Important Importables: Club Nintendo

A wonderful program exists outside of North America for people who purchase Nintendo products – Club Nintendo. Club Nintendo is a special program to reward people who purchase games for Nintendo systems.

In regions that have Club Nintendo programs set up (Japan, Europe, South Africa and Australia), games for Nintendo systems come with either a small slip of paper or a card with a numerical code on there. If you register that code with the program, you’ll receive points, known as stars. You can then trade those in for items.

Sadly, this program is not offered in North America, and there are no plans to start a program like it here. To make matters worse, you can’t redeem points from import games. So if you’ve imported DS games and have a stack of slips (ahem) collected, you can’t redeem them. Only people who live in that region can participate in that Club Nintendo program.

Since the Club Nintendo premiums are often incredibly cool and collectible, it is still nice to dream about them. Besides, if you look sharp on eBay, or visit online stores, you may still be able to purchase some of the Club Nintendo items…