Club Nintendo Exclusive Game Guide

Club Nintendo is Nintendo’s official loyalty program that offers incentives for voluntarily registering your games and reporting on how many games you buy, what you buy, and what you think of your purchases. The rewards for selling your information varies from a downloadable screensaver to an extremely limited edition Nintendo 3DS depending on just how much of your consumer information you are willing to part with and how much you buy. Filling out the registration forms are tedious and I often find myself rapidly clicking and smashing buttons to just get through the prying questions just to get at the coins in the end. You can then take these coins to the “Rewards Shop” and redeem them.

Club Nintendo is notorious in North America because it was only first introduced on October 2, 2008. This came a staggering six years after Nintendo’s first loyalty program launched in Europe, Nintendo VIP 24/7. Nintendo executives claimed that this delayed launch was due to the logistics of trying to launch such a huge program over a vast region. Eventually they did launch the program.

There is a reason why I spend hours registering my games with this program, the freebies are pretty amazing. Like I stated earlier, the Club Nintendo reward freebies range from a screensaver to an awesome 3DS. I tend to save my points and buy the expensive things that are released in limited quantities. This article is a guide to the games that have been released exclusively through the rewards system. They are naturally hard to come by because they are “mail-in” rewards and you have to register a lot of your games with Club Nintendo to even come close to obtaining them.

Not many games have been released but the ones that have been have not gotten a lot of press or notice. This means that the market hasn’t caught on and prices aren’t that high. I think it is safe to say thanks to their exclusive nature that they will hold their value well. Heck, even if you sell them for a penny, you still made a profit since you did not pay anything for them, just reward points.

Game & Watch Collection

This release was a compilation of original Game & Watch games Donkey Kong, Oil Panic, and Green House on the Nintendo DS. Nothing was changed and this isn’t a hard title to come by.
New: $20
Used: $15

Game & Watch Collection 2

A 2010 title that rereleases the classic Game & Watch titles Parachute and Octopus. What is interesting is there is a third game on this cartridge, Parachute x Octopus. This game combines the two previous titles in an amusing crossover. It is less common then the first Collection title but is still easy to find.
New: $30
Used: $22

Tingle’s Balloon Fight

The first two games on this list are available from Club Nintendo of North America, Japan, Australia, and Europe but this one is a Japanese Club Nintendo Exclusive. This game is fun, it is just a revamp of the original NES game, Balloon Fight, but with updated graphics and replaces the Balloon Fighter with Tingle from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. I am not sure who decided to create this game but it is an interesting piece of Japanese gaming memorabilia.
New: $50
Used: $25

Ball

This handheld is an interesting exclusive. Club Nintendo of Japan and North America actually gives away reproductions of the very first Game & Watch handheld system for 1200 “coins”, the rewards system’s currency. You have to register about 24 new Wii titles to even accumulate that many coins. Remarkably, this game resells for cheap on eBay, at least the used copies.
New: $50
Used: $15

Zekkyō Senshi Sakeburein (Exclamation Warriors Sakeburein)

This is one of the most interesting Nintendo titles to ever be released and it was released in a staggeringly limited capacity. It was only available in Japan for a short time, in a limited amount, only through Club Nintendo. The game is a 3 person multiplayer game where characters run around and beat up enemies by shouting at their DS microphones, making for a fun, loud adventure. Copies of it do show up on eBay a lot though, so try to pick up a few and play it with your friends.
New: $50
Used: $25

There have been other titles that have been released exclusively through Club Nintendo but they have been downloadable only. I would be hard-pressed to find data on the prices for these codes but if you do, please post a comment below.
Most of the games in this article are DS games. The DS is going by the wayside with the emergence of the 3DS meaning that many of these games will most likely no longer be available through Club Nintendo. These games will probably never get re-released. So get 'em while they are cheap!