Club Nintendo Elite Prize: EarthBound

Well the prizes were announced, and I have to say they were pretty disappointing. Like the Mario Kart 8 bonus, we were basically given the option to download a free game from the online shop. While there was a wider selection than in the previous case, most of the games were either cliche virtual console offers or otherwise uninteresting. Having achieved platinum status, I felt compelled to select an option not available to gold members, and we ended up settling with EarthBound.

We're very close to achieving gold status for next year, and it's quite likely we'll reach platinum, what with Smash Brothers and the establishment of an actual game library for the Wii U (also we may buy 3DSs), so hopefully next years prizes will be more exciting and/or appealing.

Platinum on Club Nintendo

Apparently there's this thing called club Nintendo that rewards you for making first party hardware and game purchases. Unless you're like Jburitto, if you haven't registered your stuff, there's a good chance you can get hold of some really interesting merchandise. After registering pretty much everything we own (excluding the Wii and a mounf of DS games), we came out with over 1000 Ninten-coins. Or maybe they just call them coins. I'll call them Ninten-coins. Well, I bout the Wii U port of "Kirby's Adventure" for 200 coins, because it's the qeuntessential Kirby game, it's pretty much the first game I ever played, and it's fun. Other than that though, they don't have any prizes we're particularly interested in. While pocketing the other 900 or so remaining Ninten-Coins, my eyes stumbled upon the rating system thing, and apparently we achieved "Platinum Status". I guess they'll be reviewing our status on July 1st, and we'll be recieving some sort of special Nintendo-related present. As I later discovered, it only takes around 600 coins to achieve platinum status (that's probably a lot steeper when you aren't sitting on 200 games and consoles you haven't registered), so we're saving the rest of our stuff for the following Ninten-year (each of these being from July 1st to Junr 30th of the following year). A warning to those who've registered their stuff but somehow are unaware: you only have two years to spend your coins before they expire. You can spend all you're coins and still achieve higher ranks (ranking system doesn't subtract from purchases), but everything has to be spent in a two year duration.

Anyway, when we find out what the prize is, we'll do an unboxing special (or the nearest equivalent) if it's physical, or a virtual review if it's a digital distribution. Most likely we'll have enough stuff to achieve Platinum for the next few years (especially because they'll finally be releasing Wii U games), so consider this an announcement for an anual show-casing special, where we'll pretentiously force our earnings in the faces of all foolish enough to enter the realm of this blog or click into any associated YouTube videos.

Anyway, I'll be back with updates. In the meantime, enjoy our meager stream of video content.