Nintendo of Japan has just released its Club Nintendo rewards for this year. One of the rewards includes a code for a digital copy of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (known as Advance Wars: Dark Conflict in Europe and Australia) at the Platinum level. According to a translation of the Club Nintendo page on NeoGAF, the game “is treated as a DSiWare title and only available for download on the 3DS,” where it’ll takes up only 426 blocks. Japanese 3DS owners who have reached Platinum status on Club Nintendo can download the game starting today. Anyone who did not reach Platinum status this year can acquire the game for 800 points starting May 2014.
This isn’t the first time Nintendo has made the bizarre decision to withhold a game from its home country. In 2011, Excitebots: Trick Racing was similarly given a Japanese release through Club Nintendo two years after its release in North America. More significantly, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is the first retail DS title available for digital download, albeit in a more restrictive manner. Hopefully, this will lead to more out-of-print DS titles coming to the eShop, both in Japan and internationally.
