This is, necessarily, your final reminder: today is the last day of the "year" for Club Nintendo Gold or Platinum status in North America, which means that today is the last day for you to enter points toward whatever the exclusive free gift is going to be. We don't dare hope for the kind of awesomeness seen in Japan's Platinum rewards, but we want free things.

If you aren't yet at 300 coins (for Gold) or 600 coins (for Platinum), and you've got more games to register, get to it right now! If you've been thinking of picking up Punch-Out!! or something this week, you should probably do it today! Conversely, if you're at 600 now and you have more stuff to register, wait until tomorrow so it counts toward next year's total!

If you're not sure about the eligibility of an older (pre-Club Nintendo) game and don't want to waste time registering it, consult the list of eligible games in the "Product Registration" area of the Club Nintendo FAQ.

It seems that the door is beginning to creak open for alternate-color Wii systems and accessories. First, Nintendo finally announces a Wii in a new color scheme (black), and now, less than two weeks later, the company has announced another color for the Wiimote and Nunchuk -- and the first new color for the MotionPlus. However, this is going to be a little harder to come by.

From June 25 to August 31, Nintendo will give away exclusive light blue Wiimotes, MotionPlus attachments and Nunchuks (and a matching jacket, of course) to five thousand Japanese Club Nintendo members who register copies of Wii Sports Resort. Not that Nintendo needed to offer any kind of incentive to sell Wii Sports Resort.

[Via GoNintendo]

Club Nintendo in the UK is offering members something beyond the usual trade-for-points bonuses. The first hundred registered Club Nintendo members to purchase a copy of Icarian: Kindred Spirits on WiiWare will receive a copy of the game's soundtrack. The lucky hundred will receive (hopefully a link to) the soundtrack file via email shortly after downloading the game.

We appreciate seeing Nintendo promote its downloadable games for once, but here's a word of advice to the company who "reads the blogs," according to its E3 keynote. One of the best ways to advertise your WiiWare and Virtual Console games is to actually tell people in advance when they'll be available.

[Via Nintendo Life]

Attention Club Nintendo members: on June 30 your membership status will be reset. According to an email being distributed by Nintendo, via Aeropause, users attempting to claw their way to Gold elite and Platinum member status for Nintendo's buyer program will have their efforts reset at the end of next month.

Here's the skinny: Coins (points obtained by registering games/hardware, taking surveys and buying WiiWare and DSiWare titles) are only valid toward a user's Club Nintendo status within the year they are purchased. The Club Nintendo year runs from July 1 until June 30. Users will not lose any coins they've collected (although they can expire), but will have their membership status reset when the year is over.

In order to achieve Gold or Platinum status again, users must collect the necessary amount of coins within the year. Gold membership status begins at 300 coins, Platinum begins at 600 -- as a reference point, the DSi nets users 150 coins. Club Nintendo Gold and Platinum members are awarded special bonuses by Nintendo, in the form of a unique gift at the end of the calendar year. Like Aeropause, we recommend you hold off on any activity that may net you coins ... for the sake of your Club Nintendo street cred.

This week, a reader question about Club Nintendo reminded me of the rewards currently available, including the marginally useful, but so pretty Mario Nintendo DS Game Rack. I want one of these, but what would I do with it? Choose eight games to display? I might just get one and use it as a display piece with nothing in it. It can display itself.

If you have a question about Mario hat-shaped things or anything else Nintendo related, send it to us by email at asknintendo AT joystiq DOT com.

Are you a Club Nintendo Platinum member? The most dedicated Nintendo fans have registered their numerous Nintendo games and have earned VIP status. These faithful are getting rewarded yet again in an "exclusive" event meant specifically for Club Nintendo members. Platinum members that live near a event locations will gain entry to a special DSi event where fans can preview the upcoming system weeks ahead of its US release.

The DSi isn't a revolutionary upgrade from the previous DS Lite, but we're glad to see Nintendo rewarding its fans in new and unique ways. We hope this event is but the first of a long line of events planned for Club Nintendo elite.

Club Nintendo has finally launched in Australia, offering a sort of hybrid version of the older European Stars Catalogue and the US/Japan Club Nintendo models. Like the new US Club, the Australian site offers exclusive goods in exchange for points earned by purchasing games; however, the store uses the same "Stars Catalogue" nomenclature used for Europe's mostly-virtual offerings.

The new Catalogue currently has but five items available, but that list of five includes the Game & Watch Collection (as found on the OFLC!) and one sort-of-awesome item we don't have in the US: these Mario face towels. They just cost 1300 Stars, 250 of which you can get for signing up!
[Via IGN]

A rating for the DS Game & Watch Collection has popped up on the Australian OFLC ratings board, along with a bunch of other stuff, including Boom Blox Bash Party (under the bafflingly different title Boom Blox Smash Party). The collection, featuring Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Green House, has been used as a Club Nintendo reward in Japan and North America. News about Australia's Club Nintendo rewards program was expected last week, so this confluence of events suggests that this is to be handed out as a reward for Aussie gamers soon.

That is, whenever Nintendo of Australia gets around to setting up the Club Nintendo program.

[Via GoNintendo]

The North American Club Nintendo rewards shop has updated with a new item! You're no longer limited to the choice between one DS game you can't afford and a variety of card cases -- now Nintendo has a card case you can't afford.

For 700 hard-earned Coins, you can get a Club Nintendo-exclusive silver DS card case, designed to hold 6 game cards (it would take 23 DS game purchases to acquire 700 Coins). The case comes with an aluminum stylus, which is at least a little awesome.

By the way, if you haven't signed in for a while, check it out -- we had a bunch of new Post-Play Surveys waiting for us, in some cases for games we bought years ago.

[Via GoNintendo]

According to market research bods at GfK, the number of Wii owners in Australia just reached the big one-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, 111 weeks after the platform's launch.

That's a new record for fastest-selling hardware in Oz -- previously, the DS shifted a million units over its opening 152 weeks. The handheld was never going to compete with its bigger brother, however: the sale of 685,000 Wiis during 2008 made sure of that.

Oh, and hey, while we're at Nintendo of Australia's site, let's check out the progress on the local Club Nintendo! Oh, look at that: it's still not functional. Color us not amazed in the slightest.

[Via PALGN]

Club Nintendo, the long-awaited rewards site, opened to North American gamers on December 15, and has been in a perpetual state of kinda working since then -- some people couldn't log in, some couldn't access surveys, and the site has oscillated between being on- and offline. That is, until Christmas, when ... the site went down for maintenance.

Good news for those of you anxious to register codes from all the games you got over the holidays: the site is back. Not better, but back to its unreliable pre-Christmas state, which means that you can enter codes and earn Coins, but you may have to hit F5 a few times to wake the site back up. Alas, we didn't all get bonus Coins for the inconvenience, thus dashing our hopes of earning the hanafuda cards.

So it's happened -- Club Nintendo has finally made it to North America. Sure, the website has been a bit shaky on its newborn legs, but the important thing is: it's free stuff. Some of the prizes are unexpectedly awesome as well, hailing as they do from the Japanese program. Browse most forums and it's clear that Game & Watch Collection is a favorite, but we're also loving those classy DS Card and Stylus cases.

What's your favorite freebie on the service (full range here), and have you ordered anything yet? Have any of you found a reason to grumble about Nintendo giving away gifts?

Now that we actually have our own Club Nintendo, which features only rewards that have already been released in Japan, we have even more interest in Nintendo of Japan's version. We feel like pretty much anything from the Japanese Club Nintendo catalog could become available to us at some future date.

But maybe not the latest prize. The newest promotion offered by the club allows Wii owners to trade in 150 of their Club Nintendo Points for a set of thirty custom Mii business cards from the Digicam Print Channel. We have our doubts about ever seeing the Digicam Print Channel here (although we welcome surprises, Nintendo), so we aren't saving our points for these cards. However, this is significant in that it involves the exchange of Club Nintendo points for content from a Wii Channel.

We imagine some of our Australian readers read yesterday's news concerning Club Nintendo in North America with a burning sense of injustice. That's kind of understandable. The Aussie Club Nintendo was announced back in April, half a year before the North American version, yet has still to launch. Sucks to be Australia.

But not for much longer, maybe. Aussie-Nintendo was scoring free drinks at The Nintendo Experience launch party in Melbourne last night when it was informed by Nintendo representatives that Club Nintendo will launch in Oz at some point close to Christmas or New Year. According to the reps, the Australian program has been developed alongside the North American service, and a website redesign had caused the ridiculous delay of eight months. Memo to Nintendo Australia: time to get some faster code monkeys.

So, with Club Nintendo launching last night, we've had a few hours to digest all of the wonderful items Nintendo had up for grabs. Initially, we were overloaded with need for a great deal of these items. Now, our fascination has been focused and refined onto a few items. How about you all?

What did you think looked the best over there? We all want the Game & Watch Collection, but you have to admit those DS Lite cases are pretty nice. What do you think looks best over at Club Nintendo?