National Videogame Museum Opens This April
If you’ve ever wanted to visit a museum completely dedicated to video games, you will soon have your chance. The National Videogame Museum is confirmed to be opening this April at the Frisco Discovery Center in Frisco, Texas. This will be the first and only museum in America completely dedicated to the history of the videogame industry.
According to the official press release, the museum will have more than 100,000 videogame consoles, games and artifacts from the past and present of gaming on hand. It’s described as an interactive museum that will bring to life “life science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) values by tapping into America’s enthusiasm for playing and creating videogames.”
The museum is set to feature more than 20 installations, including a retro 1980s style videogame arcade with some classic 1980s arcade games. Here is a breakdown of some of the exhibits:
- Pixel Dreams: A 1980s-inspired arcade full of timeless classics such as Asteroids, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders and more.
- Giant Pong: Play the classic game Pong on the world’s largest home Pong console on a giant 15-foot TV replica from the 1970s.
- Head-to-Head Hall: A hall full of gaming stations where you can go head-to-head with friends, family or competitors in tournaments. Guests may find a set of game systems and games they’ve never seen before or find a tribute to their favorite game franchise played on 10 different systems. The hall takes advantage of NVM’s 12,000+ library of games and will be an ever-changing area of fun.
- Gearbox behind the scenes: See the actual office of Randy Pitchford, founder of Gearbox Software and creator of the games Borderlands, Brothers in Arms and Duke Nukem Forever.
- The Timeline of Consoles: Learn the stories and see artifacts from more than 50 past and present videogame consoles on a physical timeline.
- Rarest artifacts: A collection of rare artifacts will be displayed including the only Sega Neptune prototype, the unreleased Barbie edition for the Nintendo Game Boy Pocket system, the Atari Mindlink controller (one of only two in the world), the ultra-rare RDI Halcyon laserdisc-based game console and the Nintendo World Championships cartridge from 1990.
The museum officially opens on April 2 of this year. One can imagine a lot of school kids will be begging for this as the site as one of their upcoming field trips.