Aside from the usual Web based Musuems of various console collections/histoty of etc.. Does anyone know if there has ever been a Musuem based around the history of Games Consoles, their development from Arcade machines to the home etc, developers etc. Am curious as if so, where?? have been searching via google on and off for almost a year and the closest i have got is to an Arcade Museum in Yorkshire which has many cabinets but as far as i can tell, no conosles. Cheers Lee
hmm this is not really a console museum but in one of the muesums in edinburgh they used to have a sort of exhibition on gaming from the old to the new, i have never been so i don't know if it has arcades or whatever and i don't know if its still running each year or not anymore from what i heard and seen when visiting the museum where it was held It seemed really good, well planned out with alot of thought going into it to make more than just a few consoles and some games
Game On down in London was great, but that moved on, at the end of Feb as I recall. It had loads of classic arcade cabs, and a (somewhat hit-and-miss) selection of consoles and games. It was well worth the £8 entry, anyway, but I don't know where it's gone now.
It's currently on it's way to Hong Kong and China. It is a good show but what do you think it was missing then?
It wasn't so much what it was missing as some of the features; I remember there being a DC playing homebrew and kind of wondered why, when they're limted in space, that was felt more important than something like Shenmue. I have nothing against homebrew, and especially for DC I keep an eye on the scene, but if you want to show off the DC, you don't do it with that. There were a few more titles that were kind of "huh?", can't say I remember what exactly, and some weren't working (understandable)... overall I had a fantastic time, don't get me wrong, and it coincided with Videogames Live, the concert thing, which was worth seeing too. Ace weekend in general.
I actually have plans to create one someday. I've been working on grant writing for a few years, so I plan to take an academic approach to it. I know there are already a few schools out there amassing collections. I've got plenty for a collection, but they are all things that were bought to be played with, not stored to look pretty on my shelf. Anyone want to give me money to start touring the country?
There's a national museum of play where they specialize in toys and have a special section for Atari 2600 and you can even see a C64 with a few games.
If I had a dollar for every person that said 'I'm going to set up an arcade / computer / console museum' then I would be quite rich. Even if 2% of them were serious, most fail to get enough money to even start planning it and even then they woefully underestimate how much it will like to take to even start a small museum (you're going to need about $100,000 to be serious...). The reason why most places that have tried to be console museums have failed are generally for two reasons. 1 - They have no idea of who their audience is. You have to convince people to show up to a museum and give you money to see it and most places are way too optimistic on how many people will show up or they fail the balancing act between casual gamers and hardcore gamers, and in experience the casual audience are the ones that will come to an museum and spend money whilst the hardcore audience are less likely to show up and when they do they moan, and they moan about the most pathetic of things like why not having some import japanese cooking game (that no one except people that understand Japanese) is a travisty of epic proportions and why running a PC Engine on AV is the work of satan. So you need to be a lot more casual with a just a sprinkling of hardcore consoles or games on the side. 2 - They have no idea on how to run a museum and end up being broke very quickly or at least spending their sponsors money very quickly. At bare minimum you are going to need about $25000 a month just to break even (thats about 5000 visitors a month at $5 a head) but that's going on a tiny museum that would have problems with numbers during the weekend and have nearly no visitors during the week. Factor in a wage for yourself too if you want to eat and the like. The only ones that have had an success have been the runs organised and run by er museums and galleries (or have at least had people with a strong museum / gallery background in the case of the Computer History Museum in California) and have either government (national or local) backing (or at least some funding) of some description or a rich supporter (in companies or people giving large yearly grants to said places).
Me too! I'd only read about it before then, the voice effects and such. It was also the first time I'd seen a real-life Asteroids cab, and they are something special.
They had a Nintendo Donkey Kong arcade machine too, and that's one of my favourite games of all time. ^_^
