Club Nintendo (the noun, not the verb)

lub Nintendo went live today for North America, marking the first time ever in recorded history that anything cool and niche from Japan has been implemented for normal boring white people (and some other colors).

It was formerly exclusive to Japan, and then just Japan and Europe, but now we too can redeem our game purchases for such prices as a deck of cards and a different colored DS game case.

It’s a bit more exciting than I make it sound, of course, and why should I complain about the prizes when they are free? There are a couple cool ones such as the DS game rack and Game & Watch Collection for the DS. The latter going for 800 coins, so good luck getting it any time soon.

The club works in that you use the registration codes that come with every Nintendo published title to earn “coins” which can be redeemed for prizes. The exchange rate seems to vary based on the type of game (DS or Wii) and also how old the game is, though I can’t confirm this. I just registered 13 games and only have 610 coins. With nothing interesting coming out for the Wii I’m not sure when I’ll have enough for the Game & Watch Collection.

For your information: You cannot re-register games that you registered under the old system (so you better be happy with those lame wallpapers you got in return for them). You can register really old games, but as mentioned they don’t seem to yield as many coins. If you did have a My Nintendo account you can “transfer” it over to Club Nintendo. For more details on things I was too lazy to explain, maybe you should actually check out the Club Nintendo section of the Big N’s website.