Look What Nintendo Sent Me For XMas!

[Mega Man]

A Hanafuda deck!

[soupy]

whoa, nice~ how'd you get that? I like the subtle Mario theme touch. You probably know but many do not; Nintendo started out as a company making these cards, not video games.

[Mega Man]

That's right! The unfolded paper shown in the photo tells the history of Nintendo as a playing card company, a toy company, and then a video game company. It also tells you how to play koi-koi with the cards.

You can get your cards by registering at Nintendo.com and registering all your Wii/DS games. You can also choose to get all the Mr. Game & Watch games on a DS cart, or a set of poker cards with Nintendo characters. I wanted the hanafuda cards though!

[Logik]

very i might have to join up now.

[Mega Man]

Definitely! There's actually a lot of stuff you can choose to get.

Hanafuda has a bit of a learning curve, mainly because you have to memorize which cards are to which month; you can see above there are 12 sections, each with 4 cards. They represent months.

Each month, if you are fortunate enough to get all 4 cards (kind of in a go-fish manner, but with a "field,") you get points, but certain months are worth more points than others. You can also call, "koi-koi" after scoring, which allows you to get more points during that round. The game is played in 12 rounds, and whoever has the most points at the end wins. Calling koi-koi can have a disadvantage though, and that is, if your opponent was close to finishing a hand, and they do after you call koi-koi, they get their points, plus your points.

There's also special hands you could have, that are a certain number of points. Luckily, this is all explained on the little scrip of paper.