@bollard: lol it tells me i once upon of time had 2790 points, but for some reason I have a balance of 0. Man I could have bought a shit tonne of ringtones :(

@ichthy: Sure, send me a PM with it, if you really don't need it. :D Thanks!

I am going to get Paper Mario (the N64 one since I wanted to actually finish that game) and Yoshi's Island because fuck Jeff (actually because I've never played it).

Yeah, the N64 one is pretty good. It's a good basis for what eventually became the Gamecube one. My biggest complaint is that the story is a really standard "Bowser kidnaps the princess, Bowser is primary antagonist" setup. I feel like it's almost a mandate of any game bearing the Super Mario RPG/Paper Mario/Mario & Lugi name that they have to include some new villain that is either the central villain of the game or at least teams up with Bowser.

This is one of the many reasons I refuse to buy Paper Mario: Sticker Star, because seriously fuck that game for basically having no story or memorable areas, no party members, and just a regular old Bowser-causing-a-ruckus plot (from what I've heard). If I wanted a game that makes absolutely no twists on the Mario universe, I'd play any of the Mario platformers. I expect something a little different from Mario RPGs.

Yeah it's been a while since I played it. Rented it once upon a time and fell in love with it. But I only ever got about half way through the game I believe. I really liked Thousand Year Door but it just didn't grab me in the same way. Never played the Wii one. Sticker Star was okay I thought. It was strange in that it seemed like it was really designed more as an adventure game. Certain stickers would have specific effects on bosses and some were incredibly difficult without them. I kinda thought it was a neat mechanic but it would get really frustrating sometimes when you're just in a battle and not doing any damage because you were supposed to bring in sticker X. There was basically no story though and your only partner is the dumb star thing.

Site has been down for me for a few days now, this is ridiculous

@alexw00d: SO MANY RINGTONES

@rafaelfc: If you login later at night the site load seems to be much lower and it lets you login just fine. But yeah, the sudden addition of a bunch of uses for coins has seemingly brought everybody out of the woodwork.

Yeah I went on occasionally late last night (and in the technical early hours of the morning) and it was much smoother, though I did notice if you're idle for a minute or two it signs you out. Not sure if that's a move by Nintendo to keep traffic down or if the site is just too borked.

Still not sure what I'm going to pick. I thought about getting the Majora's Mask puzzle just on the chance it might become rare and fetch a decent price in a couple years, but I'm kind of impatient and I don't think it'll fetch more than $20 or so.

As for anyone that's stumped on what they should pick, I HIGHLY recommend 3D Land. Potentially my favorite 3D Mario game ever, and the only 3DS game I've played where I felt the 3D was very well implemented to the gameplay. Star Fox 64 3D is also great, along with almost any of the SNES games.

Just whatever you fucking do, DON'T pick Urban Champion. Seriously. Don't.

@turtlebird95: I generally recall that North American Club Nintendo has always signed you out of your account if you're idle for like, 3 minutes. It seems like their webhost must be fucking awful because the Club Nintendo site can't handle ANY traffic. You'd then that when it's a website for one of the biggest video game publishers in the world, running a more-or-less one of a kind rewards program as far as game publishers go, they'd be more prepared to handle the (predictably enthusiastic) response.

Speaking of the Majora's Mask puzzle, I think it's interesting that Nintendo of America has seemingly gotten enough comments about it in surveys that they realize there are ZILLIONS of Zelda fans who think that Fierce Deity Link is the coolest thing ever. I feel like these are probably the same people that would've really liked Spawn and/or Dragon Ball Z in the 90s. By which I mean I think Zelda fans project a LOT onto Fierce Deity Link based on expectations of badassery from other fiction, and Nintendo is never going to deliver on those expectations. He's just the Adult Link model crammed into Majora's Mask and they changed the textures a bunch and gave him a weird name. That's it. It's a cool character design, but I guarantee Nintendo never gave it much thought, it's not meant to have much greater meaning in the Zelda mythology, and they'll probably never use the character again.

Not trying to go off on you, but Fierce Deity Link just reminds me of all the people that take Zelda too seriously and think that the Zelda storyline/chronology means anything or is going anywhere at all.

@bisonhero: I like the character, but I agree. I remember seeing people lose their minds when he wasn't a playable character in Hyrule Warriors, and again when he was announced as just a temporary transformation in a DLC pack.

Speaking of the Zelda storyline, I think the funniest part about that is when fans create plausible conspiracies that sound awesome and clever, but you know there's not a chance in hell Nintendo had that in mind. I honestly think that series story should be straight up rebooted at this point.

I'm going to get Mario Party 2.

@turtlebird95: It seems like Nintendo is hellbent on being a family friendly company that makes games anyone can enjoy. But sooo many fans seem to think Nintendo is on the verge of turning Zelda into shounen anime, but guess what you guys? NEVER HAPPENING.

Or at least, it'll never happen with the core franchises that Nintendo maintains direct control of. Apparently anything goes with Star Fox and Metroid because Nintendo doesn't know what the fuck to do with those series so they're letting other devs work on them. Which it turns out works pretty well when you turn it over to Retro Studios and have them write some OK lore and game scenarios in the Metroid Prime games, but kinda bad when you give Yoshio Sakamoto too long of a leash to tell his weirdo Samus story (maybe Team Ninja has nothing to do with how weird the script of that game turned out to be).

Nintendo has an interesting scenario with Zelda, in that judging by just about every scrap of Western fanfiction or fanart I've ever seen of Zelda, the fans all want it to be this sweeping fantasy epic on the level of the Lord of the Rings (and also they want Link and Zelda to be obvious love interests in every game), but mannnnn does Nintendo management not have any intention of appeasing that fanbase. I mean, I think if Nintendo tried that it could turn out as bad as Metroid: Other M, but on the other hand, I'm all for Nintendo changing LITERALLY ANYTHING in the Zelda series. Those games still feel like I'm playing Ocarina of Time just in an engine with better shaders and lighting, but man, that Kyoto caution just means all change is glacial in flagship Nintendo products.

The Zelda series is interesting when it has to reinvent itself for technical reasons (the SNES allowed them to make a much more complex game, the N64 required them to transpose the Zelda concept into a 3D world), then it briefly got interesting on the Gamecube because in an inexplicable move Nintendo actually took a risk and did a cool redesign of the world, but it seems like the fan reaction to Wind Waker has permanently made Nintendo skittish about Zelda so they've been playing it pretty safe with Zelda for a long time.

People are already listing the Majora's Mask Messenger bag on eBay for $100. Fucking people, man. I swear.

Edit: And now I just came across some dude trying to sell the puzzle for almost $600. Fuck this race.

@bisonhero: Cool. I'm 145 coins away from Platinum, but I don't think I'll bother trying to get there. The only worthwhile Platinum reward was in 2010.

Too bad I missed that. I didn't even get a Wii until 2011.

I ended up getting the Animal Crossing playing cards for my niece.

lol I just want to do some surveys for coins and it kicked me out as I tried to submit it. This is silly.

Well, I guess I successfully ordered the Fierce Deity puzzle. No idea if it'll be worth anything, but I know enough Zelda fans to where it could be a cheap ass Christmas/Birthday gift or something.

I guess I also never got around to redeeming my Omega Ruby code, so I can redeem that and maybe get Earthbound and finally sit through that whole game. (Not now obviously, gonna wait a few days and see if things calm down)

I've got 1400 coins to blow all on virtual console games weeeeeeeeeee!

Also Harmoknight looks real dope so I'll get that.

I got Kid Icarus Uprising. I haven't heard great things about its control scheme but hopefully it's a fun game despite that.

Nothing new in the eu stores yet, hope there'll be some good stuff, I got like 8000 stars to spent or something.....dont know how much coins that would be.

How much coins did you get per game in the us?

I'm still quite cross about how Europe is getting shafted. We get ringtones and wallpapers, while the US is getting about a hundred good games. Baffling

@lestephan said:

Coins are just about 1:1 with USD kind of? A Wii or Wii U game (they've since lowered many Wii games because they're not full retail price in stores anymore) that normally costs like $50 or $60 USD gets you 50 coins when you register, then 10 more coins if you do the "post-play" survey a week later giving your final thoughts on the game. For a DS or 3DS game (again, I think DS coin values may be lower now because DS games are all on clearance/not being sold anymore), I think you usually get 30 coins when you register, 10 more coins when you do the post-play survey.

However, if you register a marquee Nintendo-developer or Nintendo-promoted game within 4 weeks of its release, you get a bonus 10 coins on top of the other stuff (early adopter bonus?). Also, if you do a "intend to buy" survey before a game's release, IF you follow through and actually buy and register the game later, the intend to buy survey is worth an additional 10 coins (preorder bonus I guess, Nintendo basically wants preorder data, and wants to know how people got interested in games). So one Wii U game is potentially 80 coins, if it's a big release and you do all the bonus shit.

eShop games are weird, in that a lot of them are 5 coins when you register, 10 when you do the post-play survey, even for games that cost less than $15. I think the amount you get when you register varies somewhat depending on the price of the game, but the minimum was 5 and 10, I think.

Anyway, all of the physical rewards have been junk for its entirety, especially when a lot of them required like 300-800 coins. The download codes for games are nice, but even the 200 coin games mean you probably had to spend something close to $200 to get those 200 coins (unless your coins are primarily from games where you got the early adopter/preorder coins, or you bought a bunch of $5 eShop games).

It's a weird system. I still think the games are a better value than trading in 600 coins to get an Animal Crossing deck of playing cards.

I would normally agree, but I unfortunately (fortunately) either already own the games I would have picked up, like Earthbound, or have no interest in getting. I'd rather pick up something that would make my niece happy than three 200-coin games for the 3DS that I played years ago, and would simply sit on a memory card after being played once for about 10 minutes.