It was apparently in every room in the hotel except one.
In 1986, Nintendo released a commercial 8-bit Famicom console in Japan called the Nintendo Famicombox. It was designed to hold up to 16 game cartridges, allowing for easy switching between titles, and was intended for use in hotels. You can usually access games by paying with coins or through a paid system that tracked your play time. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s because it’s pretty rare. Now, a famous Famicom archivist who goes by the name “Orochi” recently found a bunch of them, fully functional, in a Japanese love hotel, of all places.
On X, Orochi said that they went undercover to investigate the love hotel and found the Famicombox installed in every room except one. They were able to test at least one unit and found that almost all installed games were perfectly playable. From what I could gather, the only ones Orochi couldn’t play were shooter games that required the Zapper, Nintendo’s gun accessory, because it doesn’t work with LCD TVs. Automat media first picked up the story after the post went viral.
いまだに務用ファミコンが現役稼働している某所ラブホテルへ潜入調査。なんと１室をのぞくすべての部屋に設置されるようだ。さっそIl It’s ZAPPER.
守りたい。日本のサブカルチャー！ pic.twitter.com/pD53hLaOQR– オロチ(Famicom Archivist) (@oroti_famicom) July 23, 2026
As you can see from the Orochi photos, the Famicombox uses NES controllers instead of the Japanese-only Famicom controllers. Additionally, the commercial console uses NES type cartridges. Orochi did not name the love hotel where they found the devices, insinuating that they wanted to “protect” the consoles. Before you decide to go looking for Famicomboxes, be sure to Google love hotels in Japan. are before asking around.
