Pac-Man Obsessions are History at the National Videogame Museum

“Everyone’s a gamer. You just haven’t found the right game for YOU, yet.”

That’s what one of the all-women Ubisoft gaming team the Frag Dolls told me years ago at SXSWi (the South by Southwest Interactive tech conference.)

Since playing a LOT of Pac-Man in college, I haven’t paid much attention to finding that perfect game, so I assumed that I wouldn’t be interested in the new National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas.

Wrong.

I was in there for a little over an hour and could have easily spent another hour or more. It seems that interesting tech history was happening to me and to my kids over the years and I didn’t even notice it.

The museum is set up to show the timeline of game software and hardware development over many years, with both the standard “historic item in a Plexiglas case” and plenty of actual games that visitors can play, including those in the authentically darkened “Pixel Dreams” 1980’s game arcade (you get some tokens to play Donkey Kong Junior, Mortal Kombat, and more when you buy your ticket, and there’s a machine inside the arcade to purchase additional tokens.)

The first big display as you enter are the stories of fifty different significant game systems, beginning with 1972’s Magnavox Odyssey, at an interactive game console display and searchable database right behind a selfie-ready large plastic Super Mario statue….

….or right behind that you can see an original full-size yellow Pong unit, plus the prototype for the first home video game system….

The well-organized museum does a great job of calling your attention to changes and developments that, at the time, were simply comments like, “Let’s get one of the new controllers. This one sucks.”

You don’t really see how the technology is evolving when you’re living in the middle of it, but grouping the changes together, like the displays of controllers and games shown below, makes you see how daily life becomes a part of history after a few decades pass.

How about these early portable game units – did you play with any of them?

How about any of these?

You can also see why we have such a mess of plastic waste going into our landfills, thanks to the changes wrought by a disposable culture.

Once you’re tired of a game like Atari’s “Stunt Cycle – Jump 32 Buses in Your Living Room!” or something better comes along, how many of us take the time and effort to properly dispose of electronic junk?

The museum also showcases the history and process of software and game development. I liked seeing this storyboard for the early 1980’s Fall Guy game, a tie-in with the TV series featuring Lee Majors….

There are weird one-offs and outliers like a “Tengen Tetris – The Soviet Mind Game” that was discontinued after only four weeks thanks to a publishing rights kerfluffle, and a rare 1998 Japanese “Game Boy Light Famitsu Edition.” The museum addresses some arcane issues like lockout chips, and people hacking out DIY “homebrew” games for old and discontinued consoles.

A whole row of 1980’s computers is set up for gaming, including a 1977 RadioShack TRS-80 consumer PC (affectionately known as a “Trash 80”) which was connected to a cassette tape deck. A museum guide explained that you had to stand around waiting for the game to load off of the cassette before you could play.

Behind the row of early computers is a wall of 1980’s logos hand-painted by local Dallas and Fort Worth mural artist Max Juhasz. I appreciated the museum’s efforts to involve the community in the creation of this facility.

Probably the favorite part of my visit was seeing a mocked-up vintage 1981 living room set up for TV gaming, complete with rotary dial phone, ficus plant, and magazines with singer Boy George and bad boy tennis star John McEnroe on the covers. There’s an 80’s music playlist going as you walk around, so you can get some Zenyatta Mondatta with your nostalgia.

There is also a 1985 bedroom, set up for gaming as it would have been in the average home “back in the day.”

They got it right all the way down to the Pac-Man sheets. Of course there’s a Cowboys pillow sham; the football team is based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which includes Frisco.

My visit ended with the strangest time travel sensation.

Just as I did many decades ago, I walked up to a Pac-Man in the museum’s arcade, dropped in a token, and grabbed the round joystick that would direct my little yellow Pac chomper thingy through a maze, eating fruit graphics and power pellets for more points and trying to avoid the moving ghosts named Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde that would spell my doom if I ran into them.

Wow, my skills have really deteriorated since 1981.

Challenge accepted. I’m going to have to return to the museum for another visit, and try again.

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