In case you missed it, we now have Club Nintendo in North America, after years of seeing Japan and Europe get free exclusive shit via points you get inside Nintendo games.

I suppose it's come too late for them to offer those neat Mario, Luigi, etc. GameCube controllers, but maybe we can get that Wii SNES classic controller or Tingle Balloon Fight DS game.

You get coins from buying Nintendo-published games, more for completing surveys after you buy games, and more by signing up your intent to buy them and then taking a survey after you do. At the moment, I have exactly zero coins. :( They don't even have any games yet that you can intend to buy.

You get Gold or Platinum status by earning a certain number of coins in one club year (July 1 to June 30), which earns you a "special reward".

This would be awesome if Nintendo had anything good on their release calendar for like...the next entire year. We've already got Metroid, Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, Smash Bros. and Animal Crossing. I think that means they're done with the Wii.

And..jesus, how long has it been since there was a decent Nintendo-published game on the DS? Seems like forever. How long was it since there was ANY good game on the DS that wasn't an RPG remake or a Castlevania game? This kind of thinking makes me sad. :(

I was just happy that we finally got it, but yeah, it's not looking like I'll be getting too many eligible games.

I was going to quote this part the first time around and say it's Nintendo policy to never have any games you'd intend to buy, but then i forgot. So i guess i'll do it now.

Seriously though, i was looking at the game aisle in Target tonight and it's awful. Pretty much 95% of the DS library at this point is the Petz/Babyz/Horzez line and $20 ports of free internet flash games. And nobody outside of Best Buy even carries any of the good games because nobody knows any better. So everyone's just choking on terrible crap.

Aside: A work friend of my wife's bought each of her kids a DS this year for Christmas and my wife had to go shopping with her just to lead her through the terrible minefield of a game library. Because you know what happened at GameStop? This poor woman who is just learning about games asks an employee what would be a good racing game for her 8 year old on the DS. And did they recommend Mario Kart DS? Nope. Even Diddy Kong Racing? Nope. They tried to sell her an M&M's cart racing game. Told her it was awesome. SERIOUSLY.

Remember the Nintendo Seal of Quality? :(

The Nintendo Seal of Quality used to be attached to some real terrible crap. The ratios were just better back then.

Yeah, i just think it's funny that they're now the only console manufacturer that has ZERO approval process or quality control for games released on their systems. Back then you could at least be reasonably assured that you were buying a finished and playable game.

I forgot to mention the funniest game i've probably ever seen for the DS. "My Stop Smoking Coach". Awesome.

Yeah, I got a kick out of that the first time I saw it. I need to snatch it up some time if it ever gets cheap.

OMGZORZ!

YES!!!!

SUGEE!!! ^_^

I WANT TO SMEX IT!

And I know it's an RPG remake, but... THEY'RE FUCKING REMAKING YS AGAIN OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD FANGASM!!!!!

By the way, Space Invaders Extreme got dropped to $10 ($8 used) at GameStop if you can find it in stock. I want it to use with my super awesome straight from Japan OMG paddle controller, but it's out of stock online and the closest GameStop that has it is in a town I never seem to go to.

These may not be terrible games, but they ARE all remakes of old games. Well, Metal Slug might be a sequel i guess, but essentially every Metal Slug since 2 has been a remake. Fun games, but they're all the same game.

To be fair, are there ANY original games ANYWHERE anymore?

Well if you want to get all technical about it, yeah, most things have been done. But what i'm saying is that those are all direct rereleases or remakes of pre-existing games. They're not similar in a Street Fighter:King of Fighters way, they're similar in a Kirby Super Star:Kirby Super Star kind of way.

Although one of my most-awaited DS games IS a sequel...wish they'd hurry up on the next Professor Layton already. :(

Ninjatown is pretty awesome on the DS. :( /two cents

Yeah, Ninjatown is on the short list of DS games i wanna buy. Probably the only non-remake on said list, aside from the new Castlevania game.

might wanna give this a gander