Kyoto: Nintendo Museum Offers Visitors Hands-On Experience of Game History; Hanafuda Card Games Also Enjoyable

The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:06 JST, October 19, 2024

UJI, Kyoto — The Nintendo Museum, which recently opened in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, exhibits almost all the video games and consoles that Nintendo has ever sold in Japan.

The museum exhibits a variety of the company’s products, including hanafuda, playing cards that the company has been selling since its founding in 1889, along with video games and consoles, as well as other toys, showing visitors how Nintendo has become one of the world’s largest game companies.

In the exhibition space, a Family Computer, or Famicom, which went on sale in 1983, is on display, along with subsequent gaming consoles and gaming software. The Game and Watch portable game console, which came before Famicom, can also be seen at the museum.

The museum also has a space where visitors can use huge controllers to play historically popular video games. The museum offers many fun experiences such as Japanese traditional Hyakunin-isshu card game that visitors can play with their smartphones.

“We hope that people of all generations will enjoy the museum and that the museum will help revitalize the city,” Shigeru Miyamoto, executive fellow and representative director of Nintendo, who supervised the museum project, said at a preview of the museum on Sept. 25.

The museum is about a five-minute walk from Kintetsu Ogura Station. It stands on the former site of the company’s Uji Ogura hanafuda card factory, which also served as a repair center for video game consoles. Reservations are required to enter.