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June 11, 2006

"Game on!" at the Pacific Science Center

This weekend I took most of the kids to see a cool exhibit at the Pacific Science Center called Game On!. It's all about the history of videogames, from computeer games to arcade games to consoles.

The best thing about this is that you can play all of them (actually you can play the arcade games and consoles; most of the computers don't work, I assume because of floppy disk preservation issues) and it's all FREE FREE FREE. No need for a quarter on a string, just walk up and press Start. They've got a bunch of classic arcade games like Ms. Pac Man, Galaga, Dig Dug, Centipede, Space Invaders, and Discs of Tron. Then it's on to the consoles where they have every old clunky thing you can think of (although I don't recall seeing an Intellivision which I actually have one of). In the computers, they have lots of memory lane hardware like the Sinclair ZX-81, and they even have a PDP-1 to play "Spacewar", although it doesn't seem to work.

There's also sections on the business of games, and on Japanese games, including a PS2 game where you can drive the bullet train (like Microsoft Train Simulator). Except I don't think the real trains freeze up every 10 minutes like this game did.

To prove they are not totally retro, they have an RSS feed for their podcasts.

Worth checking out. It's $2 extra for members, which we all are through Microsoft Prime. As a data point, in the yearbook for their elementary school, 9 out of 59 sixth graders listed their career ambition as being a game designer and/or working at Microsoft and/or being CEO of Nintendo and/or being the new Bill Gates (one each on those last two).

Posted by AdamBa at June 11, 2006 09:55 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Christian at June 18, 2006 05:37 PM