Nintendo is set to open a museum of its old products

The Nintendo Gallery will be built on the site of one of the company’s old playing card factories

Nintendo has announced plans to build a museum of its products on the site of one of its old factories.

The Nintendo Gallery will showcase Nintendo’s historical products and will also include “exhibits and experiences”, the company announced on Wednesday.

The Nintendo Uji Ogura Plant was built in 1969 to help with the manufacture of playing and Hanafuda cards, and was also used as a customer service centre where product repairs took place.

These functions were transferred to Nintendo’s other plant in Uji city, however, meaning at the moment the building isn’t being put to much use.

Nintendo has been trying to figure out what to do with the old Uji Ogura Plant for some time now, and it opened discussions with the city of Uji to figure something out.

The city is in the process of redeveloping the nearby Ogura Station area, so after discussions with the city, Nintendo has decided to build the Nintendo Gallery as part of this redevelopment plan, it said.

This won’t be the first time Nintendo has exhibited some of its products. The Nintendo World store in New York used to have a museum area where it would show off rare systems.

Nintendo has historically been very protective of its intellectual property, only greenlighting television and film projects for the Zelda animated show and Super Mario Bros. movie 30 years ago.

However, during the past decade, the company has increasingly moved to leverage its popular IP in various ways. The company’s Nintendo Tokyo store opened in November 2019, and Super Nintendo World theme parks are set to open at Universal Studios locations around the world.

In its corporate management meeting in September last year, Nintendo said it had “already embarked on multiple other visual content projects” alongside Illumination’s planned Super Mario movie.