When the Nintendo Museum was announced back in 2021, the reveal gave it a slightly different name to what it launched as. Back then it was known by the tentative name of the ‘Nintendo Gallery’ – and that conjures up a much fairer, more appropriate image of the final product than the title ‘Nintendo Museum’.
The thing about the museum is this: it’s not really bucket list stuff. I firmly believe that pretty much anybody who flies out to Kyoto explicitly to go to the museum will likely end up with more than a little pang of disappointment. Ultimately, it’s a fairly run-of-the-mill affair; cute, and sweet, and well-designed – but you won’t find anything earth-shattering here that redefines or recontextualizes your knowledge and opinion of Nintendo as a company. For lack of a better word, it’s sanitized.
When you dig into the history and background of the Nintendo Museum, it all makes a little more sense. It’s an open secret, I’m told, that the museum is basically curated by a fan – a man who had put on several unofficial Nintendo exhibitions over the years from his own vast suite of rarities and collectibles. Nintendo drafted him in and then provided their own official touch – but much of the museum still feels like the sort of thing that could’ve been curated by a fan.
The museum’s main floor is, indeed, a gallery. Gorgeous glass cases line the walls, each sitting beneath a gigantic version of each console’s controller. That’s your indication of what each case contains – head to the giant N64 pad and beneath it you’ll find a double-sided case filled with delights from the console – key titles from every region boxed and in beautiful condition, notes about release dates, all the key accessories – it’s a little time capsule, basically.
Most museums or galleries are structured. You’re guided through the exhibits one-by-one, a narrative forming as you progress. There’s none of that here. In a Nintendo-like touch, once you ascend the darkened escalator into the exhibit floor, the boot up sounds of Nintendo machines echoing around you, you’re set free. Nintendo clearly wants you to do what comes natural – which, of course, is to gravitate towards the console that means the most to you. I naturally immediately drifted towards the SNES and N64. Somebody half my age would probably end up moving to the DS or Wii. Absolutely nobody visits the Wii U first.
These display cases are lovely, but for hardcore fans there is little here that you haven’t seen before. As I meandered the gallery floor, I watched other guests, however, and realized the potential. I see some western guy with a clearly vaguely bored partner going absolutely bonkers when he sees the Japanese box of Pokemon Green – he had no idea a Green version even existed. Later I see the same guy with his jaw on the floor when he looks at the cabinets holding the oldest items – a guy realizing for the first time that Nintendo is over a hundred years old and used to make analogue toys. I see a young Japanese lad absolutely losing his mind at the Splatoon display. There are delights here, then – just not perhaps in the way the word ‘Museum’ might suggest.
A museum suggests an insight into history as well as just seeing stuff – and there’s little of that. The displays highlight neat little facts, like which famous franchises made their debuts on which machine – but there’s nothing about the development of these games or even the people behind them. Shigeru Miyamoto’s signature at the entrance is the only real nod to any creator, in fact. I was particularly surprised to not find any sort of tribute to Hiroshi Yamaguchi or Satoru Iwata, legendary stewards of the brand now no longer with us. But then again… That isn’t the Nintendo way. I get that. It’s about the games.
But there’s nothing about the games here really, either. There are boxes of finished games, and TVs that show nostalgic footage and make nostalgic noises. I particularly loved one wall that showed various series’, like Mario and Zelda, over the ages – the first screen shows an NES game, the next SNES, then N64 – someone can look and see the history in front of them.
That’s lovely and neat. But if you walk in here thinking you might see a design document or two pinned up behind glass to show even a glimpse at the actual process, you’ve got another thing coming.
“I just want to see a photo of Miyamoto smoking a cigarette in front of a computer while programming Mario World, you know?” I turn and say to a friend. “Or what about a photo of Mario Segale,” I add, speaking of the American businessman that Nintendo used to rent warehouse space from, who the world’s most famous plumber was named after. Nothing like this is remotely present.
There is one concession to this sort of thing – but how it’s presented points to the fact that it’s a late addition. In a separate cabinet different from all the others, stuck in a corner and with none of the presentational flare, there’s a little prototype showcase. Here there are N64 controllers made out of clay, a weird Game Boy Micro prototype that looks like an old Nokia phone, bizarre experimental Wii remote designs previously only seen in magazines, a kitbashed Wii U prototype from the (very early) point when they should’ve realized it was all a bad idea, and stuff like that.
Behind this display you can just about make up those moving archive shelves – and it’s all filled with stuff that, to my eye, is more interesting than most of the stuff in the gallery. And you can’t even get to it! I end up straining, leaning close to the glass to peer around a corner I’m not supposed to be able to see around to see shelves that aren’t technically part of the exhibit. D’oh.
A decade ago, the late Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata accidentally said one of the best things anyone has ever said about the company. When being probed by investors about the as-yet unannounced next-generation of Nintendo hardware – the machine that would become the Switch – he promised that the system would offer a “Nintendo-like solution”. I love this phrase. It is an immovable part of my personal gaming lexicon.
The concept of a “Nintendo-like solution” perfectly encapsulates the nature of Nintendo – off the beaten path, going its own way, often brilliant, sometimes obtuse; the phrase can be both praise and pejorative. These solutions come for better and for worse. The industry-shaking nature of the Wii is a Nintendo-like solution. So is the bonkers way we media have to redeem pre-release codes for games in Europe, which resembles something designed by the Riddler. The genius of the analogue stick and controller rumble are Nintendo-like solutions. But so are bloody Wii friend codes.
Anyway, my point is that the museum is very much a Nintendo-like solution to the idea of this kind of attraction. The presentation is delightful, and it’s packed with lovely easter eggs and clever ideas. At the same time, the very nature of Nintendo means that many obvious things for such a place are absent, simply because such concepts don’t fit with the Nintendo mindset. Thus no focus on behind-the-scenes, next to no mention of Nintendo’s brilliant creators, and absolutely no secrets spilled. It’s as sterile as a hospital ward. That’s a Nintendo-like solution.
Downstairs from the main gallery floor, the Nintendo-like approach really kicks in. This is where you’re allowed to fire up your cameras, and also where you’ll find the interactive exhibits celebrating Nintendo’s history. I love the old-meets-new feeling of it all.
I don’t know if it’s deliberate, but it all feels like a deliberate mash-up of the eras of Nintendo. The carnival-like game where you use a recreation of Nintendo’s 1966 toy ‘Ultrahand’ to reach out and pick up Pokeballs and Voltorbs off a moving carousel brings together two iconic pieces of Nintendo IP that made their debut thirty years apart.
When you go into the batting cages with another old Nintendo toy, the scoring system, music, and sound effects recall Mario sports games and the vast success of Wii Sports. I’m technologically wowed by the largest-scale light gun game I’ve ever played – while playing with a facsimile of guns from the NES and SNES eras. Even the emulated Nintendo Switch Online interface attached to the retro games you play on giant controllers speaks to the old meeting the new.
This is the best bit of the experience. Over in another building, you can create your own Hanafuda cards in a ridiculously tranquil room as Animal Crossing music pootles away in the background, and then play the related card game using a futuristic-feeling digital-meets-analogue interpretation where cameras above you watch your moves and projectors tell you what you need to do next.
When you’re done with all these interactive activities, you can log into your Nintendo account that you usually use on Switch and see your records. Even trophies are recorded – I now have my visit, and my 2nd place finish in the light gun shooting, immortalized on my account. That, too, is a lovely touch – something that draws this in as a real ‘Nintendo’ experience, attached to the rest of the ecosystem.
Even the food is a surprising delight – not exactly the best burger of my life, but ‘Hatena Burger’ (named after the ? block from Mario, which in Japan is called a ‘Hatena Block’) feels like… a Nintendo-like solution to the idea of a fast food restaurant! The idea is that the burger you get could be as much a mystery as what power up might spring from one of those blocks – with a huge number of toppings, there are literally tens of thousands of possible combinations. You can choose your own, go for something off a set menu, or go for something random. The interface you order on, via your phone, looks like it was built by the people who did Labo and Game Builder Garage. And you know what? It probably was! A Nintendo-like solution.
For what it’s worth, despite all my thoughtful criticism, I really enjoyed the Nintendo Museum. I’d had my expectations lowered by friends – and that actually really helped. Plus, however I felt about the activities, the Museum-exclusive merch in the store is absolutely packed with stuff for the likes of us – I spent about £300, to my eternal shame, and I didn’t even buy one of those stupid pillows (my wife would kill me).
With that said, I think the best thing anyone planning to visit the Nintendo Museum can do is to temper expectations, and to not make a long-distance pilgrimage to primarily visit the museum. Think of it as a gallery with some interactive bits rather than a fully-fledged museum. Think of it as a nice way to kill three or four hours, not a whole day-trip. If you do this, you’ll be pleasantly surprised, as I was.
Plus, I dare say the museum will get better over time. For one, I’m told by friends who have visited more than once that it is already evolving – cabinets changing, being curated, things being added and tweaked. Nintendo is clearly listening to feedback. Second, this feels like the sort of concept that could easily travel. I wonder what sits in the archives of Nintendo of America or Nintendo Europe. There’s legs in this concept – I just hope, in time, Nintendo becomes more willing to give us a greater glimpse behind the curtain.
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