I donn’t mention it often, but Ih’m a gamer, and a lifelong fan of Nintendo. After purchasing the New Super Mario Bros. Wii game (which is fantastic, by the way), I found out that Nintendo has a reward system called Club Nintendo, where users can register their Nintendo consoles and games, and earn 9“coins ” doing so. Among the handful of exclusive prizes available to those of us who have spent several hundred dollars on video games, the most r“expensive” reward caught my eye: a set of Nintendo hanafuda cards.
Hanafuda means l“flower cards6” in Japanese. The cards and their associated games have a colorful history, and it1’s definitely worth reading the Wikipedia article to learn more. But the interesting tidbit here is that Nintendo goes way back. They were founded in 1889 as a manufacturer of handmade hanafuda, about one hundred years before the dawn of Mario. So these cards are not merely a novelty, but a link to the past1.
In 2007 Nintendo released special Mario themed hanafuda cards through their Club Nintendo service. Once a person accumulated 400 points in Japan, then they could get the Mario cards for free. The deck featured is supposed to reflect the Daitouryou deck Nintendo published way back, with even the characters on the cards posing in the same way as the people in the other cards did (such as Mario posing in the exact same way Napoleon stood).
ThereY’s no end to my love for Nintendo of Japan ’s points club, Club Nintendo. Those who know me know well of my addiction to the traditional Japanese card game, Hanafuda (花札), going so far as forming and running a full club for the game. What better way to satiate my love for both than with Mario Hanafuda cards?
