Game On Exhibition

James Matson takes a trip down joystick-thrashing memory lane, and invites you to come along

Imagine a video arcade populated not just with the staple arcade cabinets you’d expect to see just about anywhere - Daytona, Street Fighter 2 et al – but also with some of histories greatest and most influential games, like PONG, Space Invaders and Asteroids, the games that shaped the first generation of gamers. Then compliment those awesome machines with an array of consoles, spanning the length and breadth of game hardware development as far back as relics like the Magnavox Odyssey circa 1972. Top off the scene with handheld and mobile gaming devices, networked PCs running Halo multiplayer and well, have you died and gone to gamer heaven yet?

We did yesterday, and only the driving need to tell Atomicans about one of the most well presented, informative and unadulterated ‘fun’ exhibitions you’ll ever go to, dragged us back here to write this.



We found gamer heaven, at least a slice of it – at Federation Square in the heart of Melbourne. The Game On exhibit, presented at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne is – simply put – the largest and most comprehensive presentation in the world dedicated solely to the history and impact of video games. It’s an international touring gig, so what began at the Barbican gallery in London in 2002 has finally landed in Melbourne, with all the arcade cabinets and consoles that were originally on show in the UK, but with some added Australian content.



For Conrad Bodman - one of the original curators at the exhibit in London currently in Melbourne for the launch of Game On – part of the challenge of setting up a show like this was sourcing the hardware, “We had to go through a lot of private collectors, and find hardware off eBay at times. Game companies were more than happy to help out with the software, but finding the consoles or cabinets to run them was a different story”.

Conrad was also exposed to the almost religious fervour that some video game collectors have for their hobby, “There was one man we’d approached about a number of cabinets in the U.K, and when we went around to his place to take a look at them, we discovered he’d built an entirely separate second house just for his arcade cabinets.”

Now that’s passion, love and a not inconsiderable amount of insanity. Game On is all about looking at games as a cultural influence and a still developing form of interactive media, and the exhibit is set up in a timeline format. You start off at the early history of video games, the big clunky retro boxes of button mashing goodness that started it all. It’s one of the really special parts of the show, not only because it’s rare to get a chance to get up close and personal with original arcade games like Spacewar made in 1962 or Pong some ten years later, but because you can actually play them.



You can’t expose the history of gaming properly through long winded talks and walls of text, you’ve got to play your way through it, and that’s what Game On provides. With a couple of minor exceptions, everything at the exhibition is completely playable, and you’re encouraged to shed a few years, don the big kid in a candy store grin and just go nuts playing stuff. What’s not to like about that? Moving through the exhibit you’ll start to see the big arcade presence, everything from the stock standard Virtua Fighter upright cabinets to the pub style ‘Galaga’ machines, where two players can sit, shoot aliens and have their actions projected onto the wall – big screen style - for passers by to see.

In amongst the more familiar cabinets you’ll spy some absolute gems that call out to the geek child inside you to go to them, zone out for an hour or so, and come back with joystick calluses the size of golf balls. Star Wars is a notable inclusion in the exhibit - the original 3D ‘wire frame’ cockpit game that got you engrossed in your mission to destroy the Death Star thanks in part to careful sampling of the voices and sounds from the movies. Several times we were forcibly removed from the cockpit by security for not letting other people have a play. They just don’t understand.



Games consoles get an unbelievable showing at Game On as well, with a whole stack of playable modern consoles at one end of the floor, but of course that’s not where the appeal really lies. At the heart of Game On is the fact that you can walk past at least ten historic pieces of console gaming, all fully working and begging to be played before you’ve even realised it. There’s a mint condition PC Engine running the original Street Fighter, the Sega Dreamcast radiating it’s aura of failure out from behind glass, and if you head to one of the faraway corners of the exhibit you’ll even spy an Atari Jaguar (complete with the worlds ugliest controllers) ready to entice you with a few rounds of Tempest 2000. There’s an Amiga 500 in the ‘top 10 consoles’ space, which spiked a little on the geek annoyance scale, but – in all fairness – most people considered the Amiga primarily a games machine, so it’s totally forgivable.



For those with little interest in the 8 or 16 bit era, don’t worry – Game On caters to the PS3, Xbox 360 and modern arcade crowd at the other end of the floor space, with stacks of cutting edge kit to play around with, including booths set up for four player Halo matches.

While the multitude of playable games and platforms is obviously the main attraction, there’s a wealth of other stuff to engage the visitor. Game On takes you on the complete journey of gaming and game development, which includes walls of concept art, character design, props from games, and even a sound booth where you can listen to some of the classic pumping tracks from your favourite games new and old. The ridiculously good theme music from ‘Shadow of a Beast’ that brought gamers flocking to the Amiga developer ‘Psygnosis’ is there, so don’t fret; someone did their homework and the collection represents some great game audio moments.




As a special treat at the opening day we got to catch up with none other than Al Alcorn himself, self confessed Silicon Valley entrepreneur and designer of the original Pong. Al is in Melbourne to help launch the Game On exhibit, and though he feels privileged to be a part of something like Game On, he’s honestly shocked to this day that Pong has become the cultural marker that it has, “When Pong was designed, we had no idea what it would turn out to be” he said. “We thought it would last maybe a year or so, fall over and I’d go back to honest engineering work.”

Tough luck Al, instead you created a game that was part of spawning a whole industry, and now – in turn – that industry has spawned an exhibit to celebrate an entertainment format that knows no equal. There’s so much care and attention to detail in the Game On exhibit, that you’d be a fool to miss it. For some it’s a childhood relived, for others it’s a chance to hold onto that ‘arcade’ environment for a little while longer, that combination of primary colors glowing off Capcom boxes and electronic sounds that only the 8 and 16 bit era could produce. For others, it’s just an excuse to let loose on a ton of games for a very modest asking price.

Whatever the reason, make sure to check out Game On before it finishes its run on the 13th July, there’s an obscene amount of fun to be had, so just get up right now – and go.