to redeem a lot of codes to get anything useful. The mario Kart Trophies are mine but each cost 5000 points to get, which works out to 20 unique. I've only managed to pick up 1 from the website itself, the other 5 I own come from ebay.

At the moment though, I am sitting on a stash of 8500 points. The Trophies themselves should be a set of 8, but 2 haven't been released yet. I'm waiting on them being revealed in the run up to Mario Kart 8. There are only 4 games I'm getting between now and the release of Mario Kart 8 so I'll be short a few points if they come back up again for 5000 points, so I'm torn between getting some other cheap games to get the points, or hitting up ebay for someone whom is selling codes.

[Shaibana]

i signed up becaus they promised me a free game.. wich i did get, mario deluxe
but i never use it

[Dat Matt]

That's weird. I got mario deluxe no problem. When did you like your 3ds to club nintendo using the NNID?

[Shaibana]

wich i DID get.. i did get it

[Dat Matt]

Oops, I misread. That'll Serve me right for browsing the internet during my lunch break :P