Sheffield – National Videogame Museum
After it became apparent to me that the others wouldn’t consider spending eight hours in Greggs as a suitable activity for the day, we went to the National Videogame Museum. A slightly confused branding meant that they’re pitched it at children, but, fortunately, that wasn’t the actual reality and also, it didn’t matter as some of our group are childish anyway.
Aaaah, an Amiga, such happy memories 🙂
This was quite exciting, as although I’ve played this game many times, it has never been on an actual arcade machine. I can also see how much money these machines must have taken, as I kept on having another go to try and get just a little further each time. That was fine here, as there’s a one-off £11 fee to get in and then everything is on free play. As a place to take kids, it’s not bad at all, primarily as there’s no real way for them to spend more money, as long as they’re kept away from the small shop area at the end of the visit.
Zool, which is one game that I remember, although I appeared to be no better at it twenty years on….
Football Manager is perhaps one of the greatest games ever written as far as I’m concerned, very classy. I note that the author of the game, Kevin Toms, is on Facebook promoting a new app version of the game and I hope that proves to be popular.
As with Space Invaders, I’d never played Tetris on an arcade version and it was no less addictive.
The ridiculously difficult QWOP, which it’s fair to say that I didn’t manage to master. Nathan, irritatingly, was quite good at the game, although I suspect that’s because he’s spent weeks playing it.
Nathan and Scott playing Guitar Hero, or something similar. I can’t remember who won, but they took it very seriously.
Overall, it wasn’t difficult to spend a couple of hours here (although one of our party started to falter after around an hour) and some of us managed to relive our past….. There’s probably more that could be done at the museum given the floor space available to them, but there were numerous consoles and computers from different periods of gaming history, so there was a broad selection already. There’s also more that could be done to tell the story of gaming history, which isn’t really done at all, and that would justify the museum tag a little more.
Hopefully, this is one of those locations which slowly but surely adds to its collections and therefore it gets a little better every year. Given a few more years, it’d be nice to think that all of the floor space is used and there is more of an informational feel to the museum, in addition to engaging children (and adults) with more games to play.
