There were a ton of people at the premiere evening of Game On 2.0 in Sweden. Our booth was jam-packed with people the entire evening – great fun!
The exhibition has an entire room dedicated to the pre-console era. Hand helds and toys with LCD displays, crude (CRUDE) animations and ingeniously fake 3D-effects. These were amazing to get to try. They also let you play the Virtual Boy – a decently rare beast of the relatively modern games industry.
In the arcade section you could play Star Wars from 1983 (video). As a designer it’s humbling to see how they managed to distill the essence of Star Wars into something so technologically limited! And how efficient the experience is constructed! A full play through is less than 3 minutes, and sees you through a large scale space battle, intense X-Wing racing and finally the terrifying approach of the ventilation duct on the Death Star.
Saving the galaxy in less than 3 minutes!
If you ever need a definition of “aged well” – nothing will serve you better. And what a perfect argument for opening our archives and museums for games! An emulator would never convey the experience of the real deal; the fully articulated flight yoke is such a sense pleasure!
If you’re in Stockholm, set a few hours aside and go see this exhibition!
