Nintendo Badge Arcade is Out Now in North America

Well that came out of nowhere. Nice it's out, but I guess this means I should just not expect anything for the Direct. This is reminiscent of the mini direct they had before E3 this year where everyone thought they got the small announcements out of the way for something big but nope..

Huh. Well I'll give it a go. Won't drop any monies on it though, I have better things on my wish list.

@Retro_on_theGo I wouldn't say that releasing this badge game will mean that there will be no announcements for the Direct. This is a very minor downloadable "game". I think it's best that it's outtta the way now.

Having a decent amount of fun out of it, aside from the spending required.

Downloaded this an hour ago, it's pretty fun to design your home menu with badges. Though I doubt I'll spend much on it judging by the horrible moves I did on my free plays lol.

Seems pretty fun. I like how you can win free plays every day, and it'll apparently randomly give you free plays in a notification as well. Should be enough to keep me going without spending anything for now.

Got All the badges I wanted with the free tries lol.

shrug Not for me.

Nintendo knows how to attract the geeks ... Now that I know there's free plays sometimes, I'm getting this. I've spent a dollar on more stupid crap than this. I'd rather give a dollar to Nintendo than a bum on the street. Sorry that's just how I feel ...

Got all the badges I wanted unless they make some really neat ones, got all of the Famicom/game boy sets, most of the first Mario bros set and the knight from Zelda along with a few spares here and there, also got the first free exclusive theme, other then that there is nothing I really want.

Wonder when the Wii U will get themes and badges unless that would be saved for the NX.

Oh hey, I didn't realize you people didn't have this thing yet. Be prepared to be very frustrated very often. Especially if you want to collect all of a particular set of badges but don't want to pay money (hint: it's NOT worth paying money for these things)... the first few months I was able to get 2~3 free plays every day, and sometimes as many as 5, but after some recent updates I'm lucky to get a single free play. But I still go for it every day because it's pretty satisfying when you actually manage to complete a set (even if I'm too lazy to ever actually decorate my home screen).

I'm mostly excited for the Zelda badges, since my first page is loaded with Zelda games, minus the ambassador exclusive Minish Cap (grumble grumble...), and I have all the Zelda themes on Shuffle Favorites.

I'm baffled by all the positivity. I'll have to blow the dust off my 3DS, I guess.

bought it and spent $2 to get some ac badges,only messed up once and wasted a 1 go but got both of the ac ones I tried on complete

also got the free exclusive theme, which is why I paid $2, but the theme isn't really worth it.

I can't wait to spend more on this app lol. I love decorating and I'll be using it at leas when more AC themes come for it, and to get pokemon badges.

So you can get the free passes things in Practice, then? I'm kinda tight on money, so...yeah.
EDIT:...Oh, once a day...figures. T.T

I played it a bunch when I first got my Japanese 3DS... Haven't used it for a while though. I guess it's worth a shot again.

Nice! Been wondering when this would get brought over.

Seems kinda neat, but I'm scared of these free-to-start games, cause I've spent more than 20 bucks on Pokémon Shuffle...

I'll download it when it gets to Europe... and I'll spend exactly 0p on it.

@Rod64 Yep, i spend 2 bucks on something I didnt even really want. It just draws you in @_@.

@Rod64 You think that's bad? I ended up spending at least £30 on Pokemon Rumble World trying to complete the 'Dex and do all the missions. I did it, but at what cost? AT WHAT COST? Oh wait, £30...

@itzdanburton I haven't fiished all the missions yet, but I did complete the Pokédex... without spending a single penny.

@aaronsullivan The thing is, it's nothing special as a game by itself. But the badges the game has on offer make the game something special, as it's quite possibly the only concept that actively involves the HOME Menu, which is the last place one would expect to have fun at. But arranging elements from various games to replicate certain scenes, or even just creating a unique scene in general, has a very charming appeal to it.
Granted, it's not everyones cup of tea, so don't expect a world of change, but as a time-waster, this game offers more substance than any other title on the 3DS

I won't spend a cent on it, but I'm looking forward to it.

The Rabbit's awesome.

Played my free shots last night and this morning and managed to grab a few snazzy badges for my otherwise droll 3DS folders. Also managed to be completely charmed by the little rabbit fellow running the joint.

So it has come to this. People paying actual money for the mere chance of getting virtual merchandise.

Though this has been the case with Steam crates for a while, I suppose.

Wish they didn't put sailor schoolgirl Isabelle and inkling badges at the bottom load screen if they weren't available yet. iirc none of the badges on the load screen not even the Mario kart ones were up the first day. Guess I gotta wait. My wallets shut til then.

I became completely obsessed with getting all of the keychains in Triple Deluxe and I can see this going the same way, just at a much slower pace. Too bad you can't cash in play coins at the Badge Arcade.

Sounds sort of interesting since i like collecting things like the Smash trophies, stickers, and Kirby keychains, but I don't like having to spend money on things like wallpaper (which is free on computers, phones, etc.) or what looks like non functioning icons. Maybe it's a Japanese thing...

Wow that is surprising! I will definitely give this one a go since it is free to play but I will probably never end up spending money on it.

i'm downloading it. i'm a sucker for things like this

That bunny looks so... untrustworthy. I shall read carefully.

Alright, I'll be getting this. However, I won't be spending a single cent on it. I'll just use the free plays.

Figures, the day I don't have my 3DS on my @ work! Oh well, I'll check it out later tonight but it looks cool.

I've been waiting ever since the app came out in Japan!! Going to Downloaf now!

Im having way too much fun with it

Welp. My life is over...I already spend way too much time in the Japanese version as is...

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!

For those wondering, you start out with 5 free plays (which I'm sure most of you know); but you can also get 3 (in my experience, it was three—results may vary, I guess) plays by get a special badge on the practice crane, and I also got 2 more for getting 20+ badges on the practice crane.

EDIT: The rabit also told me that they'll occassionally send free plays in their newsletter.

@aaronsullivan I'm baffled as I can't decide if I should praise Reggie for not promoting this app or condemn Reggie for continuing to not promoting anything in the US.

32 hours, then I'll decide.

I just want some Kirby badges and I'll be happy.

Oh wow, I was just thinking about this game the other day, and wondering if it had been cancelled.

Do you need to log in every day to attempt to get free plays? Or does it just show up through spotpass?

@Naoiko I played the Japanese version a bit, to get free plays you have to log in every day and beat a little minigame, although sometimes you get free plays from Spotpass.

Pretty fun, and won some cool Game Boy badges, but I doubt I'll be spending money unless there's actually a theme I really want at some point.

Thanks Reggie!

I never thought I would be saying that sincerely. Like, ever.

Such a cute app. I ended up replacing all the app icons on my home screen with badges. I could see myself spending a dollar here and there on this.

It's so odd that they haven't done anything with themes on the Wii U.

@Nicolai he's definitely a conniver.... All pink and .... And fluffy and happy.... And telling me I need this and that and making it all sound so... So.... Tempting and ... DAMN! Before you know it you've spent $20! All for the 8-bit awesomeness !! AAAAHHHH!!!
On a side note and in all seriousness I would love if they made some Pokemon red/blue/yellow sprites available to get. That would satisfy my game boy love...

This badge arcade is pretty cool- I love the fact you can put these things on your folders. That for me is worth it alone.

Saw Nintendo's tweet last night and hop to it. I really like the charm of that Bunny, especially when he drops the reality bomb on you

I already spent $1 so far with the hammer crane game a few minutes ago. I can see myself dropping a extra dollar or two later on down the line if they have themes I like or easy ones to get like that Zelda hammer one. After all I already spend $ on some home themes and if I had a New 3DS instead of the XL model, I would get some face plates too.

Instead of "badges", you should get tries at grabbing VC games...

That was unexpected. That kind of stuff was expected to be announced for a post direct kind of thing. Now if you excuse me...

I got three badges in one try on my five free plays. This is definitely going to be a fun time waster for me. I love claw machine games.

@DreamOn Same! I was like, "ooh, Yoshi!" "Aw, Paratroopa!" "Uh, hey. Also a Yoshi egg. I guess."

DONE

Can you actually use badges for folder icons? I've been dreaming about that since folders were a thing. I hate have a single letter on all my folders, looks very ugly.

@Tman Yes, the badges cover up the letters and stand out nicely on the folders.

@iphys Yes yes yes YES!!! I assume there will be badges for GBC and NES then?

@Rod64 Be very wary of Pokemon Shuffle because that is literally a F2P microtransaction trap game(hence why it was released on mobile).

I'm ok with the way Badge Arcade is being done since the game is very upfront about how much you're paying and that your microtransactions are real and you're spending real money. Telling the player its $1 per play is honest and is how I'd rather see microtransactions be presented if a game has them. "This costs 67 fun gems/tokens/MB coins/Helix. Buy 500 fun gems for £9.99 and get 222 free, best value " where the game has the player buy monopoly money to purchase ingame items to distract and confuse the player from how much they're spending and the value of their purchases.

Not a bad idea for the 3ds and If you wanted to you could just skip paying for plays and get free plays by the practice claw. I was hoping though that once I completed getting all the badges for the Super famicom theme .. I would get that background for a 3ds theme but oh well. And 1$ is next to nothing if you want the 5 plays instantly.

@Tman Currently GB, GB Pocket, GB Lite, GBC, and Super Famicom, but I think today is the last day to get those until they get re-offered. I stuck the 8-bit Mario sprite on my NES folder for now.

@ultraraichu lol I feel the same, but I did it got some AC ones and spent $2 just to nab the theme.

themes here seem like they won't be worth it, but if theres exclusive AC or pokemon themes I'ma have to pony up

@Tman GBC might already have a badge if not already. I put a badge on every folder I have except for the junk folder...

currently I only got the free badges and some AC ones, I spent $2 and can see me spending way more. ($2 was the amount required to get free 3DS theme.)

This is the silliest thing ever, why would I want icons cluttering up my screen that don't even do anything? This would be better if you could stamp them onto existing icons or set them as folder icons instead...won't even bother downloading now that I understand what this is...

So THIS is the reason that I can't download more than 300 games and apps at a time on my 3DS? So Nintendo can charge me $1 or more to fill up the empty spaces? Suddenly, I hate Nintendo.

@bofis You can use them on your folders so they don't waste space and make your folders more identifiable than just having a letter or a number.

Don't worth the money. I wish there was a free-to-play model somewhere, where you could use play coins or something else that required effort and not a wallet.

@iphys Oh, awesome, okay, I'll download it and never spend a cent, but at least get some icons to decorate my folders with...better than the single character we get now

This is the first I've heard of this. Sounds interesting though, will download sometime soon.

Earthbound/Mother series badges would be pretty sweet...

@aaronsullivan This was actually really well done and much better than I thought it would be. Spent about an hour on it on my first go. Probably would only be a few minutes each day after that. It's actually a really well put together game. If they could put it on tablets - well it wouldn't be a good on tablets w/o the really nice 3D effect work - but if they did and could support it w/ ads for other 3DS and Wii U games and amiibo, it could be a hit. You know me though, not paying $1 for 5 tries. Not sure what I would be willing to pay, $1 for 25 tries maybe. The practice hammer got me 5 tries. If I could mange that every day it could keep me amused or a few days anyway. Wii U needs more pay-to-start time wasters, I really don't like Greatest Bits.

So does anybody know if the rabbit has a name? I didn't catch it at the beginning. We're calling him "amiright" in our house. He is adorable, especially when he puts on the boss faux mustache to ask for money.

Now I think I need to go check out Rusty baseball to see if it's as well put together as this.

Caught wind of this last night before I dozed off and hopped on it. I got really lucky and made plenty of badges fall while I was failing at actual catching.

I hope earning free plays will remain as easy as it has been thus far; got 3 free plays from the practice session last night, and 2 more from today's. As long as that remains the norm I'll never drop a cent on it. Not that I planned to; I've bought two or three themes but otherwise I'd rather use my 3DS funds on games I'll probably never get around to playing.

A really nice idea. Picked up all the pins in one of the Mario sets and in one of the Legend of Zelda sets, and was able to get one of the "Pixel" Gameboy collection pins.

I especially like how I can take my "M" and "L" folders and finally pin a Mario (for Mario-themed games) and a Link (for Zelda-themed games) on them. Can't wait to try and get some more for other game themes.

Ugg. Sick of them spoonfeeding these microtransaction games on us... :mad:

Real Life crane game: Pay $10, receive 20 tokens. 1 token = 1 play. For casual crane gamers, 20 plays won't be enough to get item unless absolutely lucky. More will be required to win... something.

Digital crane game in this case: Pay $10 (plus tax I'm assuming), receive 50 plays ($1 (plus tax) for 1 play). In one play it is entirely possible to win several badges (depends on choice of machine). 50 plays = lots of chances to win badges. Additionally, playing $2 (with taxes) will net you an exclusive theme.

To my mind this game emulates a real arcade except it bumps the chances of winning something up loads. Had the chances been identical to that of an actual crane game machine then I would be amongst the first to cry foul. As it stands though, having played the 3DS game a little (i.e. the free plays), it's alright as the chances to win a badge on the slots are quite high generally.

To those debasing the fact that these are digital items and not real stuff, well two things spring to mind. Firstly: applications you purchase on your phone and eshop games are a few examples of items we purchase in this ever increasingly digitized age. Secondly: for crane game prizes, how many of these are worth the money put into the game? For the average person they'll need to shell out loads of tokens to get them (not counting luck factor of course).

Note that while this post may attempt to justify the microtransactions within the game, personally I'm not too big of a fan of it much. Granted it's pay-to-play at least and not pay-to-win, which is alright for a free-to-play game; but I'm not really part of the target for this. This game is relatively inoffensive though so I'll pop by once in awhile to try win those practice badges to try get some free plays.

I got curious about the free theme for buying ten plays (that's two micro-payments of a dollar or so), turns out it gave me a delightful little Zelda theme so I'm feeling satisfied.

That said, the game itself is cute, simple and much more fair than I thought it would be originally. The little mascot especially who it seems is literally named "Bunny" is adorable and has a few genuinely clever lines where he'll acknowledge the F2P deal as being kind of a hard sell to gamers, so in that regard I'm sold.

The big issue comes with the badges themselves. There are a few I like. A few I love. I now have a Ravio face on my homescreen for FREE (you get free plays every now and then) and that's awesome. But I also have nearly a dozen badges of the sprite for... I think it's a rock? From the first Legend of Zelda. So many of the sprite badges feel like filler, and while you have no obligation to go after them (I honestly kind of got them all with one lucky hit) it feels like a strange amount of the badges are just kind of unappealing on a home screen.

Ravio and basic iconic sprites like Mario or Toad aside of course. It's cute, I don't imagine I'll spend more money on it unless it rolls out some badges I particularly want but overall I think I'll be mostly using my free plays to just go for the badges that really appeal to me. Still, I am quickly growing a soft spot for it so maybe in time I'll want to blow more cash just to make Bunny happy.

@bofis You can actually stamp them on your folders. And you get free plays every now and then, it starts you off with five right off the bat. I currently have a Zelda theme on that I got for spending a bit on it, and folder icons of Mario sprites.

@itzdanburton What's charming about Rumble World though is that it caps you after you buy around thirty-thirty five bucks or so of diamonds, so you won't end up spending any more on it than you did on say, Rumble Blast. Each payment is like an installment on the purchase of a small game, but still a game.

@onery Well put. It does have that arcade rush to it of having cash on the line, but it's more fair about its difficulty since it doesn't have to pay to mass-produce Bart Simpson dolls.

Personally, I think there should be laws against letting anyone below the age of 18 play blatant real money gambling games like this.

This game is literally built around the exact same abusive tricks and manipulative techniques that casinos and gambling machine designers/creators use to get people addicted to gambling every single day (variable ratio reinforcement, compulsion loops, and that kind of thing). And the fact Nintendo is encouraging kids to do this, for actual real world money, kinda sickens me.

Now, don't get me wrong here. The actual game is REALLY well built (better than most games like this that I've seen), but it's nothing more than a glorified casino game (the important factor being it costs real world money for each play), and the kind of product people are starting to hate on the likes of iOS. It's just the blatant manipulative abusiveness and insidiousness of it all. All for the sake or making an easy buck of the most easily abused people.

It's only real saving grace is how well it's actually made, and it really is pretty high quality for what it is, and the fact you get a free go every now and then. But Nintendo is counting on exactly this, and knows that it only has to capture that small percentage of the most addictive type personalities, who will spend the vast majority of the money Nintendo will make from this game. It's the "whales" Nintendo is counting on abusing with this game—even if those "whales" happen to be little, innocent, naive, children, who don't know any better and don't really understand what is happening with this game. They just want to win some more badges...

This should have been a a free 3DS update that gave the play coins some much needed use. Instead they made it a freemium game. What a shame.

That bunny character has to be one of the most unique characters they have created in a while. Its pretty awesome.

And i have to agree on this game being a pure gabling game. It should have an age rating of 18+.

Just tried this and it is admittedly pretty addictive. The rabbit thing is funny and cute. And it does seem like there is a way to pick up at least one free play per day via the practice machine. Not bad as my first five free tries I grabbed some neat icons to replace the standard ones for the camera and music launchers.

This thing is horrendous. Nintendo should be ashamed. Why should people pay real money to get digital images of useless things that have no point? I even gave it the benefit of a doubt and played it for 1/2 hour (no money spent). I was appalled at nintendo's obsession with money. Why not just go back to what made Nintendo successful and release some good games in the USA such as style savvy 3 and Disney magical world 2?!?

Bleh. Good for 3 mins per day. Then I saw the $1 per 5 turns. o h brother.

@Sinister

I agree using the play coins. otherwise.. whats the point.

Arrrrrrrggggghhbbbbb

I can only get 10 pins on my home screen. Is that the max or am I doing something wrong !! This is frustrating.