Game on: shrine to all things Nintendo opens in Kyoto

Traditionally, visitors to Kyoto in October come for momijigari, the turning of the autumn leaves in the city's picturesque parks. This autumn, however, there is a new draw: a Nintendo museum.

- Keza MacDonald

The attraction, which opened yesterday, is best described as a chapel of video game nostalgia. Upstairs, Nintendo's many video game consoles, from 1983's Famicom through to 2017's Switch, are displayed reverently alongside their most famous games. Visitors can also peer at toys, playing cards and other artefacts from the Japanese company's prevideo game history, stretching back to its founding as a hanafuda playing card manufacturer in 1889. Situated on the site of Nintendo's old manufacturing plant in Uji, a 20-minute train ride south of Kyoto, the museum is expected to welcome up to 2,000 people a day. Tickets-which are allocated via a lottery system and cost 3,300 yen (£17) for an adult - are sold out for the next three months.

When it opened in 1969, the plant manufactured toys and playing cards. With the arrival of the video game age in the 1970s, it became the location of a customer service centre for console repairs until 2016. Never one of Kyoto's tourist attractions, the suburban town of Uji has renovated its train station in preparation for a flood of visitors in Mario hats.