Weekend of Games

It was Australia day yesterday which meant that we had a full three days to do typical Australian things. BBQs, trips to the beach, fishing or perhaps a game of backyard cricket would all have been blokey ways to pass the time. I on the other hand decided to amp up the geek meter this year and dedicate the long weekend to serious gaming.

Saturday kicked off with a little house party that I've been looking forward to for a while now. It started off innocently enough as a simple way to get some of the guys from work that live around the area together for a little out-of-the-office get together. The nature of the activity, which turned out to be Rock Band at our place, soon attracted other would be plastic rock virtuosos and the selected invite list eventually doubled in size. Not that that's a problem as we finally have a house that's capable of hosting three people without drastic furniture rearrangement.



We rocked out pretty much non-stop from 3PM to 10PM with a short but necessary intermission for pizza. I think I've created a bit of a monster as most of the guys are planning on getting Guitar Hero to practice at home before the next meet up. I'd say the most disturbing thing was Chris' persistent selection of No Doubt when it was his turn to sing. No one should have to witness a 6 foot man sing "Just a Girl" without imbibing a debilitating amount of alcohol first.



Sunday was our first chance to see the Game On exhibition that has been at the State Library since November. It's supposed to be a historical view of video games with plenty of interactive displays. I must say that I was really psyched to go see it, and in truth probably built up my expectation a little high. Not surprisingly, the show didn't quite deliver and we both walked away feeling that it could have been something more.

It shouldn't come as a shock that the Sunday of a long weekend right at the end of school holidays would be a popular time for families to take their children to an exhibition about video games. The show was split into two rooms at the library and the organisers had imposed a maximum number allowed in at any time to ease traffic and waiting time for the games. Even so, the rooms were absolutely jam packed with kids that had no qualms about hogging the popular displays in defiance of an unenforced five minute time limit. Struggling air-conditioning and teenage hygiene weren't a great combination either for the enclosed space.

I was hoping for a lot more text and information about the different genres and culture of games over the years. While there were a few displays on old video game consoles and Japanese niche games (train simulators, dating simulators and pachinko), on a whole I didn't feel like I learned anything I didn't already know. The floor was basically packed with a bunch of emulators with arbitrary games from various eras and genres, with no real theme around their placement. To make matters worse, quite a few of the game displays were non-responsive or plagued by poor instructions. I'm being particularly harsh I realise on what was obviously designed to be an event for the "common people" rather than obsessed geeks. I can't help but feel however that there was a lot more interesting information that could have been on display.

The thing wasn't all bad though, I got to see and play quite a few games that I'd only read about up till now. Steel Battalion was a highlight for me as the game never arrived on Australian shores due to lack of public interest. You actually had to flick six toggle switches and press three buttons to get the "mech" powered up when you start playing! Talk about geektastic!



Other highlights included being able to play Spacewar! on what I'd assume would be an approximation of the PDP-1, checking out concept art for Monkey Island, playing Densha de Go with a real train controller and seeing first hand how bad the Atari Jaguar's controller really was. There was also a pretty nifty Pong exhibit.



Australia day itself was a veg day on the couch for Alison and me. We whittled our national day away with episodes of Studio 60 and various games on the 360. Still struggling to make our way through Gears of War 2 as we've sorta lost our mojo since playing the first game. Once we grew tired of dying in next generation glory we downloaded Bionic Commando: Rearmed so we could cark it retro style instead. All good fun.

I may not have an aussie tan today like most of my co-workers but colour me a happy gamer.