Topic: Today I learned, South Africa is a part of Nintendo of Europe but Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland are not

http://www.nintendo-europe.com

Woah. I guess Sweden is an Asian country then.

@Ichi: Why? Why don't other countries have their own distributors?

@Ichi: Nordic countries, not just Scandinavia.

@TheLegendofMe: As far as I know, the countries mentioned on the NoE website are the ones in which NoE has their own offices and where they also distribute all Nintendo games. Since Nintendo games and consoles are distributed in most of the Nordic countries by Bergsala, the countries do not have their own NoE offices. You probably also noticed that the website does not link to the Baltic, Balkan, or Eastern European Nintendo websites either and that's most likely because they also have their own distributors.

Did you ever wonder why Nintendo games were not being translated to Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, or Finnish? Or why those countries never were part of Club Nintendo? Or why those countries are still waiting for Miitomo?

Well maybe you should all learn one language

Bummer for the Nordics though

@Nego: Yes I wonder. I sent an email to Bergsala some years ago and they told me they would love to be a part of the Club Nintendo but NoE was the problem. When I sent NoE an email, they gave me some generic answer about how they're trying to make customers happy and whatever.

It's kinda funny though since it's only the manuals and covers that get translated. The software does not get translated and 99.% of people in Scandinavia speaks fluent English so the translations are kinda pointless.

@Ichi: We never had Club Nintendo which meant we missed out on physical prizes.

Now we don't have Miitomo either. I think that's quite a problem.

@TheLegendofMe: I can think of at least two reasons why we didn't have Club Nintendo back in the day. 1) Since Nintendo wasn't the distributor in the Nordic countries, they received less money for the games being sold here. Thus they felt less inclined to reward us with Club Nintendo exclusive prices.
2) Since Nintendo wasn't the distributor in the Nordic countries, sending the physical Club Nintendo prices would have cost them more.

What's funny is that Finland actually had a Club Nintendo in the '90s. It started as a magazine made by the distributor that was practically one big advertisment for Nintendo's games and consoles. It also came through the mail and I still have some single magazines lying somewhere. Sadly I threw most of them away or cut them into pieces since I wasn't old enough to figure out the value. Then later on when the Internet became a thing the Finnish distributor created a Club Nintendo section on their website with contests and such. But yet no rewards.

Well according to some Finland is part of Scandinavia but geographically speaking Scandinavia refers to the Scandinavian peninsula and the mountains that is where Norway and Sweden is located. Only a really small part of Finland belongs to Scandinavia. If you want to include Finland then you can use Fennoscandia (which also includes part of Russia and Karelia). But I prefer the term Nordic countries since it also includes Iceland and Denmark.

NoNN. Nintendo of Nordic Nations. I came up with it everyone credit and applaud me.

Lol wow that is a hot mess though and I actually never realized any of these details myself, but then again this is no concern of mine. But I always thought Nintendo for Europe was screwy. I assumed it was like South American countries, you have stores that somehow get the systems (how idk???) they cost 2-10 times as much as a country with "official nintendo" and good luck getting games or anything to work properly.

If i remember correctly, Bergsala was the first company to distribute Nintendo games outside of Japan, starting with Game&Watch. In other words, before NoE was a thing.

@Xilef: I don't know when Bergsala begun distributing Nintendo games but I know that before it acquired the distributing rights in Finland, all things Nintendo were distributed by Amo oy in the country. It specializes or specialized on importing toys. I remember Amo still being the distributor back when the Wii came out and don't remember when Bergsala took over.

I was visiting Lithuania this weekend and found out that they pretty much have no Nintendo games in stores, at least not in the capital. I saw maybe three or four Wii titles on sale in an electronics store but that was it. It would suck to be a Nintendo fan in some countries it would seem.

@Nego: Interesting. Bergsala started working with Nintendo in 1981.

@Xilef: I decided to check what Wikipedia had to say about the matter (best source ever, of course). Apparently NES was first brought to Finland in 1987 by a company called Funente oy which went into bankruptcy in 1993 and was replaced by Bergsala's sister company Bergsala Fun oy. It was changed in 1999 to Agerex oy that changed their name to Amo oy in 2003. Wikipedia does not tell when Bergsala begun distributing Nintendo games and consoles in Finland for the second time but I believe it was around 2010 give or take three years.

Interestingly Funente founded a Nintendo Club in Finland over a decade before Club Nintendo came a thing. Obviously it did not have rewards but members did begun to get a small magazine about Nintendo games at some point in time. I also still remember having a plastic membership card when I was a kid but I believe I threw it away unless it's still buried somewhere.

@Nego: Very interesting. Man, Nintendos history in Scandinavia isn't particulari straightforward lol.