More than any other game company, Nintendo loves to play with its history. Just look at how many times the NES library has reappeared across virtually every console era–remakes in Super Mario All-Stars, re-releases on Game Boy Advance, playable titles in Animal Crossing, the Wii Virtual Console, NES Remix on Wii U, and NES World Championships on Switch. Characters like Pauline from Donkey Kong can disappear in the mid-’80s and suddenly reappear decades later. And for a quarter of a decade, the Super Smash Bros. series has essentially served as a digital museum of Nintendo’s most iconic characters, worlds, and franchises. Given this fascination with its own history, it’s surprising that it took this long for Nintendo to produce a physical museum. A week before its October 2 opening, I had a chance to spend two days at the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto. As a lifelong fan of the company who credits it with my early fascination with gaming, it was a tremendous and surprisingly personal experience that I won’t forget.
Nintendo’s first-party titles have always been filled with a certain polish that can feel like magic at times, so it should serve as no surprise that the company’s obsessive attention to detail translates to a physical space. As you enter the main building (well, after you pass the line of five Toads who sing if you bonk their heads around), you’re ushered into a holding area before the escalator to the exhibit space. In this dimly lit room, silhouettes of various Nintendo consoles light up in sync with the sounds of their startup chimes. From there you step onto the escalator and are greeted with ambient console-menu music as you’re ushered upstairs. The first visible element of the exhibit room is a scoreboard-style box hanging from the ceiling with screens on each side. It displays startup screens of various consoles such as the iconic GameCube intro. It’s very cool to see the entrance to the museum replicate the feeling of turning on a Nintendo console, from the chime to the logo animation to the menu music.
As you reach the top of the escalator, you suddenly emerge in the center of 360 degrees of Nintendo’s history. It’s almost overwhelming to go from a dark room and escalator to a panorama of sights and sounds from Nintendo. Game displays, massive controllers, and dozens of screens surrounded me as I entered the space, and I found myself randomly walking to the left to look at my first display. It was for the Nintendo DS, and I spent a couple of minutes taking in a wall of game boxes before I decided that I needed to have an attack plan for the exhibits or I was bound to miss something.
I decided to go chronologically, starting from a display that showcases Nintendo’s early history with toys and licensed products. My time with Nintendo began when I was four years old in 1988, and I was only vaguely aware of the company’s history of making hanafuda cards and toys. It was surreal to see Disney products and Twister boxes with Nintendo’s logo on them. As a huge WarioWare fan, I was delighted to learn about and see products that I had previously only known as goofy minigame elements–the cowboy that you shoot over, the Ultra Hand grabber toy, and the Ultra Machine baseball launcher, among others. Thanks to one particular item on the wall, I learned that the random old Love Tester that I’ve directed my Pikmin to carry back to Olimar’s ship wasn’t random at all.
After a few walls of toys, board games, and old commercials, Nintendo’s pivot to video games is presented via a case filled with Game & Watch devices. I primarily know of Game & Watch via Smash Bros. and minigames in WarioWare and the Game Boy Camera, so it was cool to see the wide variety on display.
Donkey Kong on Famicom at the Nintendo Museum
I entered the NES display and immediately felt my brain shift from, “Oh that’s interesting, I haven’t seen this before” to a flood of personal memories with dozens of games on the wall. Each console display has an inward-facing wall featuring a massive collection of games with their various North American, European, and Japanese boxes next to each other for the sake of comparison. You’ve probably seen examples of Kirby getting pissed off whenever he leaves Japan, and there are numerous examples of that in the museum.
Anyone who grew up playing games is sure to get a blast of nostalgia when they encounter so many titles from their past, but this hit was especially potent for me and my collector brain. I’ve spent so much time looking at cardboard boxes of games on eBay and analyzing creases, tears, sticker residue, water and sun damage, and names written in Sharpie. I occasionally encounter cardboard boxes of NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBA, and N64 games in good condition, but I have never seen boxes as pristine as these. With very few exceptions, every single box looks like it would have when you tore open the gift wrapping on a Christmas in 1988, 1991, 1996, or anywhere in between. The cherry on top? I asked a Nintendo rep if all of these games were CIB (complete in box), and he confirmed they were. It’s hard to imagine a more flawlessly preserved collection of video games anywhere in the world.
These game displays take up a large percentage of the exhibit room, and their corresponding console is immediately identifiable thanks to the massive controllers that loom over every display. I spent a not-insignificant amount of time standing under these and staring straight up, marveling at the accuracy of these controllers’ appearance and texture. It’s seriously like someone took the machine from Honey, I Blew Up The Kid and pointed it at a pile of GameCube controllers and Wii Remotes, among others.
Above each game display are numerous screens that showcase gameplay from that console’s titles. If the wall of dozens of Super Nintendo games isn’t enough of a nostalgia hit, just glance up and you’ll see Donkey Kong riding a minecart, Mario flying with his cape, and Star Fox battling a boss. One of the cooler AV features throughout the museum is the use of directional audio. When you’re standing under one screen, you’ll be hearing and seeing Uniracers gameplay. Take a step or two to the left and suddenly you’re hearing and seeing Super Metroid. There are so many sources of audio in this room, but it never feels like chaos. Appropriate audio plays depending on what you’re looking at, and if you’re closer to the center of the room, it fades away so it doesn’t feel like you’re in a loud, blaring arcade. Of course, classic Nintendo tracks serve as the background music, so you might be listening to the soothing sounds of Delfino Island during your bathroom visit.
While the inside-facing walls of the console displays focus on the games, the outward-facing sides focus on the hardware, innovations, and features. Do you want to look at almost 30 Game Boy Advance SP variants in one place, including the one with the ad where Mario got a tribal tattoo? Boy, have I got the place for you. There’s also a box filled with every transparent “Funtastic” variant of the Nintendo 64 that had me daydreaming about pulling off my own Ocean’s Eleven heist. Most of these displays feature fairly common items, but I learned about the Super Game Boy 2–which only released in Japan–saw my first in-person 64DD, and was made aware of a wild peripheral that allowed people to trade stocks online on the original Famicom. Sadly, there was no shrine to the WaveBird to be found.
The museum overall is light on text, descriptions, placards, and other traditional elements of a museum. Most of this information is relegated to these outer-facing walls, with details about sales, franchises that debuted on that console, and particular hooks like the N64 featuring four controller ports or the Gamecube having a network adapter that supposedly let you play Double Dash online, despite me never knowing a single person that has ever successfully done that.
The GBA display
A clever display involves eight adjacent screens, organized from left to right to represent Nintendo’s consoles chronologically from NES to Switch. They’re synced on a cycle to show how the big first-party franchises evolved over time, meaning you’ll see Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, and so on simultaneously. In another example of Nintendo’s great attention to detail, not only does it sync the various games, it also syncs the specific gameplay moments. It’s wild to see eight simultaneous depictions of Link retrieving the Master Sword or eight versions of Rainbow Road at the same time. Longtime fans are well aware of how games have evolved visually over the decades, but it’s really impressive to see it laid out so cleanly.
Some of the details that Nintendo has included are almost impossible to notice if you don’t know what you’re looking for. One wall is a collection of game and console manuals (organized chronologically like most things at the museum), and the wall behind them looks like a subtle wave design of sorts. But it’s more than an aesthetic; it’s actually an unlabeled graph that tracks the number of products that Nintendo was shipping at that point on the timeline. This is depicted by stacked lines up until the mid-2010s or so, where the lines start being replaced by dots. Before long, there are no more lines and only dots. That’s because the stacked lines represent paper manuals, and the dots are products shipped once physical manuals went by the wayside. Nowhere is this spelled out or labeled. It’s just another little detail that Nintendo crammed into this space. And speaking of hidden little details, I spotted more than one sneaky Pikmin hanging around the museum as well.
One corner of the exhibition room is dedicated to specific franchises. Mario is the biggest display, with his games assembled in bunches that correspond to his platformers, sports games, parties, and kart racers. In a decision that shocked me, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was actually included in the display for the Yoshi series rather than among its mainline Mario series brethren. It’s a glaring mistake and one that I need to bug my Nintendo contacts about until it’s rectified.
This Mario display is in the back corner of the exhibit room, and in the lower corner of this display sits a little collection dedicated to Mario’s movies. There are a few items from last year’s tremendously successful movie, but I had to laugh when I noticed the DVD of the 1993 movie tucked away in the farthest corner of the farthest display. If it got any farther away from the center of the room, it would be outside in the courtyard.
Speaking of the back corners, another one is labeled “Storage” but still features several interesting prototypes on display. Nintendo clearly went through a lot of ideas for the original DS design before landing on the final product, which must also be the case with the early Wii Remote prototype that looks like a Frisbee with a star in the middle of it. One of my personal favorite items at the museum is a pristine Ultra 64 (the original name of the Nintendo 64) along with its controller. I saw so many mockups and pictures of that thing in EGM and Game Informer growing up, and never thought I’d get the chance to see one in person.
I’m sure this all sounds like a lot to be located in just one exhibit room, and it’s incredible to see how densely packed with gaming history it is. I certainly haven’t listed everything, either. There’s the display of fitness devices and games, a timeline of the evolution of the question mark block, the look at Nintendo’s history of experimenting with stereoscopic 3D, and plenty more.
That’s the second floor. The first floor mostly consists of interactive activities that are tied to various Nintendo products and the company’s history. It’s basically a collection of real-life minigames. Numerous rooms resembling batting cages are set up, but with the aesthetic of various rooms in a retro-themed house. It’s meant to replicate how owners of the Ultra Machine–a Nintendo-produced pitching toy–likely interacted with it in the ’60s and ’70s. Each room is different, and I tried most of them, as hitting various objects with the balls triggers different effects. I knocked down shelves in the kitchen, started Mario tracks on a record player, and made bottles rotate so they said L-U-I-G-I instead of M-A-R-I-O. At the end of your 20 pitches, a screen asks you to grab a little broom and sweep the balls towards the front of the room, which I found oddly satisfying for some reason.
My favorite room was the one with the giant controllers. Miyamoto went wild with the Honey, I Blew Up The Kid machine in this room, featuring fully functioning giant replicas of the Famicom controller, N64 controller, Wii Remotes, and SNES controller. I played with all of them, and I had to laugh at the absurdity of attempting Super Mario Bros. speedrun strats on a controller the size of my front door. All of the controllers look and feel amazing, but the N64 was my favorite by a long shot. Using a massive analog stick to try to grab Bowser’s tail is a blast, and I love that the Z trigger was activated by stomping on a little pedal on the ground.
The Super Scope game
One of the bigger spaces is filled with Super Scopes, NES Zappers, and a giant screen. Visitors can compete in a shooting-gallery game in which you’re able to aim impressively far across the room to hit another player’s targets. There’s a novelty to playing on a screen this big and with a Super Scope, but I found the game itself to be a little too reminiscent of a mediocre minigame from the Wii era.
Most of these interactive experiences are directly tied to the company’s history. You’ll use an Ultra Hand replica to grab balls from a conveyor belt, walk on a screen as you match cards with Japanese poetry on them, test your love connection with a fellow visitor via a version of Nintendo’s Love Tester machine, and control huge Game & Watch minigames with your shadow. One room is filled with basic kiosks that allow you to play from a library that’s essentially the Nintendo Switch Online collection.
Everything on the first floor is played by scanning your museum pass, which is loaded with 10 coins upon entry. These experiences range between one coin for smaller exhibits like the kiosk games, two coins for the batting cages and big controllers, and four coins for the shooting gallery. It seems like visitors will have to really pick and choose what to play on the first floor, especially if they’re with their families. It’s not like you can just pay two coins and go into the big controller room and go nuts. Each short session with a big controller costs two coins per person and per game. So if you and a friend want to team up to beat Agahnim in Link to the Past, collect 50 coins in Super Mario 64, and get to the flagpole in Super Mario Bros., that’s six of your Nintendo Museum coins right there.
Two interactive experiences take place in a separate building, which sits across a small courtyard. There, visitors can paint their own hanafuda cards with an easy-to-follow kit. This room has a very “elementary school art class” feel to it, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. It was a pleasant, low-key way to start my visit before I got bombarded with Nintendo’s gaming history. In a nearby area, a second hanafuda activity involves playing a tutorialized version of the card game against another player. It’s done with some really clever tech involving projectors and cameras that can identify what physical cards are being placed and suggest what to play next. Neither I nor my opponent had the slightest clue how to play prior to this, and by the time we left the room, we felt like we had learned the general flow of the game.
Downstairs from the hanafuda activities is Hatena Burger, the museum’s food offering. Considering how remarkable most of the museum is, I found this to be a fairly standard burger place. I’m glad there’s some sort of non-vending machine food at the location, but it felt more like a utility than a standout part of the museum. The fries came in the form of little balls instead of normal fry style, which is cool, I guess. But maybe they’re not even fries at that point; maybe they’re just potatoes. Look, I’m not a chef.
The Nintendo Museum store
It should come as no surprise that there is a substantial gift shop at the museum. It also came as no surprise to me that I wound up getting way more than was reasonable or even feasible to bring back to Minnesota. But listen: This place sells huge Nintendo 64 controller pillows, and that alone made it worth it to scramble to buy new luggage at Don Quixote so I could get it on a plane. There are sections for every Nintendo console, and they all have variations on coffee mugs, pens, pins, shirts, sticker sets, and more. It’s got to be the only place in the world with walls full of Virtual Boy and Wii U merchandise.
I left with two giant bags of merchandise, realizing that I’m probably the prime demographic for this museum. I’m a 40-year-old man whose earliest memory is playing Super Mario Bros., and virtually every single display was filled with items that I had personal memories of and fondness for. I’m also more than willing to spend too much money on a pillow that looks like a N64 controller. If that also describes you, you’re definitely going to have a great time at the museum. Once it’s open, I’m curious to hear reports from more casual gamers, younger fans, and people who brought families. My experience will not be the same one that the public will get once October 2 rolls around. I had infinite coins and could experience all the activities without any lines. It was easy for me to hop into one of those batting cages and have a fun time, but I wonder how I’d feel if I had to wait in a line and spend a fifth of my allotted coins on that experience. It could also be hard to get in for a while (tickets are currently distributed via a lottery system), and the museum is not exactly located in an easy-to-access, tourist-friendly spot. I’m confident that hardcore Nintendo fans will be thrilled with what the museum offers and that the journey will be worth it, but I can’t speak for others who aren’t as immersed in the company’s gaming history as myself.
What you get out of the museum will likely depend on what you bring into it. It feels personal in a way I’ve never really experienced at other museums. Sure, I can walk around the Met in New York City and be fascinated by the historical artifacts and artwork, but ultimately those don’t evoke any personal memories of my life. When I walked around the Nintendo Museum, I couldn’t help but timestamp all of these exhibits alongside my own experience with them. It took me back to thinking my babysitter was the coolest person in the world because I watched her beat World 8-4 long before I could. Then I moved on to the SNES section and remembered my dad rushing home during his lunch break because that would give us enough time to play a Super Mario Kart grand prix together before he went back to the store. I remembered countless Mario Party battles between me and my sisters and whatever unfortunate friend or family member who got roped in against us. I looked at the GameCube display and remembered how many friends I met during raucous Double Dash and Smash Bros. Melee sessions in my dorm room. The huge Wii Remote reminded me of how my grandpa never understood video games enough to play with me, but in the later period of his life, we’d play Wii Sports bowling together in his nursing home. Even an exhibit as recent as the Switch brought me back to when my dog Razor was a little puppy sleeping in my lap during 15-hour marathons of Breath of the Wild (a game that itself made me feel like a kid again). For me, these displays and exhibits were far more than simple assortments of video game boxes in shockingly good condition. They were a reminder of so many great memories in my life, and a reminder of why I love games and pursued them as a career. In talking to numerous other attendees at the event, I know that I wasn’t alone in this feeling.
I don’t expect every visitor to the Nintendo Museum to be as affected by it as I was. But I suspect that if someone is interested enough to take the journey to Kyoto to visit it, they’re likely enough of a Nintendo fan to find many things to love about it. And for those lifelong fans like me, it can be a truly touching experience unlike any other museum. It’s an amazing look at a company that, despite its eccentricities and occasional missteps, has had a clear design philosophy, confidence, and focus on fun that dates back decades before Mario jumped over his first barrel.
