Another year, another round of Club Nintendo freebies for those who spent a shitload of money on Nintendo products in the past year. This year Nintendo has opted out of physical rewards entirely in favor of codes for downloadable games on the eShop. Honestly while I'd much rather have them do this, the selection of games this year is downright laughable in my opinion. Like, exclusive games for Platinum are stuff like Game and Wario, DKC Returns 3D, Dillon's Rolling Western, and Earthbound. Oh boy!

Not to mention the selection for Gold members is even worse. Thanks for spending $300 on Nintendo products! Here have some Zelda II! Ugh.

Okay, enough of my disappointment. So which games are you duders looking to choose? I'm going for DKC Returns 3D as I'd really like to be able to play Donkey Kong Country Returns without the stupid forced motion controls.

I only made it to Gold (got a 3DSXL this year and like 6 games). I don't have a WiiU and I don't want any of these games, these are all really bad.

I chose Wario Land 2 because it's the only one I haven't played.

I got platinum this year, I didn't aim for it, I just bought a lot of Nintendo stuff. Last year I felt a little burned that the platinum rewards were a poster set and a fuckin' soundtrack for Majora's Mask. I didn't think it could get any worse, but man, they really delivered. For buying MK8, a 60$ product, you got a selection of some pretty great games, I.E Pikmin 3. For spending 300+ dollars, the best thing you can get is DKC3DS, a portable remake of a game that came out for the fucking Wii. What the goddamn shit is that?

EU Club Nintendo members, like myself, don't even get these yearly platinum/gold rewards. And the best rewards that redeeming our points can get are rather poor - not to mention that the EU club Nintendo website is basically broken.

Looking at the list of reward though, spending over $300 on Nintendo goods and only getting a choice of 2 $30 games & 6 $15 or under games? Wow.

Previous years rewards where unique gifts right? That's sooo much better.

Ah, thanks for the heads up. Kind of a shame that they threw the Platinum rewards up at the top of the list even though I'm only gold. I was pretty pleased when I saw Game & Wario and Earthbound, either of which I would have been very happy to have, but it was then disappointing to see that they weren't even relevant to my reward tier. I guess I'll probably grab Ice Climber or Zelda II. Fairly underwhelming selection, but free stuff is free stuff. Enjoy your rewards, everybody.

I only got Gold(which is a bummer. I'd like to play DKCR) and I picked Super Mario Land 2 because that game is pretty great. But yeah, the rewards being all codes is a bit weird and disappointing.

Yeah, I really wonder if they're just phasing out physical rewards entirely, even for the regular Club Nintendo rewards. Since they started giving you the option to spend coins on downloadable titles instead of on t-shirts or poster sets, they've barely added any new physical rewards. Or like, they added the charging cradle for the 3DS XL, which sold out in like 2 days, then never restocked it. Ditto for the Luigi's Mansion statue, which sold out even quickly, and was never restocked.

Even the stuff you can spend coins on is bad now.

I just order 3DS card cases when they pop up at this point.

Man registering nintendo products is a once a year thing I do when I get reminded about it.

Thanks for the reminder!

@lumley said:

For clarification, you actually have to spend about $600 to have your choice of the 2 $30 games and the 6 $15 or under games. Spending $300 likely only gets you to Gold status, which only gives you your choice of a bunch of $15 or under games.

For North American Club Nintendo, most $60, Nintendo-published games give you 60 coins, though you can get 10-20 coins extra if you tell them beforehand that you intend to buy it (kind of like preorder data for Nintendo), and if you buy and register the game within the first 4 weeks of release (Nintendo wants feedback on the game sooner rather than later). All that being said, aside from those bonuses, the ratio of dollars to coins is roughly 1:1, assuming you're buying digital games/new retail games.

When you compare them side by side they look terribly unequal, but those two deals have two very different goals.

Club Nintendo is merely a tool for Nintendo to get voluntary, unpaid user feedback about their games and products. They lose a little bit of money shipping you physical rewards for nothing, but most of the physical rewards are very, very cheap to manufacture, and even being able to get one of the cheaper rewards means you must've already spent a few hundred dollars on Nintendo products, so they don't mind shipping you something that cost them like, a dollar or less to manufacture. Download codes are even better, in that there is no real cost to Nintendo to send you one.

The Mario Kart 8 offer was something else. It was very uncharacteristic of Nintendo. If I had to guess, I'd say that A) Nintendo really wanted Mario Kart 8 to be a system seller and wanted that game to get a bunch of people to buy Wii Us, but B) maybe early market data or whatever suggested that Mario Kart still wasn't going to entice enough new people to buy the system. So they threw in a download code for a bunch of games that I'm guessing weren't selling anyways (well, Wii Party U and Pikmin 3 definitely undersold; Wind Waker HD and New Super Mario Bros. U probably sold a little better, though they're bundling both of those games with the Wii U itself depending on which SKU you get, which is kinda redundant).

Also, Donkey Kong Country Returns is a totally legit game, though the framerate is better on the Wii version than on the 3DS version. Anyway, I see your point, in that aside from maybe Earthbound, every game they're offering is in the bottom-of-the-barrel, came-out-a-while-ago-and-did-poor-sales-numbers category. They're basically offering the cheapest, least desirable Wii U games possible (Game & Wario, NES Remix, and Dr. Luigi). I think the selection of 3DS games is a lot better, though they're also all pretty old games at this point. The Virtual Console stuff is hit or miss depending on how well you can still appreciate NES and Game Boy games. Not all of them age well, though Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is still baller as fuck.

Anyway, I'm kinda fine with this turn of events, because I'll get more use out of Earthbound (never played it, only recently got a Wii U and haven't bought any downloadable games for it yet) than I would out of another fucking set of buttons/pins, or a poster or soundtrack CD (though if they rereleased the Galaxy soundtrack, that would've been nice). I was actually thinking that even if they had offered physical rewards this year for Platinum-level users, I was going to pass on them and just take the Gold-level download code for a game, because at least I'll actually get hours of enjoyment out of that.

Oh god. I'm platinum, so it's a toss-up between Game & Wario and NES Remix. Wario is a higher priced game, but NES Remix looks really fun. TOO MUCH PRESSURE! HELP!