Normally, online petition efforts seem doomed from the start. But a grassroots campaign, born on the IGN forums, and aimed at getting Nintendo to localize Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower outstrips the normal, futile campaign through cleverness and pure vigor.

Fans have taken to spamming Nintendo's Facebook and Twitter pages and email with requests for those three games. "Operation Rainfall" also involves coordinated physical mailings of letters to NOA headquarters, aimed at one game at a time.

Even more clever -- and likely effective -- is a campaign to pre-order "Monado: Beginning of the World" from Amazon. Back in 2009, before it was even called Xenoblade, Nintendo announced this game at E3. Amazon accordingly added a pre-order listing, which has been sitting dormant for two years. Now, that orphaned pre-order listing is Amazon's top seller in video games. Unlike most petitions, this can be translated directly into purchase intent -- i.e. money on the table -- and is more likely than anything to attract Nintendo's attention.

It's at least attracted the attention of Nintendo's social media intern: the company tweeted, "Hey fans, we appreciate your enthusiasm. Look for more updates to come soon!"