Before Mario Visits the Nintendo Museum

Before Mario is a Blogspot blog (remember them?) devoted to Nintendo’s company history before they made video games. Well, their December 13th post doesn’t fit that bill entirely, since the museum is quite new, but they did focus on those aspects on display that don’t deal with their freakishly popular electronic products.

Nintendo got their start making playing cards (images from Before Mario)
Er, so we’re consuming Kirby’s plastic bottled regurgitation?

A Stay At Nintendo’s Original Headquarters

The site. Image from beforemario.

When I say original headquarters it’s really original: the building they started out of in the late 1800s as a maker of playing cards! I like to mix up the content here and include some history when I can amidst all the gaming geekery. The building has been restored and is now a fairly small and cozy hotel! The stay is recorded on the blog beforemario, with many many photographs.

Nintendo has still been a playing card company for quite a while longer than it’s been a video game company, and while there are some artifacts contributed by the founding Yamauchi family recognizing their game products, mostly it’s a pretty chill hotel, haunted no doubt by friendly and playful ghosts. And they serve food! Have a look.

An early product of Nintendo was a set of playing cards with a Napoleon theme. beforemario wrote about those too!