Cornelius
05-06-2019, 03:28 PM
I finally got to go to this exhibit yesterday on its last day. It was a lot of fun, but also disappointing in a lot of ways. Some I understand because they seemed to be focusing on creators/developers rather than just popular games.
Summary: Start with some great arcade cabinets, all free playable. Turn the corner and there is jarring lurch to a Blizzard display, I think ICO and SOTC were right there, too, and a bunch of LEGO games. Next room has a weird hodgepodge of Sega stuff, including Virtua Fighter, and sit-down Super Hang-On and Out Run. Various games like Monkey Islands were represented. A pretty cool room for the music games: Rock Band, Sing something, and one of the Xbox dance games. Lots of people having fun there. And the last room had stuff like Rovio, Minecraft, Flow/Flower/Journey, and a cool tabletop touchscreen air-hockey/pong type game. I shot a video (link below), but it turned out pretty badly in the low light.
Tempest was there, which I had never played on an actual cabinet before. It exceeded my high expectations. My wife really liked it, too. I managed to make the scoreboard but was knocked off before we left. Most of the scores were reset, and we were there in the morning, so I also topped Missile Command, Bee Gee, Hang On, and at least one more. I'm not very good, so it was pretty fun to actually get a chance to put in my initials. My son fell in love with Reactor, and put high scores (the only scores) on it. Other than Donkey Kong, I didn't see anything Nintendo, which was very strange. Also strange that the oldest console I saw was a Genesis. And no mention of Ralph Baer. Some of those omissions were quite odd.
Not sure if this is a travelling thing or not. I wouldn't pay admission just for this exhibit, and fortunately it was included with Science museum entry (sometimes special exhibits cost extra there). Plus we had some free passes, so it was a great few hours on a Sunday morning.
https://youtu.be/mKdpy52EK9Q
-apologies for the poor quality. I was trying not to be obtrusive, so I went too quickly.
Summary: Start with some great arcade cabinets, all free playable. Turn the corner and there is jarring lurch to a Blizzard display, I think ICO and SOTC were right there, too, and a bunch of LEGO games. Next room has a weird hodgepodge of Sega stuff, including Virtua Fighter, and sit-down Super Hang-On and Out Run. Various games like Monkey Islands were represented. A pretty cool room for the music games: Rock Band, Sing something, and one of the Xbox dance games. Lots of people having fun there. And the last room had stuff like Rovio, Minecraft, Flow/Flower/Journey, and a cool tabletop touchscreen air-hockey/pong type game. I shot a video (link below), but it turned out pretty badly in the low light.
Tempest was there, which I had never played on an actual cabinet before. It exceeded my high expectations. My wife really liked it, too. I managed to make the scoreboard but was knocked off before we left. Most of the scores were reset, and we were there in the morning, so I also topped Missile Command, Bee Gee, Hang On, and at least one more. I'm not very good, so it was pretty fun to actually get a chance to put in my initials. My son fell in love with Reactor, and put high scores (the only scores) on it. Other than Donkey Kong, I didn't see anything Nintendo, which was very strange. Also strange that the oldest console I saw was a Genesis. And no mention of Ralph Baer. Some of those omissions were quite odd.
Not sure if this is a travelling thing or not. I wouldn't pay admission just for this exhibit, and fortunately it was included with Science museum entry (sometimes special exhibits cost extra there). Plus we had some free passes, so it was a great few hours on a Sunday morning.
https://youtu.be/mKdpy52EK9Q
-apologies for the poor quality. I was trying not to be obtrusive, so I went too quickly.