All hail Nintendo! Kings of the Internet!

So now all you Europeans finally get a reward, kinda. You can now trade your hard earned stars for Wii points to spend on Virtual Console games and the like. It's simple, 4 stars get you 1 Wii point...Hahaha ok, had you going there, it's not that simple. Four stars do indeed get you one Wii point but points have to be purchased in cards just like in the shops. You can buy the cards in:

100 (400 stars)
300 (1200 stars)
500 (2000 stars)
1000 (4000 stars)

Once you have purchased the card you get the code straight away to redeem on your Wii.

So what was all that account linking for? If your Wii and Club Nintendo account are linked why can't it automatically transfer the points onto your account? Because Nintendo love really long numbers remember.

While the exchange rate is a little low (It's about £250 for one NES game but hey it's free) I was still excited to finally trade in my 10200 points and buy Sin and Punishment but once again Nintendo had to kick me in the balls, as if they weren't doing it enough lately. I've been through several cups.

So once I refreshed the special Card Shop page over and over and it finally connected and I was in! Ready to throw away years of points I had accumilated since the Gamecube's launch (minus 6000 they stole off me the bastards!) I finally accessed the card page to the sight above (and larger below).

I was confused but luckily Nintendo provide an FAQ and I thought "Oh this must be straight forward and supply me with the information I need as Nintendo are always clear." Yeh right.

The only thing remotely near to an answer was this classic:

"Check if your Wii Points Card of choice is still available. If your Wii Points Card of choice is momentarily no longer available, please come back at a later date."

Momentarily? It's taken me at least 20 mins to write this and make a slightly humurous image and the cards are still unavailable, hardly a moment. Perhaps it's on a daily limit but why? Another online triumph from Nintendo, now I know how stupid people feel when they click the monkey to win an iPod.

If you would like to try your luck you can go to [url]https://wiipointscard.nintendo-europe.com[/url] but make sure your club nintendo account is linked to your wii or it won't work, in a different way.

I know there has been a lot of bashing Nintendo lately but honestly, we do it because we love you and it's about time you quit the smack, pick yourself up and become the person you used to be. This is an intervention.

[Update]
So even more problems with the system. Aparently, because stars expire after 2 years, after buying something with your points it doesn't necessarily spend the ones that will expire sooner. So basically it's forcing you to spend all of your points in one go because if you keep topping up it will only charge your most recent stars, leaving your older ones to expire. Kind of makes it seem less generous doesn't it?

This is actually a very serious problem as some stars will expire just after Christmas this year. What that means is if you don't get the chance to trade your stars due to the site being shit, you lose them forever. So you go from a quite nice reward to them stripping you completely and saying "Hey thanks for the cash, suckers!"