Nintendo Museum — Attraction in Uji

VERDICT: It's not much of a museum. Don't get me wrong, it's cool enough, has a lot of fun Nintendo stuff, but it's poor as a museum and is more of an exhibition. I'm from NYC, which has over 170 museums, so I think I know my way around museums and how they should be presented.

A museum showcases its treasures and artifacts, spaces them out and adorns each one with placards giving a little history and context With Nintendo's history there's so much to tell about the company and its ascendance to the most successful video game company in the world.

The Nintendo Museum has none of this. Nothing like "This is the first game that Shigeru Miyamoto developed" and a working machine of Donkey Kong or anything like that, and certainly no engraved placard explaining why X-game is so significant. Nothing. What they do have is an entire glass display 'case' dedicated for each and every Nintendo franchise ever created, piled up with games, but nothing of historical value explained to visitors.

What they do provide is a highly annoying tutorial -- it's so Nintendo -- on How To Enter The Exhibit. They'd easily shave 10 minutes off the overall wait to get into your time slot if they didn't tell you how to walk through a turnstile.

You definitely see things you haven't seen before, like old toys and games, especially the Ultra Hand item-grabbing game, which you can (and later buy in the shop). The downstairs games are the real attraction, like playing a giant game of Super Mario 64 using an enormous N64 controller with your family. But it's a novelty, and not necessarily worth waiting an hour for.

Some games like the Love Test are poorly explained, and sheer chaos to play. It's a cute but utterly disposable experience. The batting cages are fun, but I was surprisingly bad at this. When you hit the ball against anything in the background, you get bells and whistles and moving picture frames like you're in a pinball machine.

The real appeal is the shop. You basically pay the entrance fee so you can look at some Nintendo displays and then go spend the rest of your money in the merch shop. What I can say about this shop is that everything is worth it. The little blind box keychains are super detailed. The shirts repping each console are 97% cotton, and have colored hems at the neck and waist.

Every console is well represented by pins, pens, stickers, notebooks, shirts, mugs, etc. One of the coolest things are game box covers from every generation of games reprinted as high-quality stickers. No Wave Race 64 or Sin & Punishment stickers tho.

Then line at the Nintendo Cafe/restaurant wasn't too bad, but I didn't feel the need to wait in line, so I just had some CocoIchi curry across the street instead.

PSA: If you go, make sure you activate your personalized ticket in advance and select your Mii, or else you'll get default Mario instead.

TLDR: A great exhibition of Nintendo stuff from its entire history, but zero educational value, should be much much bigger to adequately do justice to everything on display. I learned nothing by visiting, but the shop did empty my wallet. The interactive games were stupid fun that are not worth waiting two hours for.

This is such a missed opportunity is that Nintendo did such a great job with their 3DS app/game for the Louvre, you'd think they'd be more than ready for their own museum. Even a QR code (feel free to steal this, Nintendo) that you can scan with your phone that displays a curated rundown of each franchise. Tons of people will visit the museum that are not hyper-educated about each franchise, so it wouldn't be wasted effort. How they could build a Nintendo Museum and then have zero museum-like...

The newly open the Nintendo's Museum in situated in Kyoto, Japan. I visited in early November 2024 and these are my thoughts.

Entry is predominantly gained by drawing lots in a lottery. Can you go to the Nintendo Museum website and use your Nintendo ID to log on and apply. I was lucky enough to get a ticket in November when they opened up to the General Public.

The entry process into the museum is pretty strict, you can't have any luggage and you need to go through a security checkpoint and confirm you have a reservation even before they let you in the gate.

After going through security, you're in a courtyard that has a couple different warp pipes and blocks that you can take photos together with. To the right is Hatana Burger, and to the left is the entrance to the actual museum. Once you get inside the museum you can take a photo with the interactive toads that when you touch they make sounds. Then there is the front desk where you can register to take place in the various activities like making hanafuda cards.

On the second floor is the actual museum, which is honestly pretty lackluster. On display are various Nintendo systems and games Nintendo has released over the years. There are a few rarer things and a few prototypes, but nothing that hasn't been photographed a thousand times over and can be found online. I find it incredibly odd that people are not allowed to take photographs anywhere inside the actual museum. I honestly think that it's because if people knew how lame it actually was thrn they would waste time.visiting. Minus two stars...

The only saving grace of the Nintendo Museum is the interactive area downstairs on the first floor. There are a few different physical games like using a giant N64/SNES/NES controller, a foam bat game, a grabber game, and a gun game where you can use a super scope or a zapper to play a quick rail shooter. Personally I like the zapper game and the foam bat game. Each game costs coins, and you're only allotted 10 per visit. You don't have enough coins to play all the games. Minus one star.

The Museum shop was pretty good. They had some really unique items that you can only purchase at the museum. I got a few of the giant controller cushions, but not long after I bought mine they sold out. I was the first appointment of the day. Therefore, if you are visiting the museum and want those cushions buy them as soon as you arrive.

Overall, I found the entire experience to be rather lackluster for the time investment while vacationing in Japan. Universal Studios is much better, but it costs a lot more. Also, the burger place is really quite bad. The burgers are literally the worst meal that I've had in Japan. I don't know how you could screw up something as simple as a burger when there are so many really great burger restaurants in Japan, but somehow they figured it out. It was also one of the most expensive meals that I've had outside of a fine dining restaurant in Japan. If you decide to visit the museum definitely DON'T visit the burger place.

Overall, I would not come back, and don't recommend visiting unless you're a die-hard...

A real mixed bag, mostly disappointing.

The entire entry system is too much. A whole lottery system months in advance, all the hoops to jump through for identification, guards at the street checking passes, super strict timed entry, security/passport checks, etc all seem a bit crazy. And the result is a museum that's still overflowing with people. It's not like they're keeping the crowds down. We left with coins still on our cards because there were huge lines for everything and we didn't want to spend 8 hours there. It's like disney, you would spend most of your day waiting in lines rather than having fun.

Shockingly, it's not really a museum. You enter to a big room that's just walls of games broken down by system. I can see a catalog of system games online so it had little interest to me (or anyone else apparently). The outer walls have some older stuff like the playing cards, blocks, and toys they used to make, but that's really it. This place needed a real museum space that talked about the history of the company and its products, had exhibits in a linear fashion so you can see how the company changed over time. There's none of that. They don't really honor the history of the company at all and it's very weird to see that missing.

The hanafuda card making was the highlight of the day. Entry times were wide open and not hard to get, probably because of the price, but we felt it was worth it. The organization left a little to be desired. We got all the stuff out of the envelope to start looking at the parts and getting an idea of the steps and somebody came over to scold us for "starting" early. We hadn't done anything yet. They wanted us to sit and wait 10min just so an MC could tell everyone we're going to make cards now and to officially start. Then when the time was winding down and people were still working they tried to rush us by pointing out how little time we had left. Some of the steps involve letting ink and glue dry so it seems like the sooner you let us start the better. You work at your own pace, so I'm not sure why we had to sit doing nothing for so long just to hear a guy say "go". Despite all that, it's a very rewarding activity, totally worth it.

The play area is interesting but again the lines and crowds keep you from enjoying it. Since the room of games upstairs doesn't hold much interest everyone goes to the play area and it's wall to wall people.

The shop has a lot of cool stuff, not nothing they don't already have at the nintendo stores. That was a bit disappointing. Not to mention the lack of size options in the shirts. Japan hasn't seemed to realize their large is a small in a lot of places. My very skinny adult son needed a LL (XL). Most of the shirts stopped L and LL. If you aren't that small, tough luck.

It's Nintendo Amusement Park, not Nintendo Museum. If you know that going in and don't mind waiting 45min to play on a big controller for 2min before heading to the next 45min line, then you'll have a good time. I'm a huge nintendo fan from childhood and this place was mostly...