Club Nintendo Memories

​​A bit of a history lesson before I get into the main post here. Although Club Nintendo as a website only began here in the UK in 2002, way before that in the late 80's and early 90's there was a magazine called Club Nintendo which offered reviews and news of upcoming NES and Gameboy titles, the magazine was given out on a subscription only basis when customers filled in a survey that came with Nintendo's games and consoles at the time. Eventually being taken over by the other Nintendo magazine, Nintendo Magazine System (Which later became Official Nintendo Magazine, which sadly saw its final issue last year.) Heres a link to a really intresting interview with one of the creators of the original club nintendo.

Club Nintendo has been active here for the past 13 years, beginning life just before the start of the Gamecube era, nearly every Nintendo game since has included a Club Nintendo scratchcard in the box (previously called Nintendo VIP 24/7), using the code you could exchange it for stars which could be spent in the Stars Catalogue which was like an online shop on Nintendo's website. Over the years there's been many exclusive items available on here, some asking a ridiculous amount of stars of course, and fetching very high prices on eBay as a result...

Back when the store first opened it was rare you'd find anything worth buying on there, in fact I was stupid enough to spend 600 stars on a NBA Jam wallpaper... What a mistake that was! There were also digital rewards you could purchase such as mobile wallpapers and ringtones, eventually though some physical items made their way onto the store, and usually sold out pretty fast...

Here's some of my favorite items I've managed to collect over the years, and some I wish I'd got the chance to get.

• T-Shirt / Soundtracks (couldn't find some of them though...)

• Coins - I should have also got a set of Xenobade, Pandoras Tower and Last Story coins but they never turned up...

• SNES Classic Controller

• Keyrings

• Shoelaces (Can't find a pic of them, they got old and dirty and had to be thrown away sadly...)

• Zelda Promo Disc

• Plushies (and a Yoshi cleaning cloth!)

• Trophy! I actually won this from a Mario Kart competition! :)

• NBA Wallpapers...

oops..

• And to finish it off on a good note, the limited edition, Ambassador New 3DS, an exclusive for select members of club nintendo.

Things I wish I could have got but didn't have the stars...

• Gold Zelda Statue

• Gold Nunchuck (Think it might have been Japan and American Club Nintendo exclusive though)

• Gold Steering Wheel

See a trend there?

They've actually filled the store up recently with loads of cool things to spend your remaining stars on, unfortunately I've only got... 10 stars left, lucky I have a gf who very kindly ordered me the kirby soundtrack! <3

Thanks for reading, and here's hoping that Nintendo's replacement service will be even better!