Game on @ ACMI

3/13

Turns out I missed posting day yesterday, but that was so I could write about my experience at the Game On exhibition at ACMI, which I had the pleasure of seeing this evening (just got in the door from seeing it).

The collection the curators had pulled together was amazing, some of this stuff I'd never even heard of let alone seen with my own eyes before. Firstly, one of the highlights was the arcade room at the entry. There were some really old school games in there, some of Taito's originals (yes, even *before* Bubble Bobble, which mind you was there but on a console). The machine that amazed me the most was the Space Invaders console which actually reflected the screen onto the viewing area, which had a multilayer backdrop (like, sky was far away and ground was closer). This I had not seen before, and my lovely game-loving boyfriend who came along had exclaimed that while he had seen the reflection technique used to increase the size of the screen, he had not seen it to project the game onto a colourful background.

It was a little disappointing to see some of the displays not working correctly, such as the Pong game not serving on P2's side, and many others shut down. The vast variety of other (and even multiple) consoles available made up for this though.

Some of the controls used in some of the exhibitions was beyond comprehension from a modern game design perspective. If anyone saw the Mecha game, they'd know exactly what I mean. Has anyone seen the kind of controls that are often depicted in mecha animations? Like, the dual joystick things? That's how you controlled this game, not to mention the myriad of other crazy buttons you had to work out how to use. To learn how to play properly, you'd have to read a novel-thick manual just to work out how to walk the damn thing properly. Even crazier than that (yes, it gets crazier) was the Train game. This game had train controls, and you had to get braking/acceleration right, and stopping at platforms. We got the most joy from throttling the control back and forth and seeing the little picture of people falling over come up.

I'd say the most popular games were Guitar Hero (hey, who wouldn't want to show off to those around you how to blitz a song in the bonus category on hard), and both the Wii consoles with Wii Sports and Sonic and Mario at the Olympics. To be honest, Sonic and Mario at the Olympics was a bit of a let down in my personal opinion. I don't ever think a Wii party game should require more than two panels of control explanations, let alone the eight that most of the games required. Also, despite having the buttons available on the remote and nunchuck, most party games are far more fun if they don't require actually using them (see: Wii Tennis).

The exhibition was overall really interesting and there was some really obscure stuff to see, even the number of consoles blew me away. I'd never have expected so many versions of the Nintendo, ever. The main issue with the exhibition was some consoles not working/games frozen (the number of Xbox consoles frozen was astronomical). Most definitely worth seeing, I'd allow at least three hours to see everything.