Nintendo announced a couple weeks back that the loyalty incentive program, Club Nintendo, would be closing down in Summer of 2015, to be followed by a yet-unannounced new program. The Big N also promised dozens of new rewards and games to spend your hard earned Club Nintendo Coins on before the program shuts its doors for good. The company came through on those promises on Monday, releasing a handful of new physical rewards to spend points on, as well as over 100 digital games across all of their current systems! These are the last items to be made available for the entire program, with nothing (assuming Nintendo sticks to what it has stated) being added until the discontinuation of the service in July.
So if you have Club Nintendo points, now is the time to use them!
Now that the rewards catalog has been fully updated, there are still two more important dates to remember:
3/31/2015: Last day to register products with Club Nintendo to earn coins
6/30/2015: Last day to spend Coins on Club Nintendo
Keep in mind these dates and the fact that what’s there now is what’s going to be there through June. Assuming some of those physical rewards don’t get swooped up first, since it is a first come first served basis. Speaking of those physical rewards, there are some cool ones!
Leading the charge is easily the 800-Coin The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask Messenger Bag. Big enough to hold a standard or smaller sized laptop, the sweet bag comes stitched with the Majora’s Mask logo, the Club Nintendo Logo, and a cool rendering of the Skull Kid and the titular Mask. It’s pricey, coming in as the second most expensive item on the entire list, digital or otherwise (for some reason Nintendo thinks Wii Party U is worth 850 Coins. Great game, but really?)., but it’s also a cool item, and one that will surely have huge collector’s value in the future. Also, unique Zelda swag, especially officially licensed from Nintendo swag, is hard to come by that doesn’t also come with a Hot Topic price tag.
The only other new physical items added that I think are worthwhile are the 2016 desktop calendar, which sounds kind of lame but if it’s like the one they’re showing off from 2015 is actually pretty awesome, and the Majora’s Mask Fierce Deity puzzle. I’m not a huge puzzle fan, otherwise I’d fork over the Coins for that too. As far as other physical items go, Club Nintendo has had a nice string of those “Card Case 18” cases that can store your loose DS/3DS games, but this new one isn’t as neat as the others in my opinion.
If you’re like me though, you’ll really want to take a look at those digital games you can download. And man, take a look indeed, because there are over 100 games to download with your Coins. Virtual Console games, eShop games, and even full-blown retail games for the Wii U, 3DS, and the good ol’ Wii are included. Here’s a few highlights:
Nintendo 3DS:
Super Mario 3D Land – 600 Coins
Paper Mario: Sticker Star – 700 Coins
Star Fox 64 3D – 700 Coins
HarmoKnight – 300 Coins (By the creators of the Pokemon series)
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX – 200 Coins
Ketzal’s Corridors – 200 Coins (A fun puzzle game exclusive on the 3DS)
A few dozen other eShop exclusives and Virtual Console games
Wii U:
Golden Sun – 200 Coins
Super Metroid – 200 Coins
EarthBound – 250 Coins
NES Remix – 300 Coins
The Wonderful 101 – 600 Coins
Wii Party U – 850 Coins (Pricey, but if you have 4 friends to play with this is an absolute blast!)
Wii:
Doc Louis’s Punch-Out – 250 Coins (A huge collector’s item which will now plummet in price)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – 250 Coins
Super Smash Bros. – 250 Coins (The Nintendo 64 original)
Excitebike: World Rally – 250 Coins (an eShop exclusive sequel to the Excitebike series)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – 250 Coins
Those are the games that caught my eye at first, but looking through the list again there are some other really great titles! You should have no problem spending your points between now and July, because there’s both quantity and quality included.
Nintendo really outdid themselves with this final lineup of Club Nintendo content. It makes me wish Club Nintendo was like this all the time: a few dozen games to choose from each month, instead of just six, which were starting to be repeats.
While I’m sad to see Club Nintendo leave (I actually kind of did enjoy doing those silly surveys), I am hoping for bigger and way better things with the next program Nintendo will roll out. I hope to hear some details about it soon since the old program is now terminal. I’m pulling for more physical rewards, but I bet Nintendo will go with a money-incentive based program, meaning if you spend so much/register so much, you’ll get kicked back some spending cash on the eShop. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but not my cup of tea.
So don’t forget to spend those points! Pick up something nice for yourself and wait for the next (hopefully) great thing to come out later this year!
Laters,
Jsick
