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Last month, Nintendo revealed that Club Nintendo, Japan and Europe's ace consumer rewards program, would launch in North America. Weeks of silence followed, but now Cammie Dunaway has started talking up the service. Here are five crucial facts she divulged to MTV Multiplayer:

• Club Nintendo in North America is still on schedule to launch before the end of 2008.
• It will be more like the Japanese program than the European, in that there will be more physical products than digital.
• As is the case in Europe, you gain points (known as gold coins in North America) by purchasing a product and entering a code on the Club Nintendo site, and can reap further points by completing surveys on the product you bought. In Europe, it's worth mentioning that these are hardly time-consuming: just five or six questions with tickboxes.
• Unlike in Europe, you can gain points for indicating an interest in purchasing before buying. Noice!
• Some items from the Japanese service will make it to North America (Yay! And also: please include this).

If you'll excuse us, we're now going to randomly hit our keyboard in a fit of wild, unabated excitement. YAKJFDAIWOQBHKJGFEDRYUVBEIUQ

[Update: A clarification: the service will be coming to North America as a whole! Apologies for the geographical confusion!]

Here's something: despite our initial skepticism, we actually really like the Wii Wheel -- in fact, it's all we use now for Mario Kart Wii. The only downside? At $10 per wheel (or £7 in the UK), buying enough for four-player matches can get kind of pricey.

So the way we see it, you have two choices:

1. Go with one of our totally awesome (and totally free) homemade Wii Wheels (the option we'd recommend) or:
   
2. Pick up the latest issue of NGamer, which comes with the above "free" wheel packed in. It's not technically free, obviously, because you'll have to pony up the £4.99 for the magazine, which optimistically suggests that the free gift is worth £7, meaning somebody in NGamer's accounting department may well be clearing their desk later this month.
   

Incidentally, while NGamer is a UK publication, some of my U.S-based colleagues think they may have spotted copies in Barnes & Noble, so keep your eyes peeled and you too might save hundreds of cents.

Update: Corrected U.S. price.



[Via Go Nintendo]

As if picture-perfect beaches, low taxes and fifty weeks of sunshine a year weren't already good enough reasons to emigrate to the Canary Islands (linked for Americans ... I kid!), then we just found the absolute clincher: a bank in the region that is giving away Wiis ... for free!

Of course, when we say "for free," what we actually mean is "in the form of a €300 loan (with 0% interest) that must be paid back within six months, providing you like the idea of keeping your house." That does mean you'll be paying an extra €50 on top of the usual price of a Wii in Europe, but we suppose the fact you don't have to cough up for six months makes things all better, or at least it does until Dad has to go to jail.

Oh, and what is this fabulous promotion called? Why, it's the CrediWii. Ugh, they're not even trying now.

[Via NeoGAF]

Go on, admit it. You're with friends here. When fast food chains run video game promotions, including game-related toys with their child-sized value meals, you order an extra meal for yourself just to get the toy. Or perhaps you're more brazen, buying the toy outright to add to your collection. It's perfectly fine to admit you have a problem. We won't judge.

If so, you'll be happy to know that Wendy's is hitching its Kids' Meals onto the coattails of Krome Studios and Amaze Entertainment's The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night, offering a set of five toys based on the latest in the miniature dragon's trilogy of games. The trinkets run the usual gamut of weirdness, including a Spyro-themed game of checkers and a Spyro keychain, which simply pushes the notion of "toy" beyond all measure of credulity.

As pack-in freebies go, these fall well below that of the competition, however random seems to be a running theme with Wendy's these days. To sweeten the deal, each Kids' Meal also includes a $5 off GameStop coupon for any version of The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night, though given the painful experience it was to play the last game this is simply not enough to make us go through the drive thru.

Man, we can't wait for ... whatever the hell these Wendy's Wii toys are. Seriously, we have no idea what these toys are supposed to be or do, except for the limited information what we can glean from the picture over at the Wendy's Kids meal site. That one on the bottom left looks kind of like a puzzle, and the one on the bottom right is obviously an Excite Truck, but we have no idea what the other things are supposed to do. Is that Wii remote at the top supposed to be a disc shooter? A laser pointer? A pog case? We just don't know.

Until that "Coming Soon!" becomes an "available now" we're opening up the floor to theories. How in the world do these Wendy's toys work? The five best commenter responses based on humor, cleverness, relevance, plausibility and use of massive damage jokes will win ... the hearty respect of the Joystiq staff. Hey, it's harder to get than you might think.

[Via Wii Fanboy]

[Update: "Thank you for your interest in Games for Windows. Unfortunately, this promotion has ended." And with that, our Games for Windows: The Official Magazine promotion has run its course; exhausted from a non-stop barrage of subscription requests, it finally toppled over and died. See what you've done? Enjoy!]

Sure, they've got a new corporately-sanctioned identity, but beneath the glitz and glamour of the Games for Windows branding, it's the same old Computer Gaming World magazine, one of the longest-running gaming mags around. To maintain their street cred, the editorial team introduced some risky features, like a new scoring system that ranks a 5 out of 10 as "average," and sounded off on their trepidation about upgrading to Vista, Microsoft's latest and greatest and, ostensibly, the very reason behind their magazine's name change.

So what is this all about? We've teamed up with Ziff-Davis, the publishers behind Games for Windows: TOM, to give away 25,000 free 1-year subscriptions (to US readers only ... sorry!). How free? You won't need to provide your credit card information; your subscription won't be automatically renewed at the end of the year; and you will need to "opt-in" to renew your subscription before receiving any bill for the magazine. Free.

Thanks, Joystiq readers!

As you may know, Japan loves Monster Hunter. And, Capcom is quickly trying to capitalize on its popularity. As if having over 400,000 pre-orders wasn't enough, Game Watch reports that Capcom will offer this chic Monster Hunter scarf for Japanese customers that pre-order the game at Capcom's electronic store.

Why a scarf? Why not? You know, I try to look as fashionable as I can while slaying demons.

See also:
PSP Fanart Fridays: Monster Hunter

[Update 1: Language Police caught me red-handed. Thanks for the correction!]