Fossilized fun? Nintendo Museum opens in Kyoto amid Palworld criticism

Nintendo’s brand-spankin’ new museum opened Wednesday (JST) near the company’s headquarters in Kyoto, where it was founded back in 1889. However, some gamers are unhappy with the Mario megalith for backing Pokémon in a legal battle against hit game Palworld, which they view as a hypocritical move from a now corporate giant.

On Wednesday, October 2nd, Nintendo’s account on X announced that the long awaited Nintendo Museum in Kyoto is now open. Nintendo has cleared many stages in its successful gaming journey, starting as a small playing card company in Kyoto, Japan and eventually becoming the global entertainment mega-boss it is today.

The museum features myriad exhibits in a highly stylized building which hearkens back to an original NES/Famicom system. It also includes a craft room, cafe, and play room, amongst other interactive gaming stations. Visitors can even make their own “hanafuda” style playing cards which gave the company its start back in the late 19th century.

All this is well and good, but there’s a poison mushroom in the mix.

Nintendo not laughing at Palworld fun

As Cryptopolitan reported last month, 2024’s hit satire and open world game Palworld, and its creator, Pocketpair, are currently being targeted by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo for what the latter view as intellectual property (IP) infringements.

Palworld’s official account on X responded to the suit, lamenting that they are just a small indie game company trying to make fun games and noting: “It is truly unfortunate that we will be forced to allocate significant time to matters unrelated to game development due to this lawsuit.”

Pocketpair’s CEO, Takuro Mizobe, also said way back in January that the game had passed legal reviews and stated that the company had no intention of copyright infringement. But it looks like Nintendo didn’t get the joke. The Pokémon-like satire game where monsters called “pals” can run around and enslave humans is loved by fans, and the game sold a reported 2 million copies within 24 hours of its release.

Indie gaming fans miffed at lawsuit

With the Nintendo Museum now open and people scrambling for tickets via a hyper-booked lottery reservation system, some gamers are criticizing the Super Mario entertainment giant, saying Nintendo is harming innovation and indie gaming as a whole.

“Nintendo just letting you know you look stupid suing palworld over the [patent],” one X user noted on October 3rd. “If you wanted people to keep playing it than do more with it do something new while respecting the IP.” 

Gamers have also called out Nintendo’s actions as hypocritical, since Pokémon itself seems to some to have been heavily inspired by the much earlier game Dragon Quest.

A quick search on social media shows the extreme level of zealotry die-hard Nintendo fans embody, but if it comes at the cost of shamelessly capitalizing on past glories (while killing grassroots innovation) is there much to be excited about? Some don’t think so.

“Kills emulation. Destroys game preservation. Gets away with it,” one unhappy gamer snapped of the century-old company.

Tickets for the Nintendo Museum in November are currently sold out, with a lottery reservation system active for January 2025. Tickets cost ¥3,300 (JPY) for adults, ¥2,200 for teens, and ¥1,100 for children ages six to eleven.