The other weekend my wife surprised me with a trip to the touring Arcade Age exhibit at a (somewhat) nearby library. I hadn't even heard of it. She's an author and is always looking for events & panels at libraries in the area. I assume that's how she learned about this, I guess I could ask.
The exhibit is a tribute to the rise of arcade games, collapse in the mid-1980s, and resurgence in the early 1990s. It had various displays, information, and some free play games. The exhibit itself was free, it was in a library after all. There were others visiting so these are the pictures I managed to take that didn't include them.
The library got into the theme with some homemade decorations around the book return.
I'll start with items that were on display. Everything was arcade related with a few titles receiving most of the attention. This case had a Donkey Kong doll that I spotted once before.
Of all the home versions, they went with the Intellivision one. It does have a nice looking box even if it's not the best port.
I tried to take closer pictures of these three, they didn't turn out great, you'll see.
Here's the promotional flyer for Mortal Kombat II. It was in a frame and inside a case, not much I could do about the glare.
The Mortal Kombat move received a little attention. This is still my favorite movie conversion of a video game, although the bar is rather low.
This sign for the first Mortal Kombat was not in a frame and looked great anyway.
I think most, myself included, think of Tetris as being a home game. This exhibit had the Tetris arcade game so they also had a Tetris home port on display.
This is a nice mix of old and new Pac-Man merchandise.
Another case had a Pac-Man arcade board and more merchandise.
They had a couple figures that would make for a great garage sale find.
I have not seen the Pac-Man zipper pulls before and they are awesome.
This display case had an assortment of items that didn't warrant a dedicated spot.
I don't have a lot of regrets in life. Not buying all these Street Fighter II figures when they were new is one of them.
This ad for Street Fighter II Champion Edition was also behind two layers.
They had a TV running commercials and promo clips. They were not all arcade games but added to the atmosphere.
I would rate the exhibits highly. Again, this was a free exhibit. They had a few rare items and everything was tied to the arcade games there.
They had a good assortment of arcade cabinets. They were all original cabinets from what I can tell. Some of them needed controller repairs. Others had the difficulty turned all the way down.
There are three cabinets I could not get any photos of because they were always occupied: Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, and Tetris. No complaints, it is nice to see people enjoying these two-player games.
No one other than me was interested in playing Donkey Kong when I was there.
Here it is from another angle, you can see it's a little scuffed-up but was functional.
I somehow failed to take a good picture of the Frogger screen and controls. Here's the marquee as a consolation prize.
The side panel art was in good condition.
Ms. Pac-Man was the only game that had been modded. It looks like an original cabinet.
There's a button to add credits but I thought Ms. Pac-Man had a free-play DIP switch setting. I am not an expert on this. Also Ms. Pac-Man moved about twice as fast as the ghosts making this a very easy version. It was like the Tengen port that way. I don't think that is a DIP switch option. So I kind of think maybe this was an original cabinet with a pirate or modified board.
The side art is clearly old.
Pac-Man was always occupied. Based on the cabinet condition this has seen better days. It looks like it had been moved around a lot.
Q*Bert was extremely popular... with one person who was at it the whole time I was there. The art is also clearly old but holding up reasonably well.
I also failed to properly take a picture of Space Invaders, sorry.
Being a library exhibit, it was loaded with informational signage. These started all the way back at the first days of video game development.
These aren't in order, but conveniently this transitions to the origins of arcade games. This is a very nice collection of early flyers.
Really great work assembling and organizing these signs. Even an event like the Midwest Gaming Classic hasn't had a display like this.
For a few games they went into some detail about the history.
Things will start to get out of order after this one. I could fix that but, hmm, no.
A little bit of info about early computers.
Pac-Man had its own sign with history and statistics.
OK, jumping back to 40 years before Pac-Man.
This is a nice summary of how arcades bounced back for a little while in the early 1990s only to decline in the late 1990s. This exhibit calls out network gaming as a significant factor. I agree with that and would add that 32-bit consoles meant home versions of arcade games were nearly identical to the original. In the 16-but era some games were very close but there was a big technology jump in 1995.
This one was dedicated to some popular fighting games.
A few other early arcade games that received a breakout section.
A little history for Spacewar! on this panel.
And last up is an informational sign dedicated to the influential Tennis for Two.
They also had a table with laminated newspaper articles. These were clearly re-prints from Google's newspaper archive.
I find this kind of thing interesting. I even have higher resolution versions of some of these posted over here.
The first one has tips for mastering arcade games.
This one is a review of Defender.
There were a couple articles about the early days of Twin Galaxies.
This is roughly the same article as the previous one.
Here's a reference to the early moral panics around video games (I have many of these posted here).
I was skeptical until I saw the patient in this article was 40 at the time. This now totally checks out.
OK, I suppose in the short-term this is true while I think video gaming in the long-term reduces stress and therefore blood pressure (I am not a doctor).
This article is about early movie to game ports.
The next three are about the moral panic over the proliferation of arcades. Or in the first case, not following that particular scare.
Then a two part article about suburbs trying to limit arcades or outright ban them.
The second part alludes to crime being associated with arcades but doesn't provide a specific example or statistics.
I have this same one on my newspaper page, it's one of my favorites. Do not Google the subject of the article though, trust me on this one.
Despite the headline, this is about repetitive stress injuries.
By the time I posted this page the exhibit left the library I visited. I don't know where it's headed next, or if it's headed anywhere at all. If it, or something like it, is in your area I would definitely recommend a visit.
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