Club Nintendo program ending
February 2, 2015 12:42 PM   Subscribe

Last month, Nintendo announced that Club Nintendo, their customer loyalty program which involves registering purchased games and hardware, then filling out surveys about them in exchange for coins or stars (depending on your region) which can be spent on downloadable games and physical swag, is coming to a close in order to be replaced at a later date with a new program. Today, Nintendo has posted a huge list of physical goods and downloadable games (for Wii U, Wii, and 3DS) which members can spend the rest of their coins on before the system is shut down completely on June 30th, with download codes for complimentary copies of Flipnote Studio 3D for the 3DS being released to all members later this week.
posted by Pope Guilty (21 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh dear. I'm pretty sure I have a swag of points connected to some account or other. But I have no idea what my login details are.
posted by Quilford at 12:47 PM on February 2, 2015


If you need a few extra coins, this dude on the SA Forums has you covered:
Here's a list of every free game on the Wii U and 3DS eShops that give you coins.

3DS:
Rusty's Real Deal Baseball: 5 coins + 10 for Post Play Survey
Steel Diver Subwars: 5 coins + 10 for Post Play Survey
Pokemon Bank: 5 coins + 10 for Post Play Survey
Jet Rocket II Demo: 10 Coins + 0 for Post Play Survey

Wii U:
Zen Pinball 2: 5 coins + 10 for Post Play Survey
Lucadian Chronicles: 0 coins + 10 for Post Play Survey

All-in-all, these free games will net you 80 coins.
Apparently you need to play for an hour to get the initial survey, and then the post play survey shows up a week later.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:47 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


The site is getting hitting pretty hard right now, but there will be plenty of time to pick these up.

I'm sad to see Club Nintendo go after all these years (even if the service has been a bit lackluster the last couple of them). When the WiiU released, I picked up many original Wii games that I missed out on and was pleased to discover the Club Nintendo codes were still able to be redeemed - even games that were several years old.

Thanks to CN, I have about a dozen additional downloaded games on my WiiU and nearly 900 points still to spend. Wonderful 101, I'm talking to you.

Thanks for the gifts and freebies over the years, Ninty. NOW GIVE ME A NEW METROID GAME.
posted by AloneOssifer at 1:00 PM on February 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


This generous offer of items seems to be a North American thing only, because my Nintendo Europe account has a 'stars' currency, not a 'coins' one. I really really hope they extend it, but I'm not holding my breath. sigh.
posted by Quilford at 1:00 PM on February 2, 2015


Man, I wish I could get those Animal Crossing playing cards. The only time I ever had any Club Nintendo points to speak of was about 2 years ago when I finally rounded up every code and console serial number I could lay hands on. Basically a lifetime's worth of goods, at least the ones where I hadn't just immediately thrown out those little slips of paper. There wasn't anything great on offer at the time, but I finally cashed them out on a Majora's Mask soundtrack. It never arrived, and thus I returned to not caring about customer programs.
posted by jinjo at 1:04 PM on February 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


Club NINTENDO
fainted! ▼


(I'm getting a mario 404 at the moment)
posted by Dr-Baa at 1:13 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


FLIPNOTE STUDIO 3D IS ACTUALLY COMING OUT???
posted by EmGeeJay at 1:15 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


My experience with Club Nintendo is that the items they prominently display that are no longer on offer are always better than the ones currently available every time I remember to log in.
posted by jason_steakums at 1:49 PM on February 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've gotten some cool stuff in the past, but the rewards have been pretty crappy recently. Writing has been on the wall for a while, I suppose.
posted by lkc at 2:54 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


I hope whatever replaces Club Nintendo can stand up a little bit better than the current site. Seems like the thing folds up shop under any kind traffic strain at all (Christmas, Mario Kart 8 promotion, Groundhog Day etc.) and stays down for days.
posted by Otis at 3:46 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


I recall Nintendo Europe having some ridiculous rewards, like a metal statue of Link riding Epona while the US got something like a choice between stickers and a calendar.
posted by pwnguin at 4:04 PM on February 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


I wanted a set of the Nintendo character Hanafuda cards, but didn't have points when they were available and when I did have points, they weren't.

I notice that Earthbound on Wii U Virtual Console is 250 points. Plus, they have rereleased the Wii Punch-Out Club Nintendo exclusive, Doc Louis' Punch-Out, for this. That is a nice little thing, not really very substantive on its own (it's just three training fights against Doc, and only the last one's any challenge), but its connection with the highly underrated Wii Punch-Out it's very nice.
posted by JHarris at 4:10 PM on February 2, 2015


I recall Nintendo Europe having some ridiculous rewards, like a metal statue of Link riding Epona while the US got something like a choice between stickers and a calendar.

I might be wrong, but i'm fairly certain the nintendo world store in NYC and the employee/NOA store in redmond had that kind of stuff.

Club nintendo/the nintendo power swag they'd send out was awesome. They used to let you have your birthday party at nintendo HQ. They had an arcade, and TONS of stuff for it. My friend did it in the 90s, and everyone got gigantic bags of ridiculous stuff like that. Soundtracks, toys, 2-3 games, etc. The kid whose party it actually was got a freaking gameboy color and stuff. The whole thing was just general-nintendo-stuff themed, but everyone got TONS of exclusive/weird/rare pokemon stuff too.

Sort of like how the nintendo world store had like 20 colors of DS lite you couldn't buy anywhere else.

I kinda miss old, weird nintendo. Another guy i knew who worked there amassed an entire wall, in a bookshelf, full of weird stuff like that epona statue.

I myself still have a bunch of weird shit that nintendo gave to me over the years. Shirts(are you game enough tour, powerfest 94, some other stuff), plushies, and just weird stuff.

I also miss the feeling that if you got just enough points, you could get yourself a gameboy advance SP or whatever. Didn't you used to be able to cash these points in for actual hardware?
posted by emptythought at 5:38 PM on February 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


My son and I are glad you posted this here. He's young enough that he's still Nintendo oriented, and it would have sucked if this had passed us by unnoticed.
posted by mollweide at 7:28 PM on February 2, 2015


I'm not aware that coins were redeemable for hardware. You could get a pile of them by registering hardware though.

I loved Club Nintendo when it came out and they seemed to care about it, but then a long period passed when there just wasn't that much they offered that I wanted. A deck of ordinary playing cards? Mario stationery? A DS carrying case? Meanwhile in Japan they'd get stuff like exclusive games not released in stores! It was disheartening.

One sad thing about this is the Club Nintendo jokes in Wii Punch-Out won't make sense anymore.
posted by JHarris at 8:39 PM on February 2, 2015


JHarris: "One sad thing about this is the Club Nintendo jokes in Wii Punch-Out won't make sense anymore."

Which is itself a callback to a similar line in the original NES game.
posted by pwnguin at 9:25 PM on February 2, 2015


JHarris: As a member of the original Nintendo Fun Club (since issue #2 -- never got the first one, dammit), I'm sure it will come around again.
posted by lkc at 11:37 PM on February 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Oh man, I forgot all about this. Time to spend some points!

Just a theory, but now that Nintendo is trying out some modern video game revenue streams (like the MarioKart 8 DLC), I'm wondering if they'll be rolling out a Playstation Plus type program where, for a monthly fee, you get access to all sorts of goodies. I would be so into that.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 3:21 PM on February 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oh sweet it turns out I never registered my Wii. It's like finding money in the couch!
posted by jason_steakums at 6:03 PM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


...if your couch continually refused to load while you tried to get the money.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:05 PM on February 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


I just remembered this thread. Looks like I'm picking up Earthbound for free, yes!
posted by naju at 1:56 PM on February 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


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