I got in touch with my inner-nerd last week and attended “Game On” with Hubsband; “Melbourne’s must-see exhibition of 2008 – the action-packed celebration of games culture that has thrilled over one million players of all ages around the world. Game On tracks the development of videogames from the first computer game to arcade-era hits and the very latest from today’s billion dollar industry.” Make that one million and two players!

I was a little skeptical at first, thinking it was going to be another nerd convention like SupaNova but I was pleasantly surprised at the number of normal people there! (Ha ha. Sorry honey. Just cos you’re a nerd, doesn’t mean you’re not normal.) But seriously, there were children, girlfriends, wifeys, mothers (mostly carrying around jackets and sitting around waiting for hubsbands and kids to get tired) and everyone in between. And the games! We got to play quite a few different games including:

Pong
Frogger
Mario Cart
Star Wars (the arcade game with the vector images)
Tron arcade game
Puzzle Bubble
Gravity
Donkey Kong (game and watch)
Indy 500
Adventure on the Atari
Populous
Chillingham

… just to name a few! There were quite a few people there but there were also quite a few games to play so there was always something to do. We even ran into Yahtzee, but we almost didn’t recognise him cos he wasn’t wearing his trademark hat.

We also checked out the game consoles that had been made over the last 36 years which was actually quite interesting. We finished off with about half an hour in the theatre watching the “Machinima Showcase” which is a “new kind of filmmaking that uses computer games technology to ‘shoot’ film.” Yeah, I found it boring too but Hubs enjoyed it. It gave me a chance to have a rest, so I was happy.

We were there for 3 hours, then I decided it was time to go home. I was all nerded out for one day!