National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
From Donkey Kong to Halo 3, the entirety of video game evolution is here – and
you can play almost every console and cabinet
Walking through the doors of this exhibition, you are immediately greeted by the
PDP-10 - the gigantic mainframe computer that was used to program SpaceWar,
considered by everyone except extreme computing history pedants to be the first
recognisable video game. Next to it, on the left, a bright yellow working Pong
arcade cabinet from 1972. Puck Man (later Pac-Man) and Space Invaders cabinets
stand side by side just beyond. These are very familiar sights to anyone with a
knowledge of gaming history, and they set the tone. If you’re a keen (or, let’s
be honest, old) player then it’s highly unlikely that you’ll learn anything new
at Game On, but you will nonetheless have fun.
Beginning in 2002 at the Barbican in London, the Game On exhibition of video
game history has been touring the world for all this time, only ever packed away
entirely during the Covid-19 pandemic. It first came to Edinburgh later that
year. Twenty-two years ago I dragged my dad along to this exhibition; this time
I will be dragging my kids and encouraging them to have a go on the now-ancient
games I loved when I was their age. Crucially, you can play almost everything at
this exhibition, from Donkey Kong to Guitar Hero, Farming Simulator to
Soulcalibur. One section pairs each console in gaming history with a defining
game, another groups games together by genre, and a third is devoted to
multiplayer, with four-player Halo 3 set up around a pillar. There are more than
100 games to sample and they form a well-curated nostalgia trip, focused
primarily but not entirely on the 80s, 90s and 00s.
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