Reservations are open for Kyoto’s ‘Nintendo’ hotel
Marufukuro will open in April, but would-be guests can book a room now
The building widely agreed to be Nintendo’s original headquarters is being re-opened as a hotel in April, and is taking reservations now.
The hotel, which will be named Marufukuro in honour of one of Nintendo‘s previous brands, will have 18 rooms, it was announced this week.
Marufukuro refers to Marufuku Nintendo Co, the company set up by Nintendo in 1947 to sell its playing cards.
This name was then changed to Nintendo Playing Card Co in 1951.
Although the building that stands in that location is generally considered to be Nintendo’s ‘original’ headquarters, that isn’t how it originally looked.
One half of the original wooden building that served as the company’s original HQ was redesigned in 1933 into the building that stands today, while the other half was later demolished.
The new hotel consists of 18 guest rooms, including seven suites. It consists of two buildings: the original Nintendo building, with an interior designed to match the style of its era, and a new building designed to be more modern and comfortable.
These images, as published by Game Watch, show how the building now looks.
The building remained as Nintendo’s headquarters until 1959. It then moved to a new building, where it stayed until 2000.
This larger building is currently home to the Nintendo Kyoto Research Center and its Mario Club QA team, but contains a large area of empty land, where Nintendo recently announced that it plans to build a new office to expand its game development capabilities.
Nintendo continues to manufacture playing cards in Japan and even organizes its own contract bridge tournament called the Nintendo Cup.
Nintendo was founded as Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. Ltd. in September 1889. Its business was predominately playing cards until it eventually expanded into other ventures, such as hotels and toys, in the 1960s.
Nintendo’s first venture into the games industry took place in 1974, when it secured the distribution rights for an early American console, the Magnavox Odyssey.
