Nintendo Famicom archivist and researcher Orochi recently made a viral X post, talking about how he visited a certain love hotel in Japan which is equipped with the Famicombox. Not to be confused with the Famicom (NES), the Famicombox is Nintendo’s commercial-use-only console released in 1986, mainly available across hotels and lodgings in Japan at the time. An interesting tidbit about the console is the fact that it uses cartridges similar to the NES ones (as opposed to the Japan-only Famicom cartridges).
According to Orochi, the console is installed in all rooms of the hotel except for one, and all of them are operational. Additionally, Orochi confirms that only the Zapper gun was unusable due to the hotel using an LCD TV screen, but that all the games themselves were perfectly playable. And while the arguably most amazing thing about this is the fact that there are love hotels in Japan that still have the obsolete console in usable condition (the name of the hotel itself is not disclosed, possibly to prevent “overcrowding”), some users are taking the situation a step further, theorizing that the presence of the Famicombox in love hotels might have been what fueled the “Nintendo love hotel” urban legend.
The myth, which was widely publicized through numerous video game media outlets, states that, back in the 1960s, before it made a name for itself as a video game company, Nintendo experimented with many different businesses – including love hotels. Considering that Nintendo is now widely known for being a family friendly company that firmly sticks to its brand, the idea that it used to operate a chain of love hotels (Japanese short-stay hotels primarily meant for sex) is in itself jarring but not entirely unrealistic, which is perhaps where the urban legend’s “virality” comes from.
But was Nintendo actually involved in the love hotel business? According to a lengthy article published by Orochi himself, the answer is – most likely no.
Investigating the myth, Orochi interviewed Nintendo historian Isao Yamazaki, who was apparently also researching the topic at the time. “I’ve also looked into the matter, but I believe it is very unlikely that Nintendo was in the love hotel business. If it was indeed a business, that would be listed in the company’s annual securities reports. I’ve checked all of Nintendo’s securities reports since 1962, but I couldn’t find any facts supporting the theory.”
While official records all the way back from 1962, when Nintendo went public, do not contain any concrete evidence of the company owning a love hotel business, this also means there is no way to prove for certain that such a business did not exist. Orochi mentions the possibility of the company being involved in the love hotel business prior to the 1960s, though he says that the theory would fall apart there because the term “love hotel” was only coined in the late 60s and early 70s. On the other hand, the notion that Nintendo operated a “tsurekomi-yado” (predecessors of love hotels, primarily used for prostitution until the 1957 nationwide ban) business during its years as a private enterprise and hid all the evidence, while not entirely impossible, is also pretty far-fetched, Orochi suggests.
According to Orochi, the “Nintendo love hotel” urban legend most likely originates from the 1993 David Sheff book Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children. While considered to be one of the more detailed books on the history of Nintendo, Orochi argues that it still contains some inaccuracies. Specifically, the book mentions Hiroshi Yamauchi, the 3rd president of Nintendo, dabbling in the love hotel business as a personal passion.
The exact quote is as follows: “Yamauchi then opened a ‘love hotel,’ with rooms rented by the hour. The business was, for Yamauchi, a personal passion.”
Considering the rather vague wording, and the fact that there is no evidence on Nintendo ever owning a hotel, Orochi speculates that there was a perhaps a separate company related to the Yamauchi family that was in the hotel business at the time. This could’ve been what Sheff based his love hotel anecdote off of, however, there is still no evidence that confirms that any of the Nintendo subsidiaries at the time, or other businesses endorsed by the Yamauchi family, had direct involvement in the love hotel business.
And, while probably completely unrelated, the fact that Nintendo did provide love hotels with its consoles back in the 80s may have been what blurred the lines between urban myth and reality even further.
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