On Wednesday, October 2, 2024, Nintendo inaugurated its own museum in Japan. This new venue offers visitors the chance to explore and sometimes experience more than 130 years of the gaming giant’s history, starting with its origins in playing card manufacturing.
Located a few kilometers from Kyoto’s city center, where the company’s headquarters are situated, the museum is set on the grounds of a former factory where Nintendo notably produced “hanafuda,” traditional Japanese playing cards. It showcases a vast array of products developed since the company’s founding in 1889, a period during which it ventured into various sectors, from making Western playing cards to toys and board games, before becoming a global powerhouse in the video game industry.
“We wanted to showcase the evolution of entertainment while highlighting the elements that have been shared and developed over the years,” Shigeru Miyamoto, the renowned creator of Mario, explained in a video released last August.
The museum also displays some of Nintendo’s more unusual creations, like a photocopier and even a stroller. An interactive section allows visitors to dive into the brand’s universe: playing with giant cards projected onto the floor via a smartphone, swinging at balls with a bat in a Japanese indoor setting from the 1960s-70s, or even handling a giant game controller, requiring two people to coordinate to play a video game.
This museum is part of a strategy launched by Nintendo about a decade ago to strengthen connections with its iconic characters through merchandise, retail stores, and theme parks, similar to the “Super Nintendo World” areas at Universal Studios parks in Japan and the United States. The Super Mario Bros. movie, released last year, also achieved massive success, ranking second at the global box office in 2023.
According to Kensaku Namera, an analyst at Nomura Securities, the museum contributes to this strategy by providing an environment where visitors can interact with Nintendo’s franchises. Additionally, situating the museum on a historical production site represents an efficient reuse of the company’s assets.
Tickets are sold through a lottery system, priced at 3,300 yen (about 20 euros) for adults. All tickets for October and November have already been sold out.
With AFP
