Nintendo Launches Club Nintendo in North America, Offers Exclusive Goodies for Game Registration

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As promised, Nintendo has brought its popular Club Nintendo program to North America, rewarding buyers of Nintendo games and systems with exclusive prizes.

Located at Club.Nintendo.com, the program entices gamers to register their Nintendo-published games and fill out surveys to receive coins, which can then be cashed in for Club Nintendo-only prizes, such as the Game & Watch Collection for DS, exclusive playing cards, a Nintendo DS case, and the Wii Remote holder.

Only Nintendo-published Wii and DS retail games pack the PIN code necessary for game registration. Each registered Wii game and completed survey will net 50 Coins, while Nintendo DS games and their accompanying surveys earn 30 Coins.

Select games bought through the online Wii Shop Channel are eligible for Club Nintendo registration as well, and will reward the completed survey with 10 Coins. Prizes currently range in price from 300 to 800 Coins.

From December 2008 and on, all Nintendo-published games will be eligible for registration within Club Nintendo. A list of the previously-released Wii and Nintendo games eligible for Club Nintendo registration follows:

    Wii Games
    • Animal Crossing: City Folk
    • Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
    • Endless Ocean
    • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
    • Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
    • Link's Crossbow Training
    • Mario Kart Wii
    • Mario Party 8
    • Mario Strikers Charged
    • Mario Super Sluggers
    • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
    • Pokemon Battle Revolution
    • Super Mario Galaxy
    • Super Paper Mario
    • Super Smash Bros. Brawl
    • Wario Land: Shake It!
    • WarioWare: Smooth Moves
    • Wii Fit
    • Wii Music
    • Wii Play
    Wii Shop Channel games and Wii Channels
    • Alien Crush Returns
    • Art Style: Cubello
    • Art Style: Rotohex
    • Big Kahuna Party
    • Boingz
    • Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure
    • Brain Challenge
    • Bruiser and Scratch
    • Digital Champ Battle Boxing
    • Earthworm Jim
    • Enduro Racer
    • Forgotten Worlds
    • Gradius II Gofer No Yabou
    • Hockey Allstar Shootout
    • Home Sweet Home
    • Mega Man 3
    • Metal Slug 2
    • Pit Crew Panic!
    • Secret of Mana
    • Sonic the Hedgehog 2
    • Space Harrier
    • Space Invaders Get Even
    • Space Invaders: The Original Game
    • Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition
    • Strong Bad Episode 3: Baddest of the Bands
    • Strong Bad Episode 4: Dangeresque 3
    • Strong Bad Episode 5: 8-bit is Enough
    • Sudoku Challenge!
    • Target Toss Pro: Bags
    • Tetris Party
    • The Incredible Maze
    • World of Goo
    • Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam
    Nintendo DS Games
    • Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
    • Animal Crossing: Wild World
    • Big Brain Academy
    • Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day
    • Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day
    • Clubhouse Games
    • Crosswords DS
    • Diddy Kong Racing
    • Electroplankton
    • Elite Beat Agents
    • Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day
    • Hotel Dusk: Room 215
    • Kirby Super Star Ultra
    • Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
    • Mario Kart DS
    • Mario Party DS
    • Master of Illusion
    • Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir
    • New Super Mario Bros.
    • Nintendogs: Chihuahua and Friends
    • Nintendogs: Dalmatian and Friends
    • Nintendogs: Labrador Retriever and Friends
    • Nintendogs: Miniature Dachshund and Friends
    • Personal Trainer: Cooking
    • Planet Puzzle League
    • Pokemon Diamond
    • Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time
    • Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness
    • Pokemon Pearl
    • Pokemon Ranger
    • Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia
    • Professor Layton and the Curious Village
    • Super Mario 64 DS
    • Tetris DS
    • Yoshi's Island DS

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 16, 2008 8:59 AM

    I hate that already registered games don't give you a way to get coins. I'd be happy with doing surveys on them, even ones I've already done surveys on in the past. Based on my calculations on the older games that this article says would give you points compared to what I have already registered with Nintendo, there are 520 coins worth of registrations on my account.

    • reply
      December 16, 2008 9:31 AM

      Already registered games should (eventually) appear. The site's being kinda slammed.

      • reply
        December 16, 2008 9:37 AM

        OK thanks, I hope that's the case as nothing on site said that it would work that way, and all the "earning coins" parts of the site are asking for a new code.

        • reply
          December 16, 2008 9:41 AM

          The FAQ I was looking at is now down, but the general consensus over at NeoGAF seems to be that anything that was on your My Nintendo account should show up on the migrated Club Nintendo account. Once the server settles down, surveys for your registered games should appear in the 'To Do' list.

          http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=14026397#post14026397

          • reply
            December 16, 2008 10:44 AM

            Cool, they show up on my registered games list in Club Nintendo, but nothing in the To Do list. I'll definitely be happy if this is the case.

            • reply
              December 16, 2008 11:05 AM

              OK, after reading through the NeoGAF thread more, it looks like there are possibly some problems with how the page renders in Firefox. After getting logged in through IE, I can see that all of my previously registered games show up on the to-do list for surveys, although it's not letting me take them right now. Still, that's a good sign!

    • reply
      December 16, 2008 9:41 AM

      If it's like the UK service is now then the points you earn expire after a short time so you can't build them up.

      Which really fucking sucks as it wasn't always like that, and everything on offer has tended to be total shit, so lots of us hoarded the points waiting for something worthwhile to appear, then were told they'd start to expire...

      ...but something vaguely worthwhile did appear: Nintendo said we'd be able to convert our stars (they're not called coins over here) into Wii points to use on Virtual Console games (etc.)...

      ...only problem was, the artificially limited the supply of Wii points and they were "sold out" every time I or anyone I know looked on their store. How Nintendo can "sell out" of a completely virtual item which is no more than a database entry is beyond me. The fucking cunts. So now all my stars have expired and I just won't bother registering a Nintendo game ever again... In fact the registration cards are worth more to us if we DON'T register them, since the points can't start to expire if they haven't been put into the system yet.

      Braindead fucking cunts, I tell you!

      Not that I'm bitter.

      • reply
        December 16, 2008 10:45 AM

        Ugh, that sucks. From what I was reading, it sounds like the coins do expire in this system after a year, so that could be a problem here too.

        • reply
          December 18, 2008 3:17 AM

          It's so dumb since if you don't register the games then you can keep that scratch card and turn it into coins whenever you want. AFAIK the scratch cards never expire. So there is a *disincentive* to register your games, not the incentive Nintendo are aiming for.

          I'm assuming they want people to register their games for market research ("people who bought X also bought Y and tend to by Z games a year" or similar data) and to get people's email addresses (but you only need one game to do that). Whatever it is it's for their own benefit, else they wouldn't be doing it, so I can't see how making the points expire helps anyone.

          If they're worried about people letting too many points accumulate then they should provide some decent stuff -- not just desktop wallpapers and other trash -- that people will want to exchange the points for.

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