Nintendo's company guides to job applicants

May 10, 2015 2:54 PM

In Japan, people applying to work at Nintendo are given an amazing company guide (2015), bursting with color, that they remake every year. 2014 - 2013 - 2012 - 2011 ( via Simon Carless [Twitter], thnx)
posted by JHarris (10 comments total)

This year's collage-themed guide doesn't appeal to me, but last year's guide was gorgeous.
posted by painquale at 3:07 PM on May 10, 2015

The thing that stood out to me about the 2015 guide is that it actually looks like pages of classic Famitsu, with everything jumbled together (which was the model for Electronic Gaming Monthly, I'll have you know), and inspired very early Nintendo Power. It does look cluttered, I agree, but it also has energy, it's the kind of thing that would fire a 12-year-old's spirits, and there's something to that.

But past guides are also great. 2014 reminds me of my regret that I never got one of the Nintendo themed Hanafuda decks from Club Nintendo before they stopped carrying them.
posted by JHarris at 3:20 PM on May 10, 2015

Yeah, I can see the aesthetic they were going for, but it looks too much like a vision board or the toy section of a big box store flyer for me to like it. You're right that it's full of energy.
posted by painquale at 3:30 PM on May 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

aaaaaaaaa I'd forgotten about this blog, and I LOVE the company recruitment guides. It's so weird taking a train past the Nintendo headquarters because you expect it to be like Willy Wonka's video game factory, and instead it's basically just this big gray cube with Venetian blinds on every window.

Slightly less well known is that Nintendo's original location still exists in Kyoto, and the signage is still on the front door, but you cannot go in and, to my understanding, the company does nothing with the building other than maintain it. It would make a great place to put a museum, but hey, they do what they want.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:34 PM on May 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I can't find a single picture of it online, but in the early 90s microsoft had a similar and awesome "welcome kit" guidebook thingy like this. It came in a huge box that looked like a pixelated desktop icon on one side and had painfully late 80s/early 90s art all over it. Think of like, this 90s apple promotional watch. The books were beautifully typeset and also slathered with pixel art and icons. I think some of the little booklets were even shaped like them, or like floppy disks. I know some you actually had to slide a piece out to open or whatever. I think there was even a cute mouse pointer shaped pixely bookmark, and there were definitely lots of stickers.

Even the box itself was a sort of pull-tab kids popup book. It was super fun, and looked incredibly expensive to have printed and assembled.

There was one in my friends house i played around with a bit, but it burned up when his house burned down along with a lot of other cool 80s/90s ephemera and generally irreplaceable stuff.
posted by emptythought at 4:54 PM on May 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't have a basis for opinion other than a couple of episodes of Kawaii International that I only half paid attention to last summer, but I think that collage style is associated with kawaii culture and that kawaii is "in" for the value of "in" that includes corporate promotional materials.

That said, these are great.
posted by ob1quixote at 5:00 PM on May 10, 2015

It's ironic that a company who's lifeblood is entertainment has an HQ that is just a big, boring white box. You go in the front door and there is not a single Pikachu or Mario, just a vast, white marble empty space with a few bird paintings on one wall in the back. Then rows and rows of plain white meeting rooms. Even past the securiy upstairs, there are no wacky hijinks, themed restrooms or quirky, bohemian designers. All bidness.
posted by planetkyoto at 7:05 PM on May 11, 2015

Is it? I thought the white box was the outside of it. I know Nintendo of America has some fun stuff inside, including an arcade and a game store only for employees and visitors. I wouldn't put it past them to be incredibly bland inside, but whose word do we have on this? Security seems pretty tight there.
posted by JHarris at 8:36 PM on May 11, 2015

Whose word...?>

Me, going inside, many times. I'm a brief walk away right now, as Typhoon#6 bears down on us. The QA facility in Uji, kyoto, though, has a couple of showcases of their history of toys, including a mini pitching machine that looks craptastic and a wooden rifle that was their first Duck Hunt-style gun.
posted by planetkyoto at 3:07 AM on May 12, 2015

Ah! That's cool then, as I said I was just wondering where from. There's nothing like video games for hearsay "facts" that get passed around. I've learned to always consider a statement's origin.
posted by JHarris at 9:08 AM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]