READ

A visit to WA’s shrine to old video games

Did you know WA is home to what is probably Australia’s only video game console museum?
A visit to WA’s shrine to old video games
Image credit: The Nostalgia Box

The Nostalgia Box sits in a little shopfront near the State Library of Western Australia, in the heart of Perth’s cultural precinct. It houses over a hundred vintage consoles (including my favourite, the Virtual Boy, Nintendo’s very, very early foray into the world of virtual reality) and an area with some playable classics, including Duck Hunt (with the infamous NES Zapper light gun). Founder Jessie Yeoh tells me that, as far as she knows, it’s the first and only museum of its kind in Australia.

Childhood memories

Originally working as an accountant, Jessie (whose favourite game, for the record, is Super Mario Land on the Game Boy) was inspired by her childhood growing up playing video games with her two older brothers.

View Larger

Nostalgia Box founder Jessie’s favourite game is Super Mario Land on the Game Boy

Nostalgia Box founder Jessie’s favourite game is Super Mario Land on the Game Boy

“I wasn’t any good at the games, but it was still a very fun and memorable part of my childhood,” Jessie tells me.

“The idea came about when I realised many of us who grew up playing what are now called retrogames have limited or no way of reliving those childhood moments again.” She also wanted people to learn about the history of the industry and how video games have become such a big part of our lives. And thus, the Box was born.

The resurgence of retrogames

Retrogames are games that were created in the golden age of video games in the 1970s and 1980s. First, these were arcade games that could be played in arcades with friends in the 1970s and then home consoles by the likes of Nintendo, Sega and Atari in the 1980s.

People who grew up during this time are now adults, many of whom now have families. This is why there’s now a huge revival in interest in these old classics.

There’s a revival of interest in the retro game classics

There’s a revival of interest in the retro game classics

“To these adults, gaming is legitimately a childhood memory—to most, a positive memory,” Jessie tells me.“The desire to reconnect with the past and to share their childhood with the next generation has contributed to the revival of the original classics.”

The result is museums like the Nostalgia Box, but also the revision and rereleasing of old games and consoles, such as the Nintendo Classic Mini. It also means we see the look of new games borrowing from the past, with pixelated art and 8-bit inspired music.

View Larger

Museums like the Nostalgia Box gives people a way to reconnect with the past and their childhood

Museums like the Nostalgia Box gives people a way to reconnect with the past and their childhood

A new generation

This interest in retrogaming by parents is also creating connections between the generations. This is something the Box is very happy to facilitate. As Jessie tells me, many parents bring their kids to the museum for this very reason. “I think the opportunity to share your childhood with your children is a very special bonding experience,” she says.

“We often see excited parents sharing stories and games they used to play, showing the kids tricks and secrets of a game they still remember even after so many years. I still remember this one time I asked a little girl if she liked playing Sonic the Hedgehog as I watched her play. She replied yes, and I asked her why she liked the game. She said, ‘Because my Mummy used to play this game when she was my age.’”

View Larger

At Nostalgia Box, you can gather your friends and enjoy the old classics…

Image credit: Nostalgia Box
View Larger

…Even younger kids can appreciate the fun of old school games

Image credit: Nostalgia Box

And what’s Jessie’s favourite piece?

“It is hard to put a finger on just one console,” she replies. “But if I have to choose, I would say the oldest console in our museum, the Magnavox Odyssey, is one of the coolest and most significant gaming consoles we have. The Magnavox Odyssey was the first commercial video game console released in 1972. The release of the Odyssey marked the beginning of the commercial video game industry along with the start of the first generation of video game consoles.”

It was thanks to this innovation back in the 1970s that enabled the video game industry we have today. And you can go see this piece of history today, thanks to the Box.

Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie
About the author
Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie
In an age when disruption is the new normal, curiosity is the becomes the key 21st century skill. This is why Dr. Kate is an advocate for curiosity, through her work as a designer, speaker, writer and researcher. She’s written for variety of publications in Canada and Australia and is an innovation columnist for the Business News. She’s also a Certified Facilitator of LEGO® Serious Play®. As a globally recognised thought leader on innovation, Kate has been the recipient of numerous international awards and has spoken at conferences around the globe, including SXSW (Austin), NXNE (Toronto), REMIX Academy, Pecha Kucha, PAX AUS and TEDxPerth.
View articles
In an age when disruption is the new normal, curiosity is the becomes the key 21st century skill. This is why Dr. Kate is an advocate for curiosity, through her work as a designer, speaker, writer and researcher. She’s written for variety of publications in Canada and Australia and is an innovation columnist for the Business News. She’s also a Certified Facilitator of LEGO® Serious Play®. As a globally recognised thought leader on innovation, Kate has been the recipient of numerous international awards and has spoken at conferences around the globe, including SXSW (Austin), NXNE (Toronto), REMIX Academy, Pecha Kucha, PAX AUS and TEDxPerth.
View articles

NEXT ARTICLE

We've got chemistry, let's take it to the next level!

Get the latest WA science news delivered to your inbox, every fortnight.

Republish

Creative Commons Logo

Republishing our content

We want our stories to be shared and seen by as many people as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright on the stories on Particle belongs to Scitech and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This allows you to republish our articles online or in print for free. You just need to credit us and link to us, and you can’t edit our material or sell it separately.

Using the ‘republish’ button on our website is the easiest way to meet our guidelines.

Guidelines

You cannot edit the article.

When republishing, you have to credit our authors, ideally in the byline. You have to credit Particle with a link back to the original publication on Particle.

If you’re republishing online, you must use our pageview counter, link to us and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished. It’s a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the ‘republish’ then you’ll capture our page counter.

If you’re republishing in print, please email us to let us so we know about it (we get very proud to see our work republished) and you must include the Particle logo next to the credits. Download logo here.

If you wish to republish all our stories, please contact us directly to discuss this opportunity.

Images

Most of the images used on Particle are copyright of the photographer who made them.

It is your responsibility to confirm that you’re licensed to republish images in our articles.

Video

All Particle videos can be accessed through YouTube under the Standard YouTube Licence.

The Standard YouTube licence

  1. This licence is ‘All Rights Reserved’, granting provisions for YouTube to display the content, and YouTube’s visitors to stream the content. This means that the content may be streamed from YouTube but specifically forbids downloading, adaptation, and redistribution, except where otherwise licensed. When uploading your content to YouTube it will automatically use the Standard YouTube licence. You can check this by clicking on Advanced Settings and looking at the dropdown box ‘License and rights ownership’.
  2. When a user is uploading a video he has license options that he can choose from. The first option is “standard YouTube License” which means that you grant the broadcasting rights to YouTube. This essentially means that your video can only be accessed from YouTube for watching purpose and cannot be reproduced or distributed in any other form without your consent.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: particle@scitech.org.au

Copy this HTML into your CMS
Press Ctrl+C to copy