Last week I went to Game On, an exhibition of computer games, consoles and gaming machines past and present, as well as displays showing sketches from the development of games, the impact gaming (and gaming subculture) has had on culture in general.

First up I looked at all the old games and consoles. I played a 1980s Star Wars arcade game that was actually really good despite the time it came out  -1986? – because of clever design. The aim was to fly your X-Wing through space, shooting out the TIE fighters and, if you got far enough, destory the Death Star. The limitations of computer graphics were taken into account with creativity and inventiveness, using detailed wireframe graphics, and instead of simply pressing buttons as with most of the arcade games, Star Wars had its own little handset (sort of similar in design to the old Playstation controllers, only chunkier and with fewer buttons) which you could tilt and turn to steer your ship. You shot at TIEs by pressing the trigger buttons set into the underside of the handset.

Sonic the Hedgehog

I also played 1991 game Sonic the Hedgehog, which was played on the SEGA Megadrive. SEGA went bust for a number of years, but when I was a small child they rivalled Nintendo (wikipedia link to info about Nintendo’s SNES, the megadrive’s competition) and were pretty big. Not many kids had game consoles then, at least not where I live, so playing them was a big thing, but when I was about six years old I occasionally had a chance to play on a SEGA, and would dedicate myself  (in vain) to attempting to get Sonic through the first level. It’s been a favorite of mine ever since, and although you can play online Sonic games somewhere (I used to play it in year twelve at lunch time: nerd) it’s not the same as the original game on the original console, and I was delighted. The poor friend I went along to the exhibition with had to hnag around while I played it for some time.

They also had classics like Super Mario – the console controller for that had no sensitivity and was awkward to play – and Space Invaders, and Pac Man. I played Pong with my friend,  and believe I lost. They had an 1979 game called Tennis (imaginative name, there) on an old, strange thing that was labeled TEN-1, and didn’t have buttons or anything, but a little lever-thing you had to twiddle.  On my way out I noticed it had broken down; the graphics were zig-zagging blurrily up and down the screen.

The only working PDP-1 left in the world

The coolest, yet most boring, thing was a really old computer, a PDP-1. This has increased in coolness factor since I saw it, as I googled it and there are only three PDP-1s left in existence in the entire world. Somewhat awesome, no? There was a monitor with a round screen, a keyboard the size and shape of an electronic typewriter, which is not surprising since that is essentially what it was;  and a giant bank of switches and blinking lights that they had wisely put behind a plastic display case. I’ve tracked down the details and this PDP-1 is the only working one that exists, and belongs to the Computer History Museum. You can read about it’s restoration here.  We were able to use the PDP-1 to play a two-player game called Spacewar, aka The World’s Most Boring Game. The idea, apparently, is that two ships are fighting each other in the gravity well of a star, which is a nice idea, but in reality mostly means you have two little points of light trying not to fall into a bigger point of light. Our version didn’t even have the background starfield, as that feature had been disabled. So it was very boring. Still, I’m glad I got to look at it.

I also saw Atari consoles, and an IBM computer that came out in 1981, and other stuff. It was awesome, and I had lots of fun. Then I went upstairs to play all the newer games, and spent about an hour playing Lego Star Wars. At the entreaty of my friend I lightsabered Jar Jar Binks into tiny little Lego blocks. “So many people have wanted to kill Jar Jar Binks, and now you have,” my friend said happily. Erm… Anyway, we looked at all the games – nothing special, really, but lots of cool stuff, and eventually wandered out because it was getting late and we had to get home. We looked in the State Library shop on the way, to see in any Game On merchandise was worth getting, but it wasn’t. I did buy a book of temporary tattoos for librarians and readers, though, saying things like Born to Read.