**Exploring the World of Video Games: A Journey Through Time and Space**

As I walked through the National Videogame Museum, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and nostalgia wash over me. The museum is a treasure trove of gaming history, showcasing some of the most iconic machines and artifacts from the past century. One of the first things that caught my eye was the "Inside a Game" exhibit, where developers could share their work-in-progress projects with the public. It was fascinating to see the early stages of game development, including prototypes and concept art.

I spent hours wandering through the museum, taking in the sights and sounds of a bygone era. One of the highlights for me was seeing the original "Pac-Man" machine on display. The museum had invited John Romero, co-designer of the seminal first-person shooter Doom, to share his experiences with the public. It was a special moment, as he took to the stage to talk about his work and answer questions from the crowd. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the gold master copy of Doom on display – it's hard to believe that such an influential game originated in this very museum.

As I made my way through the exhibit, I came across a fascinating section dedicated to social history. The museum had curated a collection of ephemera and artifacts that showcased how games have meant something to people over the years. I saw hand-drawn artwork from pirate cassettes, maps from video games, and even keyboard overlays – each item told a story about the culture and community surrounding gaming.

The museum also offered a glimpse into the world of game development through its classes and workshops. The Pixel Club, which met on weeknights, was a particular highlight for me. I watched as kids learned how to code and create their own games from scratch – it was inspiring to see the next generation of developers in action.

As I continued my tour, I stumbled upon the "Greenhouse" exhibit, which served as a sort of gallery showcasing 100 objects that told the history of video games in chronological order. Starting with some of the earliest gaming machines, the exhibit took me on a journey through the decades, highlighting key milestones and innovations along the way.

One of the most surprising moments for me was when I realized just how much time people spend in this museum. Families would often come in, drawn by the nostalgic value of certain games and consoles from their childhood. The Pixel Club, which met during school hours, attracted a different crowd altogether – kids who were eager to learn about coding and game development.

Throughout my visit, I was struck by the sense of community that permeated every aspect of the museum. The developers' lounge, where people could share feedback and suggestions on unfinished projects, felt like a welcoming space for anyone interested in gaming culture. Even the exhibitions themselves seemed designed with this sense of community in mind – as if the museum was inviting visitors to join a shared conversation about the world of video games.

As I prepared to leave the museum, I couldn't help but feel grateful for the opportunity to experience it firsthand. The National Videogame Museum is more than just a collection of artifacts and exhibits – it's a window into a fascinating world that continues to evolve and grow with each passing year. If you're interested in gaming culture, technology, or simply want to learn more about the people who create these incredible worlds, this museum is an absolute must-visit destination.

**A Message from the Museum**

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"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwell welcome we are in uh the world's first national video M my name is Ian I'm the director I'm one of the one of the folks that work here uh and this is what you see when you come in it's the first thing you see is a massive uh blue blue Hedgehog this wall over here will tell you all the games that are in here that changes all the time there's tons to play but it's all about playing games it's also about making games so the big thing about this place is um we think everybody should go to play games but also we really like people learning how to make them too you see these fantastic people at this desk they'll say hello you just like this so exactly like that there are arcade machines to play there are old things to do too and then another kind of peculiar thing about the building is there's lots of stuff there only here so a lot of games that we've commissioned that you can only actually play in this building the first one you'll see is this one it's called Dash and Bash this is only in the National video Market it's made byce called alist aers it's fantastic game that allows you to uh to kind of spot these symbols and you have to bash other people out the way and Bash The Bash the buttons to get to the right one before anybody else does so we really wanted to like kind of right away show people the games aren't necessarily just about kind of standing like this they can be about bashing things too and that's really what we wanted to try and do with this so lots of people do this as a kind of warmup you might want to come through here is the toast bar now it's not just a clever name the toast bar is called the toast bar behind the step uh because it will it has a variety of toast that it will indeed venue and lots again of games for you to play tends to be the oldest stuff in here you want to play Nintendo 64 you can request a different game from the bar if you want to in the summer cuz it's nice in the summer right sit outside and play a game I eat some toast like welcome you as much as we as much as we possibly can so you come in and out here this is migan troll this is a game about making games so the idea here is a two-player game and whilst two people play it other people can be changing it so you can kind of change the graphics you can change the gravity you can change the spawn rate of aliens kind of really gently get people into this idea that they can change and what games are and really see what games are made of Cu the weird thing about games is you don't often get get kind of look inside the kitchen of what they are like other things that are just here this is room Racers this is fantastic game my leave velthoven this is like Micro Machines but the magical part of it is if I just start this up for you find the red car here racing around but this is the cool part anything that we put down the car crashes into so you end up with like a couple of different games happy one of them is like a racing game I another want to be people lying on here to be kind of raced around so anything that we put there car can't pass through so it's kind of about two things it's about playing games and racing cars but it's also about what makes a good racetrack right this is that kind of big main stairwell that goes up and down most of the buildings and when you design a museum like often what people do is try and hide um the computers and hide the way that it works and we kind of went the opposite way what we want to do is expose everything so even if even if you don't really know about Electronics like you can see that all of the orange stuff uh is power right all the purples Network so similarly all the exhibits that we built here we if they break and they do break sometimes um we just fix them in front of you cuz you can CU you can do that we're trying to capture the um I suppose the sort of spirit of like when I was a kid if if the video recorder broke we'd have the back off it in the kitchen table you know you can put it back together again but youd have to go at fixing it it's that kind of idea of of like being able to open stuff up and and sort of kind of X-ray it and really kind of get involved is what we're trying to do um so the whole building we wanted to make kind of transparent so Gallery 2 is the Hall of inputs arranging from like really like the kind of controllers that you might be used to having at home game of Trials with a with a quite complicated but nonetheless thing you might recognize Xbox controller two arcade machines so joysticks and buttons you'll be familiar with what they are to mouse and keyboard games IND Jour the fate of Atlantis fantastic Adventure game to text adventures with twine to light Gun Games The Time Crisis and Duck Hunt cockit games and driving games but Star Wars or Sonic races to the music rooms this kind of Rock Band guitar here this can get quite out of hand to get quite loud in this room from time to time and this this is one of my favorite bits so this is um this is a kind of wall of inputs this is four games all with quite different control mechanisms um so we've got um version of a game called Tempest here which is using a a spinner which you spin around to shoot the aliens that's yeah so a single button game a I'm not really good at it though terrible at this game uh and a track ball game so Missile Command so some of you may remember this so you're moving the uh Crosshair around with a track ball so they're all played in quite different ways and what we're trying to do is like in a really gentle way here just get people to think about uh the fact that not all games are controlled with a the kind of controller that you might have at home there's loads and loads of different interfaces for games and by kind of gent so we change these around quite often we change the games around and change controllers around um to to just kind of gently draw attention to the fact that like the assumptions that you might have about video games but not necessarily be true a lot of people either play with a keyboard on a mouse or they play with a you know play with a play with a game path and there's so many different things that games are so we have kind of smaller installations on these rooms so these change around every few months we'll put a different kind of more experiential game in there right now it's panoramical which is kind of generative music game it's like the late 60s on the wall for and then we move up to gallery 3 so this is our most kind of gallery like Gallery I guess the problem with exhibiting video games the problem with talking to people about about video games is that quite often um like they rely on you as a customer being good at video games so if I want to talk to you about uh Sonic the Hedgehog right and show you what Sonic the Hedgehog is I could hand you a controller and you know let you play son the Hedgehog and hope that you are good at son of the Hedgehog if you're not you you won't be able to see those bits so what we're trying to do with these things called game inspectors um is experiment with giving people snapshots specific ideas within games to experience so this is Gang Beast if you haven't played Gang Beast you must immediately get Gang Beast it's has been made in Sheffield it's a kind of drunk jelly baby fighting in a car park physics brawler uh game a company called bone loaf like I a bone loaf made for us um a game inspector so this is a demo showing you play the game over there and over here you can play around with seeing how the physics work so you can see as he turns red at the Collision points and you can also see how the animation armateur is working so you can see actually what this person do is rolling around on a ball when animated you get a much better sense of the of the movement so this is a look like inside a game that you play over there that you would just never normally see one of the things I always liked about like exhibits of classical things is actually the sketchbooks rather than the finishings you know they're kind of working it out and how big the so in here um we invite any developer to show work um that's not finished yet right so people get to place before it's done they leave them suggestions in the in the feed developers box so people get to see games before they're done and feedback them and then just be able to say things like it should be faster or slower it's too hard or the colors aren't right and it's a it's like it's a look inside games that most of the public never really get most time when you encounter a game it's like shrink wrapped and it's finished and it's beautiful um just exposing again this fact that there are things that are made it's really really important this is the greenhouse and then our most kind of gallery like Gallery this is a history of video games in 100 at least objects roughly 100 objects um and it's like a loose L chronological Journey around starting here so whenever people come in they will gravitate towards the area they recognize this will be my childhood um right here and again these are all machines that people can play um we have a bit of bit of basic on the window if people want to have a go up programming a BBC I'm always really like delighted and surprised with the amount of time that people spend in here particular like people of a certain age um like me we spend quite a lot of time along this wall we've been trying to show this sort of social history of games too so things like and this may mean not mean much to some of you but things like pirate cassettes from the ' 80s with kind of handdrawn school boy artwork things like maps from video games things that kind of spin-off board games and keyboard overlay and kind of I I guess the sort of ephemera of what games are and what games meant to people is really what this um this room is trying to capture it's not just about um again you know kind of kind of playing things but also things like the l a donated by no less than in Livingston Doom 2 Master like a couple weeks AG John Romero turned up here so John Romero was was a co-designer of of Doom like seminal firstperson shooter and this is is one of the gold masters of of Doom to like incredibly influential designer um yeah just rocked up first thing I learn I was at home first thing we heard about was somebody like saying we have the thing called slack that we use internal messages oh I got John Romero's in the building and everyone like went ni he did a little talk here for some of the some of the dads to recognize who he was it's quite for a special moment people tend to spend you know kind of kind of like most of the day here when they come and that combined with things things like the classes if you got kids you want to learn how to Cod they come Saturday mornings the pixel clubs during the week and lots and lots of events that happen in the evenings for every group um we're trying to be uh I guess a sort of community center really for people are interested in this kind of stuff you know if you're interested in football you can join a football club if you're interested in music you can join Orchestra interested in games technology in culture like come here and and help us help us make it better so that's the national video game Mar we'd like to thank Audible for sponsoring this episode of computer file and if you go to audible.com computer file there's a chance to sign up and get a free audio book it's important to use this URL which is here uh to sign up using some kind of desktop uh machine and after that you can sign in on an app uh download the app onto your device and uh and start browsing listening to books I was going to recommend a toy praet book today but this is my first time using this app and there are so many options that I might change my mind St fry get started so thanks once again to audible.com and uh check out audible.com computer file your free book if I obtain a cookie off you which is supposed to be secure then I can send that to let's say Amazon or to a shop and say I'm Sean please you know what's in his shopping basket what's his address what's his credit card detailswell welcome we are in uh the world's first national video M my name is Ian I'm the director I'm one of the one of the folks that work here uh and this is what you see when you come in it's the first thing you see is a massive uh blue blue Hedgehog this wall over here will tell you all the games that are in here that changes all the time there's tons to play but it's all about playing games it's also about making games so the big thing about this place is um we think everybody should go to play games but also we really like people learning how to make them too you see these fantastic people at this desk they'll say hello you just like this so exactly like that there are arcade machines to play there are old things to do too and then another kind of peculiar thing about the building is there's lots of stuff there only here so a lot of games that we've commissioned that you can only actually play in this building the first one you'll see is this one it's called Dash and Bash this is only in the National video Market it's made byce called alist aers it's fantastic game that allows you to uh to kind of spot these symbols and you have to bash other people out the way and Bash The Bash the buttons to get to the right one before anybody else does so we really wanted to like kind of right away show people the games aren't necessarily just about kind of standing like this they can be about bashing things too and that's really what we wanted to try and do with this so lots of people do this as a kind of warmup you might want to come through here is the toast bar now it's not just a clever name the toast bar is called the toast bar behind the step uh because it will it has a variety of toast that it will indeed venue and lots again of games for you to play tends to be the oldest stuff in here you want to play Nintendo 64 you can request a different game from the bar if you want to in the summer cuz it's nice in the summer right sit outside and play a game I eat some toast like welcome you as much as we as much as we possibly can so you come in and out here this is migan troll this is a game about making games so the idea here is a two-player game and whilst two people play it other people can be changing it so you can kind of change the graphics you can change the gravity you can change the spawn rate of aliens kind of really gently get people into this idea that they can change and what games are and really see what games are made of Cu the weird thing about games is you don't often get get kind of look inside the kitchen of what they are like other things that are just here this is room Racers this is fantastic game my leave velthoven this is like Micro Machines but the magical part of it is if I just start this up for you find the red car here racing around but this is the cool part anything that we put down the car crashes into so you end up with like a couple of different games happy one of them is like a racing game I another want to be people lying on here to be kind of raced around so anything that we put there car can't pass through so it's kind of about two things it's about playing games and racing cars but it's also about what makes a good racetrack right this is that kind of big main stairwell that goes up and down most of the buildings and when you design a museum like often what people do is try and hide um the computers and hide the way that it works and we kind of went the opposite way what we want to do is expose everything so even if even if you don't really know about Electronics like you can see that all of the orange stuff uh is power right all the purples Network so similarly all the exhibits that we built here we if they break and they do break sometimes um we just fix them in front of you cuz you can CU you can do that we're trying to capture the um I suppose the sort of spirit of like when I was a kid if if the video recorder broke we'd have the back off it in the kitchen table you know you can put it back together again but youd have to go at fixing it it's that kind of idea of of like being able to open stuff up and and sort of kind of X-ray it and really kind of get involved is what we're trying to do um so the whole building we wanted to make kind of transparent so Gallery 2 is the Hall of inputs arranging from like really like the kind of controllers that you might be used to having at home game of Trials with a with a quite complicated but nonetheless thing you might recognize Xbox controller two arcade machines so joysticks and buttons you'll be familiar with what they are to mouse and keyboard games IND Jour the fate of Atlantis fantastic Adventure game to text adventures with twine to light Gun Games The Time Crisis and Duck Hunt cockit games and driving games but Star Wars or Sonic races to the music rooms this kind of Rock Band guitar here this can get quite out of hand to get quite loud in this room from time to time and this this is one of my favorite bits so this is um this is a kind of wall of inputs this is four games all with quite different control mechanisms um so we've got um version of a game called Tempest here which is using a a spinner which you spin around to shoot the aliens that's yeah so a single button game a I'm not really good at it though terrible at this game uh and a track ball game so Missile Command so some of you may remember this so you're moving the uh Crosshair around with a track ball so they're all played in quite different ways and what we're trying to do is like in a really gentle way here just get people to think about uh the fact that not all games are controlled with a the kind of controller that you might have at home there's loads and loads of different interfaces for games and by kind of gent so we change these around quite often we change the games around and change controllers around um to to just kind of gently draw attention to the fact that like the assumptions that you might have about video games but not necessarily be true a lot of people either play with a keyboard on a mouse or they play with a you know play with a play with a game path and there's so many different things that games are so we have kind of smaller installations on these rooms so these change around every few months we'll put a different kind of more experiential game in there right now it's panoramical which is kind of generative music game it's like the late 60s on the wall for and then we move up to gallery 3 so this is our most kind of gallery like Gallery I guess the problem with exhibiting video games the problem with talking to people about about video games is that quite often um like they rely on you as a customer being good at video games so if I want to talk to you about uh Sonic the Hedgehog right and show you what Sonic the Hedgehog is I could hand you a controller and you know let you play son the Hedgehog and hope that you are good at son of the Hedgehog if you're not you you won't be able to see those bits so what we're trying to do with these things called game inspectors um is experiment with giving people snapshots specific ideas within games to experience so this is Gang Beast if you haven't played Gang Beast you must immediately get Gang Beast it's has been made in Sheffield it's a kind of drunk jelly baby fighting in a car park physics brawler uh game a company called bone loaf like I a bone loaf made for us um a game inspector so this is a demo showing you play the game over there and over here you can play around with seeing how the physics work so you can see as he turns red at the Collision points and you can also see how the animation armateur is working so you can see actually what this person do is rolling around on a ball when animated you get a much better sense of the of the movement so this is a look like inside a game that you play over there that you would just never normally see one of the things I always liked about like exhibits of classical things is actually the sketchbooks rather than the finishings you know they're kind of working it out and how big the so in here um we invite any developer to show work um that's not finished yet right so people get to place before it's done they leave them suggestions in the in the feed developers box so people get to see games before they're done and feedback them and then just be able to say things like it should be faster or slower it's too hard or the colors aren't right and it's a it's like it's a look inside games that most of the public never really get most time when you encounter a game it's like shrink wrapped and it's finished and it's beautiful um just exposing again this fact that there are things that are made it's really really important this is the greenhouse and then our most kind of gallery like Gallery this is a history of video games in 100 at least objects roughly 100 objects um and it's like a loose L chronological Journey around starting here so whenever people come in they will gravitate towards the area they recognize this will be my childhood um right here and again these are all machines that people can play um we have a bit of bit of basic on the window if people want to have a go up programming a BBC I'm always really like delighted and surprised with the amount of time that people spend in here particular like people of a certain age um like me we spend quite a lot of time along this wall we've been trying to show this sort of social history of games too so things like and this may mean not mean much to some of you but things like pirate cassettes from the ' 80s with kind of handdrawn school boy artwork things like maps from video games things that kind of spin-off board games and keyboard overlay and kind of I I guess the sort of ephemera of what games are and what games meant to people is really what this um this room is trying to capture it's not just about um again you know kind of kind of playing things but also things like the l a donated by no less than in Livingston Doom 2 Master like a couple weeks AG John Romero turned up here so John Romero was was a co-designer of of Doom like seminal firstperson shooter and this is is one of the gold masters of of Doom to like incredibly influential designer um yeah just rocked up first thing I learn I was at home first thing we heard about was somebody like saying we have the thing called slack that we use internal messages oh I got John Romero's in the building and everyone like went ni he did a little talk here for some of the some of the dads to recognize who he was it's quite for a special moment people tend to spend you know kind of kind of like most of the day here when they come and that combined with things things like the classes if you got kids you want to learn how to Cod they come Saturday mornings the pixel clubs during the week and lots and lots of events that happen in the evenings for every group um we're trying to be uh I guess a sort of community center really for people are interested in this kind of stuff you know if you're interested in football you can join a football club if you're interested in music you can join Orchestra interested in games technology in culture like come here and and help us help us make it better so that's the national video game Mar we'd like to thank Audible for sponsoring this episode of computer file and if you go to audible.com computer file there's a chance to sign up and get a free audio book it's important to use this URL which is here uh to sign up using some kind of desktop uh machine and after that you can sign in on an app uh download the app onto your device and uh and start browsing listening to books I was going to recommend a toy praet book today but this is my first time using this app and there are so many options that I might change my mind St fry get started so thanks once again to audible.com and uh check out audible.com computer file your free book if I obtain a cookie off you which is supposed to be secure then I can send that to let's say Amazon or to a shop and say I'm Sean please you know what's in his shopping basket what's his address what's his credit card details\n"