Watchin’ paint dry at Club Nintendo

By Stephen Munn | December 19, 2008

You’ve probably heard that Nintendo finally launched their awesome rewards program, Club Nintendo, in the US. I heard about it at DSFanboy. Unfortunately, as with all Internet-related things of Nintendo, it’s been impenetrable since its unveiling a few days ago. I’ve made numerous attempts to log into the site, only to be told my password was wrong. Today, I was able to get in for the first time, but it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing.

Everything is impossibly slow. Punch in a code and wait five minutes for a response, even if that response is that the code is already registered. I’m not even kidding. Every few clicks, I was kicked back out to the login screen, at which point I needed to go back to the site’s root to get back in, because attempts to login were met only with loading screens. Then, finally, I was kicked out for real,  unable to log in again. Well, let’s have a look at what’s new and interesting on the site when you can actually see it.

I had many, many games registered on the site stretching back through GBA and Gamecube. Most are now worthless, as only a handful of games that are on DS and Wii will score you “coins,” the new currency of Club Nintendo. Wii games are worth 50 coins, DS games are worth 30. So it boils down to a dollar per coin on the average. Some DS games don’t get you anything, like Metroid Prime Pinball. Wii Shop Channel purchases also grant you coins, but not all of them. Not only do you have to register your retail games, but you have to complete a short survey on each to get the coins. Once you have 300 coins, you’re a gold member. When you hit 600, it’s platinum, which is where I landed. Hit gold or platinum before the Club year ends (that’s on June 30th of each year) and you’re sent a special prize. I’ll let you know what I get. You can even preregister games and get 10 bonus coins when you finally register it. You get bonus coins for registering within the first month of a game’s release, too. All kinds of incentive to buy new at launch.

Some of the items in the program are nice. There’s a compilation of Game & Watch games for Nintendo DS, that’s 800 club points. There are DS cases, Wii Remote holders, all kinds of neat things, all of which bear the slick Mario hat logo of Club Nintendo.

And in case you were wondering, no, the Japanese Club Nintendo codes in your Ouendan! games still won’t work on the site. Bleah.

Source: Club Nintendo (good luck with that link)