A couple of weeks ago (it’s been that long?!) K, B and I visited a museum in Berlin dedicated to Computer Games. It was small, but it was very good, and perhaps even the best of the few I’ve visited over the years. Here’s a random selection of things we saw in the museum…
In the earliest part of the museum they had the landmarks of pre-computer gaming, such as (very) 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons:
And the first gamebook every written, Sugarcane Island (written 1969, published 1976):
They had holy grails of the Golden Age:
Crazy game art from the 1980s:
A small but good condition arcade:
A well-done series of rooms decorated to resemble certain ages of gaming. Here’s Bernard in the 1980’s attic room (presumably a typical German household attic from that era):
They also had Germany’s own homegrown console from the early 1980s. Only about 40 games were ever released:
You could design your own sprites:
You could post with Lara Croft(s):
Or you could look ridiculous playing Atari Ms Pac-Man using a titanic joystick:
And you could even risk your life playing the Painstation:
This is a massive two-player Pong game where the players are penalized for mistake in the form of heat, electric shocks or whips to the hands (see details here). We watched two people play it and as the game progressed they certainly seemed to be feeling the pain. I would have played it, but my compatriots were hesitant 🙂
As I said, a small museum but a goodie. If it wasn’t hot and we weren’t already overcome by ruination, I would have liked to have spent hours there reading all the information. Recommended if you’re in Berlin.