Te Papa Game Makers Exhibition

Sometimes being pseudo-media has its perks, and today was one of them. I got invited to a media preview of the Game Makers exhibition opening at Te Papa tomorrow.

I got the high score (to date) on Missile Command. The photo isn’t great quality but in person the old arcade games are in great condition, and playing them all again was like being back in the 1970s!

The Te Papa website will be showing high scores for the various games, so people can beat their mates.

But this isn’t just a large spacies parlour. They are full of info on the actual creators of the games. We may all know a game is Atari, or Nintendo – but what do we know of the individuals who created them. Their games are a form of art, which has impacted our culture a lot.

More memories.

This dance game will do doubt prove very popular.

But again it is more than just a collections of games. Don’t get me wrong, heaps will flock there for the ability to play old favourite ganmes for hours on end for just a $16 admittance fee. But there’s a lot of fascinating history on the games and their makers also.

Note if you are planning a long session, they have no toilets in the exhibition, or food and drink, so make sure you are well fed, and emptied, before you go in. The doors open at 10 am.

The exhibition space is pretty  large, so hopefully won’t get too cramped.

It brought back so many memories for me. The playing of spacies at the fish and chip shop while waiting for our orders. Then as we got older, the parlous in town.

And you know what, playing on the PC or an isomething isn’t the same as those old classic arcade games. The big screens. The simple icons. The graphics on their walls.

A great exhibition for young and those no longer so young!