A Pictorial Tour Of The Ultimate Video Game Museum
The National Videogame Museum, located in Frisco, Texas, boasts this country’s most complete collection of rare artifacts from the 30-plus year history of video games. Ars Technica was given the grand tour, and what they came back with was spectacular. This may be the best museum I’ve ever seen!
Below is a small sampling of the over 100 photos AT took during their visit. Prepare to be jealous of Texas for the first time in your life.
Part of the exhibit includes “authentic” recreations of the living rooms where the older games would have been played. Here we have the 70’s, with a shag carpet surrounded by woodgrain everything (including the game console).
The 80’s room is also fairly accurate, even if the posters make it a bit too on the nose. If there was a 90’s room AT did not take pictures of it, but it wouldn’t have been that different.
Just because they could, the NVM placed the ultra-rare, uinlicensed cartridge Chiller into the NES unit.
In this corner: store kiosks for every console that has ever been. I’ve never even SEEN the LaserActive one before!
Attempts at online gaming stretch farther back than most people realize. They were trying it all the way back to Gen 1 with the Intellivision.
This wall features nine different console ports of the original Pac-Man running simultaneously.
And this is the world’s largest playable Pong recreation, sitting next to a gallery of Pong consoles.
If it isn’t clear by now this museum was made by people who know what they are doing, check out the shelf of rare games. The fact that this place has a Panzer Dragoon Saga under glass means we’ve got professionals here.
If this isn’t the coolest thing…the “Easter Eggs” portion of the museum tells you there was an Easter Egg hidden in all exhibits prior and offers you the chance to find as many as possible. The museum ITSELF is a game!
Finally, this place is so thorough and complete, it even has a recreation of a store counter from the 1983 video game crash. According to the founders, this area (and the fake “bargain bin” next to it) has fooled more than one guest.