Game On exibit appearing in Chicago

[ray_slup]

For those of you that live near Chicago they're having an exhibit about video games at  The Museum of Science and Industry.   
http://www.msichicago.org/gameon/index.html

[ErikRuud]

Cool!!!!!

Game On and Toyworks 3000 at the same time!

I work in dowtown Chicago.

[jcroach]

Very nice.  Thanks for the heads up.  My wife is in a wedding in Chicago in a few months.  Maybe I can skip out on the boring stuff and head over there with my brother.  I couldn't find on the web site how long it's running.  Anyone know?

[IntruderAlert]

Will David R. Foley be there?

[Sasquatch!]

Very nice.  Thanks for the heads up.  My wife is in a wedding in Chicago in a few months.  Maybe I can skip out on the boring stuff and head over there with my brother.  I couldn't find on the web site how long it's running.  Anyone know?

"The boring stuff" being the wedding itself, right? 

Will David R. Foley be there?

Why, you looking to pie him or something?

[ray_slup]

I don't see ho

I couldn't find on the web site how long it's running. Anyone know?

at least until September, but I don't remember where I got the info

[ErikRuud]

I went to the museum yesterday.

The exhibit runs until September 4th, 2005.

Pointers for visiting the Game ON exhibit:

1. Get to the Museum as early as possible.
2. Do NOT go during spring break or any other peak period when kids are out of school.
3. Go to the Game On exhibit ahead of your scheduled entry time!
4. Bring your own lunch.  The food court is expensive.

We did not do 1,2 or 3 any of these, and we waited over an hour to get into the museum and then we waited 45 minutes in line to get into the Game On exhibit!

When you get your tickets, they assign you an entry time for the Game On exhibit.  Ours was betwen 1:00pm and 3:00pm.  You can enter anytime during that period.  Once you are in the exhibit, you can stay as long as you like.  Once you leave the exhibit, you cannot re-enter.  They have a capacity limit for the exhibit, when it is full, they stop letting people in until some people leave.

The exhibit itself was pretty good.  Console games are the majority, but there is a reasonable number of arcade games.  They even have a MAME setup for a number of single player games using a video projector.  The frontend was GameLauncher.  The one problem with the setuo is that there is a Space Invaders upright and two cocktails in between the control panel and the projected game, so if some one is playing the upright, it is hard to see the lower left corner of the screen.

I did get to play a lot of games, many of wich I have never played, or never played on the original hardware including  Discs of Tron upright, Tempest 2000 on an Atari Jaguar, and PONG on an original Magnavox Odyssey (I did not see an Odyssey²).

Every major and many minor platforms are represented from XBOX, PS2, GBA, and PC games to a Sinclair SpectrumZX.  They even had the old Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy text adventure.  One thing that was missing was Virtual Reality games.

I'll post pictures in a day or two.