Nintendo's 135-year history will soon be brought to life inside the walls of a new purpose-built Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, Japan - and ahead of its opening on 2nd October, legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed some of its intriguing exhibits in a new video tour.

The Nintendo Museum has been built on the site of the factory where Nintendo originally made its Hanafuda cards, and which was later used for quality checks during the Famicom era. That building and its unremarkable carpark are no longer standing, however, now replaced by a shiny two-floor monument to Nintendo's history and a Mario-themed plaza.

Miyamoto's 13-minute tour begins on the second floor of the museum, where several huge curved glass displays - containing many of the products Nintendo has released since its founding in 1889 - can be found. This whole area is intended to chart the evolution of Nintendo's approach to entertainment, from its earlier non-video game products - including copy machines, baby strollers, RC cars, and pitching machines - into more familiar territory, beginning with 1977's early video game forays, the Color TV-Game 6 and Color TV-Game 15.

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An unopenable door in Super Mario 64 - thought impossible to pass through without the use of mods - has finally been prised open.

The door in question can be found within the game's infamous penguin level - you know, the one where you definitely didn't yeet the baby penguin off the mountain.

There, a log cabin can be found with a door that opens outwards - but that's impossible to return through due to an invisible wall. Because of this, it's the only door in the game that was thought impossible to be opened both ways - until, last month, someone finally pulled it off.

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Enlarge / "N-tel (64) Inside" (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

In recent years, we've reported on multiple efforts to reverse-engineer Nintendo 64 games into fully decompiled, human-readable C code that can then become the basis for full-fledged PC ports. While the results can be impressive, the decompilation process can take years of painstaking manual effort, meaning only the most popular N64 games are likely to get the requisite attention from reverse engineers.

Now, a newly released tool promises to vastly reduce the amount of human effort needed to get basic PC ports of most (if not all) N64 games. The N64 Recompiled project uses a process known as static recompilation to automate huge swaths of the labor-intensive process of drawing C code out of N64 binaries.

While human coding work is still needed to smooth out the edges, project lead Mr-Wiseguy told Ars that his recompilation tool is "the difference between weeks of work and years of work" when it comes to making a PC version of a classic N64 title. And parallel work on a powerful N64 graphic renderer means PC-enabled upgrades like smoother frame rates, resolution upscaling, and widescreen aspect ratios can be added with little effort.

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An emulator that lets users play thousands of Nintendo games is currently the top free download on the iPhone App Store.

The Delta app currently supports downloaded versions of countless classics from the NES, SNES, N64 home consoles, as well as Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS handhelds.

The app's rapid rise in popularity follows Apple's recent change in app store policy to officially allow video game emulator apps onto its storefront for the first time. The move has been linked to growing pressure on the company by European legislators to make Apple allow third-party app stores and the use of emulators on iPhone without the need to jailbreak devices.

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An emulator that lets users play thousands of Nintendo games is currently the top free download on the iPhone App Store.

The Delta app currently supports downloaded versions of countless classics from the NES, SNES, N64 home consoles, as well as Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS handhelds.

The app's rapid rise in popularity follows Apple's recent change in app store policy to officially allow video game emulator apps onto its storefront for the first time. The move has been linked to growing pressure on the company by European legislators to make Apple allow third-party app stores and the use of emulators on iPhone without the need to jailbreak devices.

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Nintendo will add five classic Rare games to Nintendo Switch today, including SNES hit Killer Instinct and N64 great Blast Corps.

In Japan, Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will also get Mother 3 - the third entry in the legendary Earthbound series which has never made it to the West.

All of these games were announced in this afternoon's Nintendo Direct broadcast - though Mother 3 was only mentioned in the show's Japanese version. Sorry, rest of the world.

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