A few days ago I journeyed up to London (girlfriend in tow) to check out the Game On exhibition at the National Science Museum in south Kensington.The event showed the history of video gaming in chronological order. When we entered the area we were greeted with retro arcade machines and some projected versions of old classics (namely Space Invaders). The game that struck me straight away though was one tucked away in the corner. ‘Space War’ is billed as one of the first known video games for a computer, the game on display was being run from emulation software but still felt pretty accurate. The gist of the game is to fly two spaceships around a screen and shoot missiles at each other until you destroy the opponents ship. Clearly you can see the influence this game had as there have been hundreds of games based on this idea. One thing future games didn’t do though (as far as I’m aware) was give you a limited amount of missiles and fuel, which means if you don’t manage to defeat the enemy with your allocated bullets you have to try to strategically outrun them with the rest of your depleting fuel – hoping that they run out before you do.

As we moved on we uncovered more gems from video game history. Many old PC games, A Frogger-based Chicken running game, many broken games which didn’t work (due to old hardware I assume) and some more modern games such as Ridge Racer and Mario Baseball.

In the next section, which was the most popular with the kids, was the more modern section. Containing a majority of late 90s until now games, a lot of which were actually quite unexpected. Sure, there was the classics like Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy 6, Tetris and Mario 64 but there were a lot more unexpected games such as Parappa the Rapper 2 (I still kick ass at that), Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania, Animal Crossing and Tokimeki Memorial (which wasn’t playable but they did have a load of merchandise on display). I’m glad the event showed all walks of gaming, not just the more popular ones.

The final section of the exhibit played host to a lot of franchises in the gaming world by showing some of the social and cultural effects of video games as well as allowing you to have a little go on the games. Franchises featured included Mario, Sonic, Pokemon, Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto, Guitar Hero and a few others. Clearly these games have been a huge force in the games industry and show no signs of slowing so it was nice to see a little dedication. It was also hugely interesting to see the original plans by Toby Gard for Tomb Raider. They detailed the game which had Lara Cruft jumping and raiding through four different levels culminating in the sacred temple at the end. The plans actually turned out to create one of the biggest games in the medium. There was also a hand held corner showcasing pretty much every portable console ever made, as well as a section with a demo unit of Wii Sports on Wii and Ridge Racer 7 on PS3 (which apparently you had to pay extra for, seeing as it’s mid February though and I have already had a chance to play these games, I wasn’t so fussed)

All in all it was a good day out, I got in as a student for £6.50 which wasn’t so bad, the normal adult price is £8.50 and I highly recommend checking it out before the exhibition ends on the 25th of February. If your interested in Video games I highly recommend it. Especially seeing as the rest of the museum is free to all and is really interesting as well.

Game On section of the Science Museum website