You can tell a Nintendo game not just from its feel – the satisfying swish of Link’s sword in the Zelda games, the weight of Mario’s jump – but by its look. They are bright, energetic, characterful. In Splatoon, the game-maker’s most recent hit series, the shooter is reimagined as teams of transforming squids splattering arenas in glossy paint. Mario’s red cap and blue overalls, originally designed to create a recognisable character with just a few pixels for 1981’s arcade hit Donkey Kong, is now a stylistic signature – Nintendo’s logo is the same shade of red. When you look into the company’s department store outlets in Japan, a dozen colourful characters stare back at you from reams of merch: Animal Crossing cookware, Super Mario gloves, Zelda wallets and ties, Pikmin vases.
Next to the riot of colour that characterises its most famous games, Nintendo’s HQ is conspicuously bland: two mid-rise white buildings in close proximity a half-hour’s walk from Kyoto’s central station, a grey Nintendo logo outside each. A small basket of Mario plush toys on the receptionist’s desk is the only clue as to what’s made in this building. Perhaps it’s more interesting-looking upstairs, but that’s a mystery to anyone who doesn’t work here. As I am firmly but politely told when I ask if there’s any chance of a tour, nobody goes up there.
