 GameCentral speaks to the organiser of a new permanent video game exhibition at the Science Museum, featuring 160 retro consoles and games. Despite video games having been a commercial reality for over 50 years now they're still afforded very little respect by mainstream society. Statistics suggest that more people play video games today than don't, even if it's only on their phone, and so the idea that the Science Museum in London has just opened a new permanent exhibition shouldn't be a surprise – and yet it is. We recently attended the Power Up interactive gallery, just a few days after it opened to the public, and while it's a commercial experience, not a free exhibit, it is one of the best collections of playable consoles in the country, with a selection that ranges from a 1976 Binatone TV Master to a modern PlayStation 5. We also got a chance to talk to Mark Cutmore, the brainchild behind the new exhibit and who is a keen gamer himself. We spoke to him about exactly how you put together such a collection, the difficulties of maintaining it, and how you show the breadth and diversity of gaming while still keeping it suitable for a family audience. The exhibit is arranged into two main areas, with banks of consoles and PCs organised into various sections – not generally genres, for reasons Cutmore got into during our interview – but topics like Mario and Sonic, two and four-player games, and virtual reality and motion-controlled titles. At first glance everything seems fairly straightforward and obvious, but Cutmore's curation is very good, with titles like the 3DO version of Need For Speed used to illustrate the evolution of driving games and multiplayer Bomberman sat alongside GoldenEye 007 and Halo to show the incredible variety that 50 years of gaming has provided. The highlight of the exhibition, from our perspective, is the timeline along the back wall, which goes from 1976 to 2006){kind=link}
GameCentral speaks to the organiser of a new permanent video game exhibition at the Science Museum, featuring 160 retro consoles and games.
Despite video games having been a commercial reality for over 50 years now they’re still afforded very little respect by mainstream society. Statistics suggest that more people play video games today than don’t, even if it’s only on their phone, and so the idea that the Science Museum in London has just opened a new permanent exhibition shouldn’t be a surprise – and yet it is.
We recently attended the Power Up interactive gallery, just a few days after it opened to the public, and while it’s a commercial experience, not a free exhibit, it is one of the best collections of playable consoles in the country, with a selection that ranges from a 1976 Binatone TV Master to a modern PlayStation 5.
We also got a chance to talk to Mark Cutmore, the brainchild behind the new exhibit and who is a keen gamer himself. We spoke to him about exactly how you put together such a collection, the difficulties of maintaining it, and how you show the breadth and diversity of gaming while still keeping it suitable for a family audience.
The exhibit is arranged into two main areas, with banks of consoles and PCs organised into various sections – not generally genres, for reasons Cutmore got into during our interview – but topics like Mario and Sonic, two and four-player games, and virtual reality and motion-controlled titles.