Audio By Carbonatix
Don’t be fooled by the following words, while they may start
out like something only rich white women would be into, they
actually end up somewhere pretty cool. The Boca Raton Museum of Art currently has
an exhibition entitled the Art of Video Games.
This particular museum, though located in what is generally
known as no-man’s-land for people under the age of 65, has hosted many a cool
exhibition. Boca, itself, gets kind of a bad rap for the aforementioned
reason, but this gaming exhibition is proof of growth.
“Video games foster the mindset that allows creativity to
grow,” said Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, Inc. These words greet you as you
enter the exhibition. Displays of older and newer systems
along with interactive ways to learn more about them line the walls, each containing four games from a specific gaming era. They start at the beginning, the ’70s through the early ’80s.
Those interested in creating what would later become a worldwide phenomenon had
very little in the way of pixels and color to work with. Pac-Man, for example,
was one of the first arcade games that was brought into people’s homes. The first version had only 4kb of memory, that’s like half a Word document.
The next section
focuses on games created in the ’80s to the early ’90s. They show a broader
visual scope in gaming, and show that this was the time
when gaming started to be taken more seriously. Game designers and programmers
began being recognized as artists and storytellers by those who had previously
shoved them into lockers in high school.
This was especially so when the Legend
of Zelda debuted in 1897. It was one of the first large scale exploration games
with a vast fictional world, history, folklore, and unique character arcs. It
set the tone for games like World of Warcraft (WoW) and Call of Duty. Shigeru
Miyamoto, responsible for many popular video games including Mario Bros., was
inspired by his childhood home in Japan and wanted to bring that scenery to the
video game landscape.
The transition era, ranging from the mid-’90s through the early aughts was an industry boom. Two
dimensional games were starting to fade to the background as three dimensional
games moved to the forefront. The landscape, ever important as it set the tone
for action and narrative, became more realistic than previously. This was
time when Tomb Raider received widespread recognition. It was the first game to
do so with a female protagonist. Lara Croft represented fearlessness, a woman
capable of having Indiana Jones-like adventures. Additional storage space on the
CD-rom allotted for full voiceover and high quality cut scenes.
And so it went,
each display hosting childhood memories, going all the way up to 2010 with
games like Portal, Minecraft, Mass Effect, and Metal Gear Solid, each display containing
a fun piece of information for whatever game you select.
If I’ve sounded
like I know what I’m talking about, it’s only because I went to this exhibit. I
had no idea about the backstory or history behind the games I used to love. Did
you know that Miyamoto had wanted Yoshi to be a part of the Mario-verse from
the beginning, but had to wait for the technology to catch up with him? I didn’t.
But once the tech got to where he needed it to be it allowed him to debut my
favorite dino in Super Mario World.
The exhibit isn’t
all history, though. There’s a section of game-play were you can relive some of
your favorite gaming moments with Flower, Pac-Man, Myst, The Secret of Monkey
Island, and Super Mario Bros. There are also concept sketches for everything
from Sonic to WoW to Fallout 3 and videos on display featuring game
developers, programmers, designers, all talking about their passion for the
industry.
Whether you’re a
noob or a veteran gamer, this platform for telling the story and artistry of
video games is like no other.
