Nintendo Rulez ... on Life Without Toast

[This post contains extensive details regarding an error on the Nintendo-Europe Website, Star Points, Wii Points, Nintendo of Europe being asshats, Nintendo being brilliant, and other videogame malarky. If you have no interest in Nintendo, you may want to leave now. If you want to continue, great! This was quite fun.]

Since there has been an internet, and a Nintendo Of Europe, there has been a Nintendo-Europe.com. For years and years, you have been able to redeem "Stars" contained in Official Nintendo© products (500-1000 in consoles, 250 in games) on the website. These have in the past been redeemable for such craptacular goodness as wallpapers, ringtones, iron-on t-thirt transfers (!), etc. Sometimes, there has been limited quantities of Good Stuff available, such as games, etc (usually for about 5000 points, or about ?2,000+ worth of Nintendo products purchased). Mostly, the "Stars Catalogue" has been ridiculed by Nintendo "Fanboys" for being utterly shit, which or the most part, it has been.

I got my Wii in December. When the Wii came out, information surfaced stating the if you "linked" your Wii account and your Nintendo-Europe account, Wii points (used for purchasing classic games from the likes of Nintendo, Sega, Hudsonsoft, etc, for download-and-play action on your Wii) would be available for exchange for Stars in the Stars Catalogue, sometime "in the future". I thought this was great news, and promptly rummaged for every Nintendo product I had, and it's associated Stars contained therein, and registered them all. I ended up with about 5,200 points.

And then I waited, all the while checking the Stars Catalogue and Wii.com every week or so for any updates. And I waited.

And then I waited some more.

And then... There they were. A couple of Fridays ago (the 23rd of March, to be precise), I logged on to the NE website and there was "WiiPoints" available for 789 points (a weird amount, but I'll get to that). "Only 1,542 left!".

And then... I got a 404 error when I clicked the "buy" button. Hmmm, I thought. And then I looked at my "Items Purchased" page, and this is what I saw:

Blank. Apparently, I had acquired "--". And then I looked back at the Catalogue page, and lo, the "Wiipoints" were gone.

So I mailed Nintendo, and waited. And waited.

A few days later, I got a reply.

Last Friday we have been running internal tests in the Stars Catalogue on our website. Unfortunately, because of a mistake during the testing phase, the Wii Points item accidentally appeared on the website between 4pm and 8pm.
We noticed that you have accessed the Stars Catalogue during this testing period, and that you spent 789 Stars on the item, without getting any Wii Points in return.

First of all, we want to apologise for any inconvenience caused.

This item is not available in the Stars Catalogue, and the price of 789 stars used during the testing period was entirely random.

However, we understand that this may have caused a disappointment. So, as we know how committed you are to Nintendo - and given the exceptional circumstances - we decided to electronically send you 1000 Wii points, if you'd like that. In case you do not want to get these Wii Points, we will of course reimburse the amount of Stars you spent.

Please allow us some time to properly prepare the opportunity for you to choose between Wii Points or Stars. You will receive a follow-up email from us soon, so please keep an eye on your inbox.

Thanks again for your understanding,

Best regards,
Your Nintendo team

Nintendo of Europe, muppets that they are, had put the experimental "future" product on the main site by mistake, instead of putting it on a local server and testing it there. The twunts. And this looked like a mail sent to multiple people, so it wasn't just me who did it. The servers probably melted from the hordes of rabid fanboys clicking "BUY" a bajillion times and refreshing their browser every nanosecond.

Anyhoo, then I waited. Today, I got this:

Yay!

So I went clicked that link (and started print-screening, just in case anyone cared).

So there you have it. Nintendo are actually brilliant, after all.

Comments

Em ... I knew that already!! haha!! What's a Wii point? Is that where is you are really good you earn points? (I am not that good, apart from at that game that me and Conor were playing before you called over yesterday where you can't die, but I can't remember the name of it!)

Posted by: babs | April 6, 2007 12:50 AM

A Wii Point is a "currency" for use in the Wii Shop Channel, where you can buy classic games from consoles past (3 Nintendo consoles, Sega MegaDrive and PC Engine/TurboGrafix-16), from Alien Crush to Zelda, and everything in between. One Wii point roughly equals 10 cents Euro, or (I think, they're more expensive in UK) about £0.07p. You can buy them in game shops, or on your Wii, with a credit card.

The "Stars" on the other hand, are when you're really good and buy loads of Official© Nintendo™ goods, and they give you rewards for them. Kinda like Esso, but without the petrol.

(I believe that game is called Metal Slug)

Posted by: Matt | April 6, 2007 1:26 AM

Yeah that'sit...Metal Slug, the blonde girl character is my favourite, only because you can see her on the screen more than the other two!

Posted by: babs | April 6, 2007 11:14 AM

Metal slug is awesome! I love that game. It's better with 2 players!

Posted by: Nintendo Wii | April 10, 2007 11:33 PM