Slashdot Mirror
History of Video Games Exhibit
Mandi Walls writes "Wired is running an article about an exhibit on the history of video games at Barbican in London. It's supposed to hit the US next year. They start at Space War! from 1962 and move forward from there."
Or I will type in 'Zippy' and drop 5 dudes behind their base!
I was playing games back on the vacuum tube machines... graphics weren't quite as good... but once we got to punch cards things really got cool.
From the article:
> Fifty game stations. Zero quarters required. I'm there.
So basically, you get to jockey for position in order to catch a sideways glimpse over the shoulder of the guy who's been playing the game for the past two hours?
Screw it- just download MAME and enjoy in the comfort of your own home.
All your exhibit are belong to us.
The show is every player's dream. View more than 250 separate exhibits, including hard-to-find vintage titles. In a wonderful coup, organizers nabbed one of only 10 or so known working DEC PDP-1 minicomputers, which runs Steve Russell's legendary Space War! (1962), the first computer game ever. From there, you can move through old arcade favorites - Computer Space (1971), Pong (1972), Space Invaders (1978), and Pac-Man (1980) - and on to the Atari 2600 (1977) and Magnavox Odyssey (1972) consoles. Of course, the 21st-century Xbox, GameCube, and PS2 are represented, too.
There's more than hardware to lust after here. As curator Lucien King says, "Our broad aim is to explore the culture, history, and global context of the industry." The exhibition and accompanying book, Game On ($28, from Laurence King), deconstruct characters (like Lara Croft) along gender and age lines and examine their relationships with players. They also consider the various sociological contexts of releases from Japan, the US, and the rest of the world.
Game On offers case studies of specific titles (Pokémon and The Sims among them) that demystify just how games are made. It's not about a single creative genius working alone in some back room anymore. Games come from the collective imagination of large development teams. This idea, it turns out, parallels the evolution of the way we play games. What began as heroic individualism - solitary epics of self-expression - is increasingly about interaction among many participants.
The show also delves into the complex relationship between the gaming community and Hollywood. Comparing film posters, screenings, and playable versions of franchises like James Bond and Final Fantasy, it becomes clear that what makes a good game doesn't always make a good film and vice versa (think Tomb Raider).
Game On ultimately reminds us that games are part of a living culture. By making the works available to the public in an art gallery instead of a commercial environment, King hopes to invite a fresh, more critical appraisal. Who are they kidding? Fifty game stations. Zero quarters required. I'm there.
when case studies are being done on Pokémon for video game history and culture.
mailto:<?=implode("@", array("chris", implode(".", array("php", "net"))))?>
Well, you get an A+ for effort and originality at least! :)
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The "three day weekend Quakefest" exhibit with 10 computers connected with a rats nest of cables, all covered by a pile of aluminum cans and pizza boxes should be great. Wonder which 10 lucky geeks they will hunt down/dig up and preserve the bodily remains of for use in this exhibit?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Just the thought of seeing all the old gang, Defender, Galaga, et al. brings a nostalgic tear to my eye... remembering mastering Pong and Breakout. Atari, we hardly knew ye.... and no quarters necessary?? Man, we gotta get these guys over here...
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
I'd drop the e11 ($9.79) just to be able to play with a pdp-1 alone!
Something about running it virtually in memory space ( http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ ) is just not as appealing as being able to have the opportunity (for the first time in my young life fascinates me. (I am only 20 and did not have the ability to play with this growing up)
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
http://agents.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects / pacewar
According to the readme it's based on a print out of the original Spacewar! code. It uses an PDP-1 emulator written in Java. Source code is available.
"Game On offers case studies of specific titles (Pokémon and The Sims among them) that demystify just how games are made. It's not about a single creative genius working alone in some back room anymore."
Anybody hear of John Carmack?
Some people don't like Pokemon (come on, it's a yellow sqwishy thing!) ID software is a small group of dedicated individuals that have produced consistently and I think the best games still come from a small core of elite hackers and people with great imaginations. So much for large development teams... It is the game design that matters, not the number of people (look at Romero's ideas of grandeur...)
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
Imagine a beowulf cluster of linux desktops!
I want 2D games back.
The exhibition and accompanying book, Game On ($28, from Laurence King), deconstruct characters (like Lara Croft) along gender and age lines and examine their relationships with players.
Oh so it's a pr0n exhibit.
Stop Continental Drift! Reunite Gondwanaland!
it would be pretty cool to relive some of this stuff.
1. Take some "E"
2. Hug everybody
Get a clue, fuckwit.
Here in the upper Midwest, we normally don't get huge cultural events like this.
Even if it happened to be in Minneapolis, I'd be a happy camper ...
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
what about pong?! where the hell is pong!?
Check out RIT's new program. Video games are more than just a hobby today.
I hope they have everything licensed. You never know when the DMCA will hit next.
This page too, crashes my mozilla when entering. Works with 0.9.6/windows 2000, but crashes 0.9.9/linux and RC1/linux...
It was the 1968 Spring Joing Computer Conference in Boston.
There was about a half million bucks worth of gear running the simplest possible spaceship game on a CRT.
And about a thousand people trying to crowd in to see it. All the other booths had boring stuff like glossy literature and programming manuals. And of course people in suits looking very unhappy because all everyone was interested in was space war.
The marketeers learned. Next year they had spiffy demos and babes to show them to you.
I once played a great game with punch cards. Unfortunately I only got the house built up to two levels.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
What is this "blackout" everyone is talking about? It would help your cause a lot if each time you refer to this blackout, you made the word "blackout" a link to the seminal post that started it all.
The only real video game is pong. The rest are just updates.
Oh wow, in the picture is that one of those old Frogger games? I had one of those and drove my folks crazy with it's insipid theme song many a weekend early morning. Thanks for the nostalgia! Plus, that initial picture on the homepage is a great group shot... I never thought I'd see those things all in one picture.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
All your video games are belong to us!
For those of you thank can't wait for this exhibit to come to your town....
I'm a lacto-ovo-pesco-carno-vegetarian
Paolo Goblino is crashing Mozilla with his signature url.
I was lucky enough to experience a similar exhibit in back in 1999: it was called Videotopia. Videotopia had its own Slashdot story a while back.
It was a room full of 1980's coin-op games - it was like being dropped back into an old-time arcade (except the air wasn't thick with cigarette smoke - times have changed.)
I got to play Computer Space and Pong, along with many other classics like Tempest and Asteroids.
Unfortunately, the tour schedule on the videotopia web site has no entries past 1999. There's still some interesting pictures of games to drool over, though.
- Tim
All though Spacewar often gets credit as the first video game in 1962, William Higinbotham an employee at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, NY had a working Pong-like game in 1958.
Designed from an analog computer hooked up to an oscilloscope, Brookhaven Lab was promptly besieged by players who waited on line for hours to get their chance to play.
Higinbotham never patented his device.
MAME is a great way to play many of the older games, there is something about playing the original in its intended form that is second to none. The cabinet art, the lighting. You can't get the full immersion of a game like "Disks of Tron" sitting in front of a desktop machine. Or how about playing "Gyrus" without that 360 degree spinning joystick. Or a game like "Track & Field" without mashing the hell out of those RUN buttons.
It's the little things that get lost in the digital age. Sure, I can download MP3's of the latest release, but something about seeing the album are and reading the liner notes makes it pale in comparison.
I went to VideoTopia in DC about 3 years back. Pretty cool, lots of games, including Space War. I was the only person in the place. No need to fight for position.
The Euros get all the cool exhibits, all we get is the some ancient pottery ever so often.
These are DOLLAR machines!
Videotopia is a similar US based exhibit that mostly focuses on arcade games. I got to see it twice back in '98 and '99 (it was in Washington DC and Baltimore, MD almost back to back). The schedule at the bottom of the page shows the Baltimore showing as the last one, which was 2 1/2 years ago. I hope it's still touring... I think it actually did a good job of showing the development process (or at least, how it used to be during the classic era in the early '80s) They had original design sketches for several games, a couple cabinets that had see-thru plexiglass sides so you could see the internals of the cabinets (ever wonder how the optical rotary steering wheel on an original Pole Position worked?) and more.
:)
I think one of the most interesting parts of the exhibit (besides the fact that there are so many games in one place to play) is the inclusion of informational stands telling you about what was going on in the world at that time, which often had some effect on the theme or elements of the game. You then can go to a kiosk and answer questions about the "history" behind the games and win free tokens! The ultimate learning tool!
If it comes to your area, don't pass it up. Also check out the site and read about some of the games that the exhibit showcases.
The show also delves into the complex relationship between the gaming community and Hollywood. Comparing film posters, screenings, and playable versions of franchises like James Bond and Final Fantasy, it becomes clear that what makes a good game doesn't always make a good film and vice versa (think Tomb Raider).
Well I guess that's true but I think a lot of that is just Hollywood being lazy and not putting any real effort into making a good videogame-based movie. Take Street Fighter for example. The Hollywood movie with Van Damme is beyond awful. But Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is actually reasonably well done, for what it is. The problem is that Hollywood just doesn't have respect for the gaming industry yet. They realize there's tons of money floating around but they don't recognize games as anything more than flashing lights and crazy sounds. I would argue that there SHOULD be a "complex relationship between the gaming community and Hollywood" but that's still hasn't happened yet. Ideally, a videogame-based movie would develop the characters to a degree that can't be done in a videogame. This, in turn, would make the game more interesting and complex than the original designers ever intended.
Just my two cents...
GMD
watch this
Virtua Tennis should be on there for best sports game of all time.
At the Museum Of Science And Industry in Tampa, Florida
My daughter is about to turn 13. Over the past few years I've taken her to just about every arcade within driving distance. She always had fun, except for the times when we went to arcades with a row of the old classics. My eyes would glaze over and I'd wander over them. One time I really embarrassed her when another 30-something dad and I got into a Pac Man grudge match (Poor fool, couldn't last past the 2nd key). One day she was endured the agony of watching the old man flip the score on a Star Trek (I used to own one until the 3rd monitor went out). I only was able to play it for 5 minutes after that because the vector monitor finally burned out as I was playing it, setting off one of the building's smoke detectors (If you've ever owned a vector game, you probably know what this is like).
Anyone know how much this'll be yet?
Video Game cheats, hints a
11 quid for adults (16+)
5 quid for under 16s
8 quid for students and dole-ites
16 may - 15 september
www.gameonweb.co.uk
andy
I wonder what happened to him?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)