Finally - Wii points for stars!
If you're one of the thousands of Club Nintendo members who have faithfully been collecting stars from your purchases of first party (that's Nintendo) games and hardware etc, then the recent news that you can now spend your stars on Wii points must thrill you. We were pretty excited about it because like at an election, Nintendo promised this at the start of the Wii's shelf life ... but for a long time, there had been nothing.
The deal is pretty simple. You join Club Nintendo at their web site and collect your stars there by filling in registration of items you've purchased (such as certain DS games). For many of us, we've been doing this for years. But if you haven't, you can still join now - it's not too late.
You can spend your stars on Wii points, and Nintendo tell us how to in this part of their 'FAQ':
'The Wii Points Card Shop is the place where Club Nintendo members can swap Stars for Wii Points Cards. These cards contain a code that you can enter in the Wii Shop Channel on your Wii. This will add Wii Points to your Wii Shop Channel account, which you can spend on such items as games for Virtual Console or Wii Software.
In order to make use of the Wii Points Card Shop you need to link your Club Nintendo account to your Wii Shop Channel account.' --- http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/news/2007/swap_your_stars_for_wii_points_6535.html
Sounds like a lot of terms all using the same words, doesn't it? Well, they could have used better terms. Essentially though, it's really simple. Stars become points when you use a shop. There have been cases of the Wii Shop 'selling out' of certain cards and people having to wait for their points to come through ... but we understand that these cases are scattered and that the service is basically working. However, if you are planning to use it, we'd advise that you don't plan your evening around a stack of VC titles until you've checked that the points cards you're buying are going to become yours.
http://wiipointscard.nintendo.co.uk/ <-- This is where you should go to do the dirty deed, log in and spend those stars you avoided spending years ago on a Kirby wallpaper (yay...)
In short, there was never any sense in spending stars before. Almost everything on offer was either tat or very expensive and out of the range of almost every star collecter. Sorry guys, but that's the truth of it. Wallpapers? You can make better ones with Photoshop. Come on. Now, you can buy games and play them on your Wii. The value difference is astounding, and we're jolly glad that we saved our stars!
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