Play Coins - An Overview

Nintendo has recently been on a bit of a health overload. They introduced the Pokewalker, Personal Trainer: Walking, and oh yeah, that whole Wii thing. But the newest addition to this health binge is the addition of a pedometer on the 3DS.

Now, a pedometer isn't a tool for measuring paedophiles (that's a paedoscope). It's a tool for measuring how many steps you take while you are walking, mostly used for people who want to walk for exercise reasons. The 3DS has a built in pedometer, so you can put in your pocket in sleep mode and it will actually serve a purpose besides just wasting pocket space! Oh yeah, and Streetpass too, but that doesn't exist in the context of pedometers. Yet.

So why would you use the pedometer? Well, every one-hundred steps, you get a Play Coin. What is a Play Coin? Play Coins are a new addition to the 3DS and will serve more and more purposes in the future. But what do they do? Well, they're like virtual money. You can use Play Coins to buy things, like new Heroes in Find Mii, new games in the Augmented Reality Shop, new pieces for Puzzle Swap, stuff like that.

Nintendo has included Play Coins for a few different reasons. For example, people may not use StreetPass often to get new characters for Find Mii and new Pieces for Puzzle Swap, so this system let's you buy them. If you can't do it yourself, pay someone else to do it. Also, this provides a reward to people who walk often. If you are out of shape and just play video games, you'll have to walk to earn these video games.

Now, since the eShop hasn't been implemented yet, we don't know if you can spend them there. However, I'd say it's a safe bet, considering Nintendo doesn't want to lose customers because they don't have a credit card and they can't find an eShop card. You can only earn 10 Play Coins per day, so price your game at 200 coins and you're set. What could go wrong?

The Play Coin cheat, that's what could go wrong. The main problem with Play Coins is that, as mentioned above, you can only earn 10 of them each day. The problem is, each day means each day according to your 3DS. That means you can make 10 coins for today, set the 3DS' date to tomorrow, and then earn 10 more coins, and so on and so forth. (It's better described here.) In all seriousness though, Nintendo will probably fix this in the big update later this month. But if they don't, they'll be losing a pretty penny.

So there you go. Everything you need to know about Play Coins. I hope you enjoyed it, and you can always come back to Nintendo Hub for more.