Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Got Some My Nintendo Store Rewards

For the first time ever I ordered some (free) items from the My Nintendo Store: a Skyward Sword HD XL postcard set, a Dodo Airlines tote bag and a Nintendo Switch card case... So, what's up with all that?

The My Nintendo Store can be used as a good representation for how Nintendo fares today in terms of user friendliness, where at least the one for Europe / Germany leaves a lot to be desired. You can get some free items, like all of the above, similar to the good old Club Nintendo days with its amazing rewards. However, you still have to pay for shipping and they only accept Master Card or Visa.

Depending on where you're from, this might not strike you as an issue, but at least in Germany it's quite uncommon to actually own and use a credit card. We pay with EC cards (or just cash) and we love our PayPal for online shopping, or bank transfer, but not credit cards, which are still widely regarded as unsafe, even though that has changed quite a bit. Luckily, my bank has upgraded my EC card to a Master Card debit card, so now I could finally shop at the My Nintendo Store without getting an actual credit card and the extra costs that come with one.

However, the bright side is that all these items were still available. If we were able to easily purchase them with a variety of payment methods, then they would probably be sold out within hours, even though you can only get one of these per customer. Nintendo could make some good money here if they simply sold these things normally, but I suppose they either don't want to or they simply couldn't meet the demand.

And of course the problems don't stop there. If you want to purchase multiple of the free My Nintendo reward items, then you can't, because you can only redeem one My Nintendo code at a time. So, for three free items you have spent the full shipping costs for each single item and Nintendo will send them to you in three separate packages all at once. That's 2021 Nintendo economics for you.

Well, I also needed a replacement for my Wii U GamePad charger cable, so at least I could order this with one of the free items. I also want to purchase the Super Nintendo controller for Nintendo Switch, but it wasn't available right now, where I will do this later, maybe with one of the other Legend of Zelda thingies I haven't gotten yet.

You might be wondering about that, where I've only got the Skyward Sword postcards right now. And even those were basically just a test order, where I wanted to make sure that everything works with my new Master Card. The My Nintendo codes only last for 48 hours and you can only get one, so if something had gone wrong, then it wouldn't have been the biggest loss.

Still, these postcards are actually very nice. They are quite big and of high quality. I doubt that anyone would ever really use them as postcards, especially since you only get the one pack, but they are some perfect small art pieces to be framed and used as decoration.

The Dodo Airlines bag is for an inside joke that I have with someone, where this is just perfect. I've only recently got into Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but there is a reason why my island is called "Dodolint" and why I also had to get this bag. Sadly, it's slightly damaged on the logo, but I suppose that's what you can expect from something free these days.

Moving on to the main attraction and the actual reason why I finally got into this whole My Nintendo Store thing: the "Nintendo Switch Card Case 8". If you're dumbfounded by this, then I won't blame you and I know that there are many third party accessories like this available. But I wanted a card case that has the same shape and look as the normal Nintendo Switch game cases, where to my knowledge this is the only one.

This case fits perfectly into your normal Nintendo Switch collection, while being highly practical for swapping between games that you keep playing more regularly, like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I keep my Nintendo Switch boxes right next to my Nintendo Switch, so switching games was already quick and easy enough, but it's still somewhat inconvenient if you want to keep the cartridges in the right cases all the time, because you always have to take out two of them. Can't have that Skyward Sword HD inside my Super Smash Bros. Ultimate case, even if it's just temporary.

But with this baby you can keep all the games that you might play currently much more organized and accessible. And since this is made by Nintendo, it has the same regular card slots inside, only eight of them at once. To my experience, the third party stuff tends to be much tighter, which makes removing the cards harder, potentially even damaging them. And I don't want that.

It also comes with two changeable covers, where both the inside and outside is different. Ideally, they would have send you two boxes as well, but it's not like I'm ever playing more than eight games at once. And the games I don't play can go back into their normal boxes for the time being.

But I'm really happy with this item overall. It was a must-have for my Nintendo Switch collection and the reason why I initiated this haul.

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