Game On: The culture and history of video games, Barbican Gallery until 15 September. Admission £11, Concessions £8/£5/free
REMEMBER Sonic? Miss Pac-Man? Want to play Liquid Fire? Then head for the Barbican in London, where they’ve made a comeback with hordes of other great games. The organisers of the exhibition, “Game On”, advise advance booking with timed tickets—and I can see why. They have brought together an astonishing collection of original games hardware, and visitors get the chance to play on it. In all, there are 150 arcade and home game consoles.
It’s hard to believe that computer game history dawned only 40 years ago, when Steve Russell at MIT used paper tape to make a DEC PDP-1 computer play Spacewar. The real revolution began in 1971 with arcade games Computer Space and Atari’s Pong. The first home console, the Philips/ Magnavox Odyssey, went on sale in 1972. Space Invaders arrived in 1978 and Pac-Man in 1980, followed by a deluge of old favourites from Atari, Sinclair, Commodore, Nintendo and Sega, with Donkey Kong and Sonic the Hedgehog. All are up and running at the Barbican, some with original consoles, sometimes with ruggedised controls.
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There’s a look at the violence of Grand Theft Auto and the theory behind strategy games like SimCity and you can take a look at the future with Liquid Fire, a game that uses motion sensors to track a player’s hand and body movements.
The organisers are going to have their work cut out keeping all the hardware working, but most visitors seem to be treating the equipment with reverence.
Even if (like me) you cannot get excited about video and computer games, this is a terrific exhibition.
