Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.Long before Donkey Kong, Super Mario and Pokémon were household names, Nintendo was founded as a playing card business in 1889. Now, 135 years later, as the Japanese entertainment giant looks to leverage its significant gaming properties to expand into wider fields like movies and theme parks, it is opening its first-ever museum in its home of Kyoto.
And though that innovative but odd combination might be one that Nintendo fans know very well, the museum gives a glimpse at how the company’s long-held values and attitudes will make the jump from video games to beyond as it builds toward becoming a Disney-level entertainment company on the strength of its beloved characters and properties.
“We’re sort of doing what we’re not supposed to do. And if we’re going to do that, we wanted to make sure that we had something appropriate,” he said through a translator. The displays on the upper floor hold thousands of games, controllers, manuals, accessories and prototypes. Much of the exterior and lobby area is packed with the familiar aural and visual cues of recent Nintendo, with warp pipes and Zelda music everywhere. But a significant chunk of the experience is about the Nintendo before video games. Visitors can learn about the making of Hanafuda cards – the traditional floral-themed kind that started Nintendo’s business – by doing it themselves, and they can keep the cards they print and glue together.
“What I do hope is, as Nintendo, we can continue to create something that has a through line across the flow of history, to whatever product we’re working on at the time.The upstairs is packed with cool new technology, but the lower floor is essentially a massive experiential game unto itself, bringing games, toys and software from the past to life with brand-new designs.
Throughout the exhibits are recreations of several Game & Watch games projected onto the walls, with roof-mounted sensors that capture movement, so visitors can play by moving their shadows around, for example holding their hands up to support the pedestrians inOne of the several 1960s rooms you can swing a bat in. Note the Ultra Machine under the table.