My Nintendo Picross

Nintendo’s current loyalty/rewards program, My Nintendo, launched on March 31st. And in many ways, it is inferior to their previous program, Club Nintendo. For example, points expire after only six months (vs. two years in Club Nintendo). Also, physical game purchases do not earn any rewards at all!

But it’s not all bad. You can earn coins on a regular basis just by doing things such as signing into Miiverse once a week or starting up the Wii U or 3DS eShop once a week. There are additional ways to earn coins if you use the Miitomo app as well.

I’ve earned enough to coins to redeem their first new reward, an exclusive, digital 3DS game called My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The title is certainly a mouthful, even if you abbreviate it as MNP:TLoZ:TP. But as you can probably figure out, it’s a Picross game with graphics, music, and sound effects based on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (which has been released on GameCube, Wii, and recently, Wii U).

If you’re unfamiliar with Picross, the name comes from the combination of “picture” and “crossword.” It’s a logic/puzzle game in which you are given numbers for each row and column of a grid. Each number set indicates how many blocks on that row/column need to be filled in. So if a row has the numbers “3 2,” that means it will have three consecutive blocks filled in somewhere, followed by at least one empty space, and then two more consecutive blocks filled in. When you’ve filled in all appropriate boxes, you’ve completed the puzzle (and a picture).

I’ve been a fan of Picross games for years; I loved the original Mario’s Picross on Game Boy, and the Picross e games on 3DS are good too. So it’s no surprise that I’m really enjoying My Nintendo Picross so far. My biggest complaint with the Picross e games was the boring music. This is not a problem here, as My Nintendo Picross has some great, quality Zelda tunes.

On the downside, My Nintendo Picross has just 91 puzzles: 45 regular Picross puzzles, 45 “Mega Picross” puzzles, and apparently just one large “Micross” puzzle. This compares to 150+ puzzles found in the Picross e titles. It will still take a number of hours to complete them all, but it is less content than you would get in the $6 Picross e games. One other minor complaint is that you can’t skip the tutorial if you already know how to play.

With that said, this is a quality game that I’m having a lot of fun with. This is miles better than Nintendo’s Club Nintendo exclusive Wii game from 2010, Grill-Off With Ultra-Hand! If you’re a fan of Picross or puzzle games in general, I recommend picking this up with your My Nintendo coins.