Game On at the Science Museum
439 wordsGame On is a travelling exhibition about video games, and Sean, Mark and I went to the London Science Museum to see it.
We arrived early, and had time for a wander around the main museum, which is excellent. Some highlights for me included the Phillips Economics Computer - which uses flows of water to model a country’s economy, because digital computers weren’t available - and the first prototype of the Long Now Foundation’s 10,000 Year Clock. There’s loads of great stuff at the Science Museum and I’d like to give it a more thorough look.
The first room of Game On concentrates on arcade games from the late 70s and early 80s. The vast majority of the games were available for play, and the ticketing system meant there weren’t too many people queueing for a go. Seeing this kind of thing presented as a historical artefact made me feel old. In particular, Missile Command remained in Aberystwyth Pier well into the 90s, so it felt odd to see it as a museum piece. By far the best thing in that part of the exhibition, for me, was Asteroids — although it wasn’t in the deluxe cabinet I remember so fondly. Asteroids can be played satisfactorly on an emulator, but it’s great to see it on a proper vector screen. In particular the brightness of the bullets is a sight to behold. I scraped onto the Asteroids high score table, at 9th position.
The next room was all about consoles and home computers. Most platforms were represented, although I was a bit shocked to see the Saturn was not plugged in and playable. Sean felt that the choices of games didn’t really show what the machines were capable of when really pushed to their limits. Conversely, I felt that some of the games weren’t archetypal of the kind of games the platform was known for. A good way to balance this would have been to either have two of each plaform, one running an archetypal game, the other running a showpiece game. Alternatively a video showreel could have been made for each system.
After that, games were displayed by theme: kids’ games, simulations, novelty control, puzzle games, and so forth. Frankly, there was little I hadn’t seen before — although many people will enoy seeing things like Steel Battalion, Rez, Densha de Go, etc. I was intrigued by an adventure game for the visually impaired called Chillingham . I don’t think I would have the patience to do all that listening, but if you’re totally blind, you have to take what you can get, eh?
All in all, an excellent exhibition, and recommended.
December 1st, 2006 at 11:55
Thanks for coming. It was great to catch up with you.
It was a great show. One thing I thought was telling was that where exhibits weren’t working (eg Pong, Space War), it was because the Science Museum had put its own button mechanism on them. The original kit worked just fine.
It was great to play games using the original interfaces, particularly on arcade machines. The tracker ball and three fire buttons of Missile Command was a revelation - I could never see the appeal of the game before, but that’s partly because I’d always tried to play with a keyboard. Centipede and Asteroids were much more playable with the original controls too.