{"id":11245,"date":"2026-02-22T05:51:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T05:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/?p=11245"},"modified":"2026-02-22T05:53:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T05:53:00","slug":"the-nintendo-store-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/local\/the-nintendo-store-in-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nintendo Store in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Until recently Nintendo didn’t operate their own stores — at least, not in the US — but now they have two: one in New York City <\/a>and one in San Francisco<\/a>. After the initial opening crowds died down a little, I went to check out the SF store on a weekday afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Directly across the cable car tracks from Union Square, the company’s iconic red and white branding stands out on a storefront in the corner of the Westin St. Francis building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n

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Going in, I correctly assumed the store’s focus would be on Nintendo’s kid-friendly, nostalgic characters and franchises. What I didn’t<\/em> expect is how much of the store would be toys and merchandise: perhaps only a quarter of the floor space was devoted to actual games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the plushies are pretty adorable though, I gotta admit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, there are a number of TVs with Nintendo Switch 2 consoles plugged into them in the basement level, along with a large projector screen for party games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n

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A few nods to the past were on display including the Virtual Boy headset, now in the form factor of a Google Cardboard style case you can strap your Switch 2 into. Whether or not the headache-inducing Virtual Boy games are worth revisiting is a separate issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing I got a kick out of was a Super Mario Bros. wall calendar, which instantly seemed familiar to me. It wasn’t until later that I remembered that for a couple years I had a Nintendo calendar; not specific to the Mario franchise, as it also included art from other big games at the time like Punch Out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can understand why Nintendo isn’t using this showroom-style store to dwell on the past too much — particularly since their history of gambling and sex hotels doesn’t exactly align with their post-1980 family friendly image — but it would have been fun to see a vintage Donkey Kong arcade machine or even some Game & Watch units on display.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Until recently Nintendo didn’t operate their own stores — at least, not in the US — but now they have two: one in New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","slim_seo":{"facebook_image":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0286-scaled.jpeg","twitter_image":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0286-scaled.jpeg","title":"The Nintendo Store in San Francisco - MrEricSir.com","description":"  Until recently Nintendo didn't operate their own stores -- at least, not in the US -- but now they have two: one in New York City and one in San Francisc"},"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[{"did":"did:plc:kbgypanrf2cbl2egeqak52nx","date":"2026-02-22T05:51:06+00:00","uri":"at:\/\/did:plc:kbgypanrf2cbl2egeqak52nx\/app.bsky.feed.post\/3mfggysnrfb24","response":"{\"uri\":\"at:\/\/did:plc:kbgypanrf2cbl2egeqak52nx\/app.bsky.feed.post\/3mfggysnrfb24\",\"cid\":\"bafyreidjqd26uigfxj6wt4zfuybiaibuvvgpx5zyq2iaakrxb736wpn63u\",\"commit\":{\"cid\":\"bafyreic2apoej6fm3a33uswjbcqdlapjimuw2ponmcpbpgzqu2fzcfytxm\",\"rev\":\"3mfggyso72r24\"},\"validationStatus\":\"valid\"}"}],"autoblue_post_url":"","autoblue_publish_document":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[802,603,23,801,983,1326,1535],"class_list":["post-11245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","tag-nintendo","tag-pokemon","tag-san-francisco","tag-supermario","tag-videogames","tag-virtual-reality","tag-zelda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11245"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11262,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245\/revisions\/11262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrericsir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}