Super Mario Bros. Free-ish On Wii’s Virtual Console

Today, many Wii owners that have connected their consoles to the internet and have a Club Nintendo account have reported receiving an email from Nintendo earlier this morning, telling them that they were eligible for a free download of Super Mario Bros. (Whether they downloaded it already or not). The email looks like this:

When this email first came out, many people were speculating why some people were receiving the email, while others (such as yours truly) received no game. Some theories included that Nintendo was giving more to Internet Channel purchasers (which wasn’t the case; I bought it, but got no game), sent to people that haven’t bought any WiiWare/Virtual Console games, or to random people as somewhat of a social experiment to gain more publicity. However, it’s been nearly confirmed that Nintendo gave away these games to people that haven’t bought any downloadable titles for their Wii console in a while. While no certain time period is currently known, it most likely is for more than a year since buying a downloadable game. Nintendo is obviously trying to get the recipient’s attention, hoping that they will take a look at the rest of the downloadable catalog and bring in even more profit for themselves. Unfortunately for me, I bought Ace Attorney: Justice for All on WiiWare back in February, so I wasn’t eligible for this offer.

Still, I find it interesting that Nintendo’s willing to go on these somewhat extreme measures; giving away one of their most popular titles for Virtual Console to people that may or may not buy anything else from them. Nintendo are not known as being the biggest risk-takers, so I’m glad that they’re willing to do all of this. (I’d be much more glad if I was included, of course.)