A reader describes his adventures in Kyoto’s Nintendo Museum and how he lucked out in getting tickets for the newly opened venue.
I got back from Japan yesterday, having spent a lot of time walking for over two weeks and the looong flight home I can tell you… I’m knackered this morning. I also feel very fortunate to have spent some time in this amazing country, the people are genuinely the best I’ve met anywhere in the world.
I had hoped to get tickets for the Nintendo Museum before I left the UK, but no such luck as the ballots had already passed for the dates we were going to be there and the next ballot was for tickets in January! For context, I’ve long been a Nintendo fan. I just think they make the best games in the world and ones that work with technology in the most interesting of ways. So much so I was importing their consoles from Japan in the days when they were released months and months before Europe.
However, I digress. I was tidying up the icons I’d added to my phone for the trip while on a train in Kyoto – the standard links to good restaurants and travel advice – when I saw one that I couldn’t recall, clicked it to realise it was the one to the Nintendo ticket availability website. ‘Might as well give it a go’ I thought… no way! Tickets had seemingly been handed back for two days’ time, I surely couldn’t be that lucky?!
I only had a data plan for Japan and it turned out you need to be able to call a number to confirm them, so between my wife and I we managed to get the authority sorted and the ticket confirmation duly popped into my inbox. To say I was overjoyed would be an understatement. I’ve looked regularly since and not once have I seen tickets for a date appear, so in terms of luck I think this could be up there with winning the lottery.
The museum is about a half an hour train ride outside of central Kyoto and it’s obvious when you arrive that this really is a Japanese suburb, there’s little else around other than houses. A slow 10 minute walk gets you to the front gate (it was hot) where you are met by security. They check the entry time on your ticket and you are put into lines for your slot. We had arrived about 15 minutes before we were due to go in, so joined the line and waited for our turn.
When going through security you are checked for food, drink, and anything else untoward and then you are given your credit card style token. You can choose to either have a Mii image or a Mario one (8-bit style) and we went for the latter. This card is used inside the museum for playing the interactive elements, it holds 10 coins and these are used up as you take part in the activities inside the museum.
Once through security you are in a little courtyard, this has some grass mounds and some photo opportunity Mario-related items, pipes you can stand in, and blocks you can stand under and jump to look like you are breaking… a nice little introduction.
Time to go in, there are two buildings, one being the museum and interactive video game bit to the left and the other a family area where you can create cards and a burger restaurant to the right.
We went into the main building on the left, not realising you needed to book a slot for the card creation area and subsequently didn’t really go in there because by the time we finished the first section, some three hours later, the next time available was three hours away and our schedule wouldn’t allow us to hang around that long (which we were a bit disappointed about).
Inside the main entrance you are met by a line of five Toads of various colours, if you move their heads they make noises and sing – it’s trivial stuff but just feels so Nintendo. Heading further in you are told in no uncertain terms that you can’t record or photograph anything in the museum, you are only allowed to capture things in the interactive area. This is a bit of a shame, as the museum part is really interesting, and as far as I could see there isn’t really anything that you wouldn’t be able to find online with a bit of searching.
As you ascend the escalator a Nintendo fanboy or fangirl’s dream appears before your eyes, all the Nintendo consoles laid out, Game & Watch through to Switch. There are also various versions of each console (e.g. Pokémon N64, Panasonic GameCube, etc.) and their peripherals… lightguns, robots, printers, connectors, etc. What follows are lots of moments where you say, ‘Oh do you remember that’ or ‘I never knew you could get one of those for that!’. There are details on sales by region and other information relating to each console’s lifecycle; looking through all the items laid out takes some time but is really fascinating.
Also in this area are items relating to Nintendo’s history of producing other items: a pushchair that folds easily, a periscope, a ping pong ball launcher, board games (a fair few with a Disney association), toy cars, card games, etc. A really broad and diverse range of items, many of which you’d probably never have any idea that Nintendo had produced before. Lots of these have old TV adverts running above them on old CRTs, many of which are ridiculously funny in a dated kind of way.
Lastly in this section, is a small range of items that were used in the design process for things like the Balance Board and controllers, although limited in quantity these are really interesting as they showed how items evolved in their development, as some controllers lost or gained elements as they went through the design process. In some cases, literally controllers being cut in half and angled differently to make them more comfortable to hold.
We moved onto the interactive section downstairs, where there is a section with oversized controllers for the N64, Wii (controllers and Balance Board), SNES, and NES. My wife and I tried the Wii flying game and the Balance Board marble experience. For the flying, my wife took the front of the massive Wii controller while I took the back. It cost us two coins each, we did a decent job of using the motion controls to aim the small plane at balloons to pop them and fly through the tunnel in the mountain without hitting the sides.
It was great fun working together, as there was a real need to say ‘left’, ‘up’, etc. in order to not get massively out of sync. Two more coins for the Balance Board; it’s tricky and while waiting we notice two other people doing really well on their score, getting lots of the marbles through the holes and not losing many over the edge. When our time came we more than matched them, although it got a little heated when my wife accused me of coming over too far on her side of the board… something that, after years of marriage, is repeated when stealing the bed clothes at night!
So that was four of our 10 coins spent; next up was a row of baseball batting cages made up like front rooms, where the aforementioned ping pong ball launcher from Nintendo’s past is used to pitch balls at you. These you must try and strike back with a foam baseball bat in order to hit household items in the cage, making things like printers leap to life or turn TVs on when you hit them. My wife missed the first few balls, which was immensely amusing to me and I went on to beat her score comfortably. Another two coins down.
Our last experience was a lightgun game, costing a large four coins, where a row of around 15 competitors line up and chose either the bazooka (SNES) or pistol (NES) to shoot at a massive screen with various Nintendo characters on. Points are given for hitting Bob-ombs, Koopas, and Goombas and lost for hitting Mario, Luigi, and Peach. It goes over three rounds and then all the points are added up and first, second and third placed players are announced. Unbelievably I won and in another brilliant piece of Japanese behaviour all the other players and the people in the queue applaud the winner. I can’t lie, I felt brilliant.
We left the entertainment and popped into the shop, and I must admit that the selection wasn’t as good as I had hoped. Some decent stuff but nothing that made me think ‘I must have that’, so we bought a couple of Nintendo Museum T-shirts and made our way back to our hotel. Overall, an amazing time was had, one that I feel really privileged to have had the opportunity to experience. If anyone gets the chance to go I thoroughly recommend it, but if you are lucky enough then remember to book the card creation bit on arrival!
By reader Birdmanrob
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