Live from Videotopia

Jennifer M. Woodard has written in a summary of her recent trek to the Videotopia Exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. The exhibit featured tons of video game history, ranging from coin operated pong to the N64. Click below to read the report.

The following was written by Slashdot reader Jennifer M. Woodard

Recently I took a little weekend adventure to Tampa, Florida. To engage one of the ultimate geek adventures one must do frequently.

I went to an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. This exhibit was called Videotopia, and man it was. There, on display, was an arcade style pong machine :). Unknown to me Pong was not the first arcade game. Pong was developed in 1975 by Atari, inc. and Tellegames. In 1971 Computer Space had the credit of being the first Arcade style video game. Only 1500 were built. However, Pong was Atari's first. Which by the way, I played both for a $.25 :) As I was reading the history next to most video games I came across something amusing. In 1976 Steve Jobs was given advice by Bushell of Atari on how to start your own buisness. I thought that was amusing. On display they had an Atari 2600, which brought back lots of good memories playing baseball *all* day with my brother. Atari stopped manufacturing the 2600 in 1990. They also had a Collecovision and an Intellivision. Collecovisions were developed in 1982 with a 3.58mhz 8 bit Z80A microprocessors. Intellivision was 2 years earlier in 1980. If any of you remember Intellivision, they also had displayed the little cards that were used. They displayed all the video entertainment systems up to N64 and segas. They also had the VCS that ran Space Invaders. The VCS was a 1.19 mhz 8 bit Motorola 6507 microproccesor with 256 bytes of RAM.

It was really a good time. They also showed the inside of a Video Cabinet running on a Commadore. They also had the coctail tables..the only one I remembered was Qbert. One section displayed all the first 3D games. They had the very First 3D game called I-Robot. This game was developed in 1984. Some of the games listed below were in mint condition.. All the cabinets were like brand new. Amoung those nice lookin arcade style games were Marble Maddness, Missle Command, the originl Space Invaders, Tron and Tron2, Frogger, Poll Position, Zaxxon, Pac-Man, Blasteroids, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes back (converted edition), Moon Patrol, Dragons Lair, Galaga, and many others that are not listed above. Even though I grew up during the whole Atari/ Collecovision war it ws nice to see the start of it all. If http://www.videotopia.com has any interest for you.. I definitly suggest takeing down schedules.

Much fun and good times to be had by all:)