"This brings back a lot of memories for the parents," notes Mark Latz, the Pacific Science Center's vice president for exhibits, and my tour guide through the center's "Game On!" exhibit, running through Aug. 31.
I am no parent (that I know of). My own video-game reminiscences, roughly from 1980 to 1986, revolve around a younger brother too precocious for his own good, and me, big brother, stuck "minding" him wherever arcade games might stand in file, hungry for dropped quarters.
But I marvel as a stand of machines, evenly spaced in the center's muted, temperature-controlled space, brings a whiff of the long-defunct Arnold's On the Ave, electronics warming plastic from within as the eagerly anticipated summer sun warms it from without, plus the sizzle and scintillating undercurrent of beef, bacon and potatoes sharing space on a grill.
"Game On!" originated at London's Barbican Museum, and in certain places does demonstrate a scholarly approach to its subject. Positioned at the exhibit's entrance you'll find a game crucial to both history and nostalgia: the magisterial bips of Atari's Pong, designed by Al Alcorn for Nolan Bushnell's Atari Co. in 1972 and play-tested at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, Calif. Soon after Pong's installation, Andy Capp's owner called Alcorn to report a malfunction.
The designer found the milk carton inside the machine's console-a jerry-rigged quarter receptacle-stuffed so full of quarters that a new one dropped would not trip the activation switch. Alcorn called Bushnell in Chicago to advise him that if he'd agree to manufacture Pong, rather than merely develop it as originally planned, he'd soon be an unspeakably wealthy man. An unjammed quarter dropped jingling into a new era.
But the earliest video-game design-never produced-dates to 1947, and "Game On!" includes a (sadly nonfunctional) PDP-1 mainframe, which in 1962 hosted Spacewar!, one of the first video games for a functional digital computer, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Game History" takes the viewer through early vector graphics, exemplified by Atari's immensely popular Asteroids, and then, around one more corner, the crucial stand, the communal memory of any American too young to vote and old enough to walk around untethered when Ronald Reagan first took office: Berzerk, with its taunting robots ("The humanoid must not escape!"). Dig Dug, with its inflatable, explodable, green dragons and red, rotund beasties. And Nintendo's Donkey Kong, my brother's brightest obsession, a teeth-bared ape holding a damsel hostage as a bounding jumpman (a.k.a. Mario) in coveralls fights for her release.
My brother once had an off day on Donkey Kong at the University Way Pizza Haven. He scored zero points. He wailed.
I say American videogames because "Game On!" features games from around the First World, and even one carcass, something called Poly Play, from (former) East Germany. A few do not function, but most do, and the entranced of any age can stay for hours. I try a British home game called Death Chase 3D. I follow the instructions, but cannot get the gun to fire, which succinctly sums up my history with such games.
Barry Hitchings, the London-born exhibition consultant, eventually figures out that you have to be moving to fire. Barry's been with the exhibit from London to Edinburgh to Tilburg (Holland) to Helsinki. When the vintage equipment breaks, it's his job to fix it, by eBay or any other means necessary.
"Game On!" weaves through arcade games, game genres, the rise of home units and CD-ROMs and finally a "Game U" space to try one's hand at game design (similar to the DigPen game, design school sponsored by Nintendo, and a sponsor of the exhibit).
I asked Barry which game he'd take to a desert island if he could abscond with one.
"Probably take Donkey Kong," he replied easily. "A very well-designed game. You have to be skilled to play it. But there's enough randomness to keep it interesting. I could try and beat my high score."
When he was 8 years old, he scored 675,000 points. His "current" high score's around 135,000.
And somewhere, my brother smiles.
[[In-content Ad]]
