Everything there is to discover inside Nintendo's first museum

While we spent the summer singing “switch it up like Nintendo” along with Sabrina Carpenter, the Japanese video game company was busy making the final tweaks to one of its biggest projects in recent years. The Nintendo Museum will open to the public on October 2nd in Kyoto at the Uji Kokura factory, once a production site for the company’s “physical” toys. As expected, the museum will not only focus on showcasing the company’s history and all its inventions (Nintendo has stated that all the brand’s projects will be displayed, starting from the 1889 playing cards), but will also emphasize interactive activities. Through new technologies, as explained by some representatives at the project's latest presentation, visitors will be able to interact with each of the devices launched by Nintendo throughout its history, as well as discover surprising details about video game design. The museum will be divided into three different sections: Learn, Experience, and Create & Play. Of course, there will be a café, Hatena Burger, decorated with Zelda stained glass windows, brick-style booths in the style of Super Mario and Animal Crossing posters, and a gift shop where you can purchase all the Nintendo merchandise, including some limited-edition items.

The museum will be free for children up to 5 years old, while it will cost about 6 euros for visitors aged 6 to 12 years, 12 euros for teenagers, and about 18 euros for adults. Upon entry, each guest will be given ten tokens to use for playing with the various available devices. You can choose from activities like Shiguruden, a game that involves using a smart device and a floor screen that projects poems from the Hyakunin Isshu, Zapper & Scope, where you have to shoot Mario’s antagonist characters, Ultra Machine, where you hit a ball with a baseball bat, and also Ultra Hand, Love Tester, or Game & Watch to calculate a couple’s love level or play with your shadow. There will also be the opportunity to try the Nintendo classics, both in their original version and with giant controllers to try out with friends. After passing the game section, visitors find themselves in rooms where they can discover the game that started Nintendo’s long history, the Hanafuda cards. By reservation, it will be possible to create your own deck and then learn how to use it, a unique opportunity to deepen your knowledge of the Nintendo world while enjoying a moment of leisure.

While booking your visit to the first Nintendo Museum is as simple as accessing it through your Nintendo account, the company has set up a special lottery for the first entries. Unlike other interactive exhibition spaces, such as museums that blend painting with digital elements or theme parks designed to encourage purchases, the Nintendo Museum aims to be a “public relations facility”, as the company described it, a space designed not only to entertain enthusiasts but also to preserve the history of one of the most revolutionary video game companies in the world.