By: John Vinson

So, I caught wind yesterday that the Club Nintendo service had finally launched for North America. I mentioned Club Nintendo in a ‘Top 5 Reasons For Wii Owners To Smile’ post earlier in the year. After my experience with Club Nintendo last night, I might list it as a reason to throw something breakable against the wall.

For those who aren’t sure of what Club Nintendo is, I’ll break it down for you. It’s a service in which Nintendo allows you register games onto a website, and will give you a survey about said game. The surveys are only 5 questions long, so it won’t take to long to complete them. The more games that you register the more coins you accrue. Once you’ve earned enough coins, you then are able to order some free Nintendo swag from Club Nintendo. The prizes range anywhere from Nintendo DS stylus kits, all the way up to a free video game.

To say that the site launched with a few problems is an understatement. My experience last night with Club Nintendo was full of slow load times. Bizarre instances that the site would log me out when I clicked on certain links. There were a couple of error messages when I tried to register some of my games.

I was able to get four of my 8 games registered, before going to bed. Which leaves me with 140 Coins at the moment. Unfortunately that’s not quite enough, as 300 Coins is the minimum prize for now.

So far the reward list is quite small, but that’s forgivable seeing as the site just launched this week. The prizes range in cost anywhere from 300 coins - 800 coins. The largest reward right now is the Game & Watch Collection for the Nintendo DS.

Here are a few of the rewards available…

Hanafuda Cards - 800 Coins

Wii Remote Holder - 300 Coins

Mario Party Playing Cards - 500 Coins

I logged on to Club Nintendo just before writing this article, and everything appears to be running a bit more smooth. I don’t have any games here to register, so not sure if that’s running better or not.

I highly recommend that you sign up for Club Nintendo. There’s really no reason not to sign up for something that’s only going to give you free stuff in the future. I’m saving my coins for now, until the reward catalog grows a bit.

Has anyone else signed up for Club Nintendo yet? Have you had any problems logging on, or have you been able to load it at all?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 9:19 am and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.