I spent 3 nights at Nintendo’s original HQ

polygon.com:

On a drizzly February afternoon, I arrive at a modest, three-story building a stone’s throw from Kyoto’s Kamo River. A plaque reads “PLAYING CARDS” in gold letters against a staid shade of dark green, next to a stylish double door flanked by a pair of bright-red flags. Around the entrance, the pale brick facade has a distinctive mix of 1930s-style art deco curves and linear graphic stonework; it’s clear that in this quiet, largely residential area, this establishment isn’t like its neighbors. A pair of tourists and their Japanese guide coast along on bicycles. “This is the original headquarters of the video game company Nintendo,” the guide says in English as they slow down next to me. His clients express delight — they’d never have known if he hadn’t pointed it out.

I’ve come to visit the Marufukuro, an 18-room luxury hotel housed in the former Nintendo offices that once included the apartment home of the company’s founding Yamauchi family. It opened in April 2022 after a careful renovation by Plan Do See, a well-established Japanese hospitality firm that specializes in wedding venues and historically significant projects; after winning the bid for the project, Plan Do See got iconic architect Tadao Ando to design the hotel, and the top-tier Marufukuro suite — where guests can observe Ando’s hand-signed autograph in pencil on part of a wall — can go for over $1,300 a night.

Inside is a hallway with geometric tiling and frosted-glass brick embedded in the floor — an imposing crane statue points toward an enclosed reception area in dark wood and checkered marble. A stylized picture of Napoleon Bonaparte sits on the counter — a nod to Nintendo’s line of Japanese hanafuda playing cards that used the French leader as its d