Game On
I’ve been waiting a good few years for the Games exhibition to come back to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The wait has been worth it. A playable exhibition – yes, you can play these machines – from over fifty years of gaming history. You can experience for yourself, the games that kick-started the industry and work your way through the years as technological advancements made their mark on this massively popular phenomenon.
The range of what is on show is massive, with over a hundred games to choose from, demonstrating how the industry has developed over time. I’m not a games player myself. I used to be, but drifted away from it as other pastimes took my interest. I was so excited though to revisit the old games I used to spend hours playing, such as Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Asteroids and Missile Command so naturally these were the machines I wanted to play again. My muscle memory was intact, and it was as if I was transported back in time. I knew what to do and how to play without thinking about it. I’ve just remembered as I write this, that I have an outline of a short story that takes place in a games hall. The date on the file is 2015, so I suspect that it has been nine years since the games exhibition was last here. The story was not finished up and remains unpublished. I revamped my short story collections in 2022, but that story wasn’t finished up. Maybe one day.
I tried out some of the later driving games but the most modern ones I have little clue as to what I’m doing. I never took to the journey sort, travelling through a landscape picking up clues and equipment to help you on your way. These didn’t appeal to me, though I appreciate how popular these have become. I was fascinated to see consoles I had never seen and games I had never heard of and how enthusiastic the gamers were. They were all ages, many far younger than the age of many of the games on display, but that didn’t deter them. It was a game to be mastered, and they were more than happy to take up the challenge.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was great to see the range of games on offer, and be able to revisit the consoles I spent many an hour on when I was younger. I often think that songs are like time machines and can transport you back to an earlier time. The games machines are very much alike in this respect. For the minutes I played them, the intervening years were all but forgotten about, with an absolute focus on playing the game. It didn’t matter I knew I was never going to play till the very end, that the game would beat me, but that doesn’t matter. There is always that hope that this time, it’s going to be different, that this time I will win, and if I don’t, it still doesn’t matter. I will have tried my best and had a great deal of fun in the process.
The Fiction Factory 