Club Nintendo is live!  Well, sorta.  For many years, Nintendo fans in North America have watched with envy as people in Japan and Europe enjoyed the benefits of Nintendo’s loyalty program.  Registering purchased hardware and software earns you points (“coins”) which you trade in for items.  Nintendo resisted starting up Club Nintendo in North America due to cost, but finally relented to demand and announced in October that it would be coming before the end of the year.  It’s buggy, but it’s here!

Just go to club.nintendo.com to sign up.  I was able to transfer my previous nintendo.com login to Club Nintendo, and I’ve been able to take a few surveys and earn a few coins, but it sends you back to the login screen frequently as well.  Rewards include the lusted after Game & Watch Collection DS game, playing cards, DS and game card cases, game racks… about 11 things to choose from that cost between 300 and 800 coins each.  You get 50 coins for taking surveys about Wii games, 30 for DS games, and 10 for WiiShop Channels/games.  You get an additional 10 points for then registering the game you took the survey on.

I’m sure site stability will improve over the next few days.  Register now!  If you link your old Nintendo account, it should pull over surveys for previously registered games (although it could take hours right now as the site is slammed).  Then get out all your registration codes and start putting them in.  That should get you some points and more surveys.  Lastly, don’t forget to link your WiiShop account to your Club Nintendo account.  You have to do that on the Wii in order for the games you purchased there to show up in Club Nintendo.  Good luck.