JC goes on a a real StreetPass quest!
OK, it's official - I'm a StreetPass addict.
Last weekend I went to Haneda Airport, central Tokyo, for the purpose of getting an exclusive puzzle piece to complete my collection. I managed to convince my wife by telling her about an awesome burger restaurant there, plus the fact that lil JC (Editor's Note: he means his baby, not his inner child) loves planes and could watch them to his heart's content!
It's actually pretty easy to find the place, found on the second floor of Terminal 2. I pushed passed all the Japanese people lining up to go to Hawaii, to go straight to the 3DS station. The Nintendo Zone is always there, but this puzzle is time limited, and will stop being distributed on September 30. This is different from the other commercially sponsored puzzle, from McDonald's, which as far as I know will always be available. Note: You must get the first piece via SpotPass, then you can start getting the rest as usual.
I don't know how I feel about this way of distributing new puzzles. On one hand, it's cool to get new puzzles that you can't get anywhere else, and gets people going to places they'd never usually go, kind of like a huge real life location-based quest. On the other hand though, these are huge corporations promoting their goods/services and I understand some people might not like being advertised to like that. Then again, this is optional and you never get told about it. Even when you StreetPass someone with a puzzle you don't have, it just comes up as "?????".
It would be cool if they served a dual purpose though, maybe have a barcode as part of the puzzle that when scanned in you get discounts off stuff. If that were to happen, I hope a donut shop does a puzzle.
Anyway, here is a short video of me getting (as of recording) the rarest StreetPass puzzle in the world!