From Hanafuda to Video Games: Nintendo’s Living Legacy in Kyoto

Since childhood, I’ve always associated Nintendo with a sense of curiosity, the joy of play, and a certain boldness in design. Long before I set foot in Japan, I played their games without having the slightest idea that this company, one of the most influential in the entertainment industry worldwide, was based in Kyoto and had been founded in 1889, producing hanafuda playing cards.

For a Nintendo fan, Kyoto feels almost like a pilgrimage site. The company is intimately connected to the urban fabric, former headquarters have become refined hospitality spaces, and contemporary retail stores transform shopping into an immersive, playful experience. And just beyond the city center, in Uji, an industrial building has been reborn as the Nintendo Museum, a place where over a century of reinvention unfolds under one roof. 

The Nintendo Museum: Archive, Playground, and Industrial Memory

Housed in the former Uji Ogura Plant, originally constructed in 1969, the Nintendo Museum bridges industrial heritage and cultural imagination. The building once produced hanafuda and Western playing cards before serving as a repair center for game consoles. In 2024, it reopens as a carefully structured narrative space, an environment that presents Nintendo’s history as ongoing experimentation.

Exhibition Building 1 forms the heart of the museum. On the second floor, “The Age of Exploration” presents Nintendo’s evolution chronologically, divided into two broad eras: from its founding through the 1960s, and from the 1970s to the 2000s. The layout is circular and non-prescriptive. There is no fixed path. Visitors move clockwise (or not) constructing their own connections across decades of design and technology.

Consoles are displayed in pristine condition, forming a complete lineage from early hardware to modern systems. Suspended overhead, oversized replicas of iconic controllers mark each era, transforming familiar objects into spatial landmarks.

Behind the hardware, shelves display software releases organized by region (Japan, North America, Europe) inviting subtle comparisons in packaging aesthetics and graphic design. Monitors above screen game-play footage and period commercials; as you approach, audio activates, layering sound over image and turning static display into immersive memory.

The Storage section expands the narrative beyond mainstream success. Here stand 1980s arcade cabinets, prototype home consoles developed since 1989, and transitional devices such as the Disk Writer and Disk Fax.

The Evolution of Game Series section traces franchises such as Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon through successive hardware generations. Eight synchronized monitors display game-play chronologically, revealing how design language evolves in tandem with technological capability. Nearby, the Art Gallery presents character sketches and development documents, emphasizing that every globally recognized icon begins as a line on paper.

Moving around in this space gives the impression of retracing one’s gaming life and sharing memories with people who played the same consoles, the same games, and had the same experiences. Generations overlap and meet, some having started on the Famicom or Game Boy, while others played Metroid or Kirby for the first time on the DS.

On the first floor, preservation gives way to participation. Visitors receive digital “play coins” with admission, usable across interactive installations inspired by Nintendo’s pre-Famicom toys. Ultra Hand SP revisits Gunpei Yokoi’s 1966 extending grabber in a dynamic scoring challenge. Ultra Machine SP transforms the 1968 pitching toy into a retro domestic batting experience. Love Tester SP re-imagines the 1969 novelty device with contemporary humor.

The most striking installation is undoubtedly “Big Controllers.” Designed for two players, these oversized controllers for Family Computer, Super Famicom, Nintendo 64, and Wii transform familiar mechanisms into a veritable collaborative choreography. The body becomes an integral part of the interface. Playing games on such a colossal scale makes coordination visible, theatrical, and elicits laughter from children and their parents, and even from those waiting in line before their turn. Ultimately, this is what Nintendo has always set as its mission: to make kids of all ages smile.

Exhibition Building 2 houses the museum shop, extending the experience through carefully curated merchandise, while Exhibition Building 3 deepens the connection to origins. At Hatena Burger, industrial echoes remain in the design details. Upstairs, workshops invite visitors to craft hanafuda cards or learn hana-awase through projection-assisted play, closing the historical loop that began in 1889.

The Nintendo Museum stages a conversation between paper cards and digital worlds, between industrial memory and global imagination, and it does so with the confidence of a company that never stopped experimenting. Nintendo has been declared finished many times, but it is more vibrant and creative than ever.

A Physical and Cultural Footprint in Kyoto

For visitors willing to look closely, Kyoto becomes a map of Nintendo’s past and present identities.

Hotel Marufukuro, the former headquarters of Nintendo, has been meticulously restored and transformed into an elegant boutique hotel, preserving the building’s early twentieth-century character. The Yamauchi family, descendants of Nintendo’s founding lineage, oversaw its rebirth, ensuring continuity between history and contemporary use. Even for those who do not stay overnight, the exterior alone evokes a sense of nostalgia, a distant era when Nintendo wasn’t yet making video games.

A more immediate expression of Nintendo’s contemporary presence appears at Nintendo KYOTO, located inside the Takashimaya department store. At the entrance, a gigantic Mario emerges from a green pipe, next to which visitors can take photos. On the rooftop, familiar elements (goal poles, question blocks, brick platforms) create playful photo spaces that echo the architecture of the games themselves. The retail environment is immersive and meticulously crafted, balancing commercial appeal with thoughtful design. It demonstrates how Nintendo curates its brand in three dimensions, turning shopping into an extension of storytelling. 

Almost directly below the shop, between exits 10 and 11 of the underpass connecting Karasuma Station to Kyoto Kawaramachi Station, is a long Super Mario mural stretching approximately 100 meters and adorning the walls on both sides. It depicts the world of the original Super Mario Bros. and a world using more recent artwork. Some Pikmin, another creation of the creative genius Shigeru Miyamoto, are also featured.

Not far away, in the Gojo district, Edit Mode offers a more independent yet equally meaningful interpretation of Nintendo culture. The studio produces THE KING OF GAMES, officially licensed apparel that translates game iconography into contemporary fashion. Housed in a modest wooden building, the first floor serves as a retail space while the upper levels function as offices and creative studios. Edit Mode illustrates how Nintendo’s influence extends beyond corporate structures into Kyoto’s creative community, inspiring reinterpretation.

Near Kyoto Station, Nintendo’s current headquarters houses the teams responsible for shaping present and future projects. From Jujo Station, sitting on the subway, you can see the large white building Nintendo Development Center No. 1, admittedly rather impersonal, especially compared to the brand’s colorful worlds.

The geographical footprint expands further west to Osaka, where Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan translates intellectual property into architectural spectacle. Here, attractions transform game-play mechanics into spatial experiences. Though situated outside Kyoto Prefecture, the park represents a large-scale, playful extension of ideas first conceived in Kyoto’s offices and studios.

What began with handcrafted playing cards has evolved into one of the most influential creative enterprises in modern entertainment. In Kyoto, Nintendo is embedded in the buildings, neighborhoods, and creative communities. The city offers not only a retrospective look at video game history but also a rich and nuanced experience of the intersection of industry and imagination. Walking through Kyoto as a Nintendo fan is to feel that the birthplace of a global pop culture phenomenon remains more vibrant than ever, continuing to shape worlds both digital and real.