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The story
Nintendo’s prepaid cards used to be sold with a specially designed card glued inside a fold-out paper sleeve, but these days they’ve switched to paper-only, with no actual card included at all. On a thread started on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (“Geha”) board, people who hadn’t realized this had changed butted heads with others insisting “this has been the case for over 10 years.” On top of that, a stream of posts kept mixing up regular charge-type prepaid cards with the download cards bundled with things like game expansion passes, so the discussion ended up having to first sort out exactly what had been “downgraded” and when.
What people said
There definitely is.
Were you seriously doing time this whole while? ("お勤め" is slang for being locked up)
10 years ago? But Xenoblade 3's expansion pass still had an actual card glued on, didn't it?
Isn't this thread about prepaid cards, not expansion passes?
That was a field where Nintendo's strengths really shone — why throw it away?
Simple result of rising costs, probably.
Right, when you say prepaid card, you picture Mario or Bowser on it.
That's been the case for years now, though.
Actually I wasn't even counting the charge-type ones.
The Bowser ones aren't even the fold-out style anyway.
Whoaaaa
Yeah, that really does make you want to collect them.
I still have the one on the far left.
I've still got a limited-edition MOTHER one, but I don't think it's worth anything special.
The MOTHER one is pointless if you're already subscribed to Online Plus, but if you actually wanted to keep the physical card, buying the paper-only version defeats the purpose — so I didn't.
So what was all that about there being no collecting angle?
Oh right, I remember this.
Once you start buying cheap on Rakuten, you stop bothering with the standard-design cards,
and tying your money up in a prepaid card ends up feeling worse than just paying by credit card whenever you actually want something.
Third parties should do the same thing, but they do nothing, so they're hopeless.
Then why did the expansion pass stop coming with a card? I don't respect that one bit.
It's about why they got rid of the card — it's a downgrade, that's the whole point.
That was a good while back, though.
Also, when did the minimum denomination quietly become 1,500 yen?
Probably because a lot of people wanted a 1,000-yen game, bought a 1,000-yen card, and then came up just short because of sales tax?
Dunno though.
Whether Re: #1 ever bought the card, and when they found out about this, is a separate question from the fact that the old collectible-card aspect is gone.
But the fact is that it has nothing to do with Re: #1, who only just found out about this now and never even bought one.
All the more reason the collecting angle makes sense, if the old cards exist as physical objects.
I don't get why you'd try to 'collect' something imaginary that isn't even sold anymore.
If the set's finished, just go complete it yourself on a flea-market app.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Nintendo’s download-code cards and charge-type prepaid cards are sold at retail sealed inside a fold-out paper package, but these used to come with an illustrated card glued inside. Nintendo has never officially explained when this switched to a paper-only format, and testimony in the thread is split on timing — some say “10 years ago,” others say “it still had a card as of Xenoblade 3.” It’s also worth noting that the standard charge-type prepaid card and the download card bundled with a specific title’s expansion pass are actually different products, and the thread repeatedly conflated the two, leading to recurring talking-past-each-other over which one the “downgrade” was even referring to. As for why the minimum denomination became 1,500 yen, no confirmed explanation has surfaced either — it remains speculation centered on adjusting for sales tax.
※This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, “Geha”) thread “[Sad News] Nintendo Quietly Downgraded Its Prepaid Cards.”
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