[Long post warning!] Today marks the second anniversary of the opening of the Marafukuro hotel in Kyoto, on April 1st, 2022. It's a good moment to share my personal experience visiting this special place in Nintendo's history: the former headquarters of Nintendo, situated at the site where the company originated back in 1889. Nintendo shop in Shōmen-dōri in Kyoto, early 20th century In previous posts, I've shared the background of this building and it's neighborhood (check it out here), as well as some of its interior details. Shōmen-dōri in 2023 Many years before the hot ..read more

In a previous blog post I discussed a very rare Nintendo item from the 1960s called the Time Bomb (タイムボーン). For decades, this Nintendo-branded licensed toy had remained out of sight, even to the most dedicated Nintendo collectors and historians. That is, until one appeared for auction on Yahoo Auctions Japan in 2021. An unknown lucky winner took it home for ¥256,555. As you can imagine, ever since that moment, I have been on the lookout for another Time Bomb. And last November, two and a half years after that first discovery, I managed to acquire one offered by an American seller through ..read more

A couple of years ago, I reported about a set of vintage Nintendo playing cards from the 1950s, that had attracted my special interest. They were for the Takarazuka Revue, a Japanese theater company, and represented some of the earliest (possibly the earliest) Nintendo trump (トランプ) decks with a marketing purpose. It is a beautiful set of cards, with full color pictures. That previous post can be found here. Unfortunately, the deck that I had found at the time was missing the box. But that has since been corrected. Recently a version with box came into my possession, and you can see it here ..read more

In today's post, we'll delve into the first advertisement for a Nintendo product in Europe. At least, the earliest one discovered thus far. Displayed here is an almanac from Italy for the year 1973. This almanac, known as Barba-Nera, is a local institution and a synonymous term for almanac in Italy. Remarkably, Barba-Nera still continues its annual publication today, over 250 years since its inception in 1762. At its essence, the almanac provides information on sunrise and sunset times throughout the year, religious calendars, weather forecasts, and horoscopes. This is complemented by agri ..read more

In today's blog post, we will explore Nintendo's 1989 company overview (会社概況). This document presents the then-century-old company poised to enter the networked information age, riding on the massive success of the Famicom and NES game consoles and their related games, as the company aimed for even greater ventures. The overview spans sixteen pages, all printed in full color, with all text in Japanese. The opening pages depict an aspirational image of a home console soaring across the globe, accompanied by the caption: "Leading the world of home entertainment" (ホームエンターテインメントの世界をリードする). The t ..read more

As mentioned on this blog before, the Nintendo Mini Game Series from the 1970s is one of my favorites from Nintendo's past. It consists of a wide range of colorful, fun toys and games. And the range is getting wider still! Not that new ones are released, but entries in the series are still discovered to this day. I mean, literally today. For many years I thought there were fifty different ones in total. Of those fifty, I managed to track down copies of forty-eight games. The two remaining ones eluded me for the longest time: Diving Shot (ダイビングショット) and Space Ball (スペースボール). In 2019, I managed ..read more

Sometimes good things take a while to come to fruition, and today's blog post is a good example of this. When I started the meet the collectors series, back in 2012, one of the people I reached out to was a collector called Christian (aka Vinelodge). I had known him as a serious collector of vintage Nintendo toys and games already for a while, at a time when this hobby was still quite uncommon. He was (is) one of the pioneers. Christian was interested to participate, but said that the presentation of his collection needed some attention before he was happy to have it featured. "Give me a chanc ..read more

We continue with the second part of detailed look at each of the individual cards in Nintendo Kyoto Souvenir playing cards from the 1950s. The first part can be found here. Diamonds The diamonds cards show a wide variety of landmarks and topics related to Kyoto: The Kamikamo Shrine (上賀茂神社) The Mifune Festival (三船祭) The Hozu Rapid (保津急流) The Golden pavilion (金閣寺) The Tower of Toji Temple (五重塔, 東寺) Maiko, Geisha Apprentice (舞妓) Kyoto Minami-za Theater (南座) The Ryoanji Temple (竜安寺) Kyoto Station (京都駅) Kyoto Prefectural Government (京都府庁) The Silver Pavilion (銀閣寺) City Hall (京都市役所) Gion Festival ..read more

In this post we will take a closer look at the each of the individual cards in the 1950's Nintendo Kyoto Souvenir deck. The virtual tour is split up over two posts. Here is the first half, with the spades and hearts. The other one, with diamonds and clubs, can be found here. Let's take a tour around Nintendo's hometown! Spades Of course we start with the spades, in particular with the ace of spades. Besides this trademark card, the images on the cards cover the following landmarks and events in Kyoto: The Fushimi-inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社) The Higashihongangi Temple (東本願寺) The Honnoji Temple ..read more

Today we will take a look at the booklet shown below, which is almost a century old. Inside we will discover a nice little nugget of Nintendo history. The booklet is roughly B6 size (132 by 190 mm), contains 128 black and white printed pages, a color pullout and a color printed front and back. The title is Great Hiroshima Guide (大廣島案内), which is printed in large red kanji on the front. The sub title reads Showa Industry Expo Conference (昭和產業博覽會恊贊會), which is sponsored by Hiroshima City (廣島市主催). As an aside, for those of you not familiar with the changes over time to the writing style of Japan ..read more