Computer Games Museum in Berlin (6 arcade machines)

[Etienne MacGyver]

Or.......   the dtv variant...

 
click pics

Im sure that has composite out  

[level42]

Geez, they should have included Kaboom ! (The activision clode of Atari's Avalanche) on that Paddle thing !!

Mmmm, well if Ully's Breakout PCB is not fixable, he can always throw in one of these.....

Minor note: He'll have to move the monitor from vertical to horizontal, but who cares ?!  

[Etienne MacGyver]

Geez, they should have included Kaboom ! (The activision clode of Atari's Avalanche) on that Paddle thing !!

Mmmm, well if Ully's Breakout PCB is not fixable, he can always throw in one of these.....

Minor note: He'll have to move the monitor from vertical to horizontal, but who cares ?!  

As far as i can judge from the story from this museum, the people of the museum don,t care  

[PunkRockCaveman]

Hmmm, I think the DO care actually, BUT they think it's all good what they do, because they can show the cabs to the people, the people can play it and the mission to bring games history to the public is accomplished. Big mistake ... they just don't know better. Maybe to few people have complained yet.

I'm still excited to hear a statement from them here in this thread ... it took a few days (if I remember right) before I got my email replied so if we are lucky someone responsible gets in touch with us here ...

[amuzulo]

Hey everyone,

First of all, I just want to say that I'm quite heart-broken by the discussion here. Second, I've only really gotten involved with the museum itself about a month ago, so I wasn't involved in the decisions to remove the original hardware and replace it with MAME. Also, I guess you could say I'm personally more of an "expert" from the software point of view rather than the hardware side. Since I'm new there, I'm also not sure how much how much I can say, so I'm going to pass this along to people more involved than me to comment. You also have to remember though that Germany really doesn't have a tradition at all of playing these games and the museum administration is doing the best they can. Computer games have always gotten a bad reputation in Germany and it looks like this museum is finally giving this medium the positive attention that it deserves.

Best wishes,
Chuck

[Superully]

You also have to remember though that Germany really doesn't have a tradition at all of playing these games and the museum administration is doing the best they can. Computer games have always gotten a bad reputation in Germany and it looks like this museum is finally giving this medium the positive attention that it deserves.

i couldn't disagree more!!!

arcade games in germany = no tradition? who's saying that?

computer games in germany = always bad reputation? since when?

[PunkRockCaveman]

Hmmm, you are a tour guide and they haven't told you that the machines are modified? I wonder what you tell the visitors when you show them the Asteroids. One of the main facts of the machine is that it's vector but there is no vector monitor installed. Don't you speak about the technical facts?

Another point: you tell people here that in germany computer games had a bad reputation and we don't have a big tradition in videogames??? Ridculous. That's a plain lie. Did they tell you that?? You should check your sources on this point.

Things are worse than I thought ....  

[2-mad]

I was thinking about visiting the museum, but now that i read this i won't.

Thats my decision now !
I will NOT visit this "Museum" that is not really a museum ..
All of us here have more really "historic" and authentic games in there gameroom ..
Who wanna see my "Museum" ?
5 Euros is the entrance .. children under 9 are free ..
All games original. All can be used, only one Mame-Machine .. but NO TFT's ..
If your eyes are not "15Khz ready" stay out !

Didi

[Etienne MacGyver]

I can understand the meaning, and i am totally sure that the intentions are the best,
Mame is ok in my book, sure, if there is no hardware available, or whatever reason, but TFT's
Please Come ON ! , in a museum that supposed to be a place to see "treasures" that is a NO-GO.
just my 2 cents..

[ElPancho]

Absolute no-go this is. Like going to a car museum and seeing them as plastic kit cars.

I won't go in there even if they offered money.... the hurting would just be way too much ....

[Laschek]

You also have to remember though that Germany really doesn't have a tradition at all of playing these games and the museum administration is doing the best they can. Computer games have always gotten a bad reputation in Germany and it looks like this museum is finally giving this medium the positive attention that it deserves.

I don't wish to sound rude, but obviously you don't know what you are talking about, and I guess you cannot be blamed for that.
I played tons of arcade games in Germany back in the early 80s, they where everywhere, in public places, in arcades, in pubs. It's true there weren't as many dedicated games as in the US as we had a lot of generic cabs, but the games were there!
I do agree though that computer games tended to have a bad reputation at least among older generations.

To be honest, and please don't get that personal, I don't understand why the museum didn't hire a guide who was there at the times that he is talking about to visitors.

To me the whole approach is a complete failure, most of the collectors I know did a better job with there collections than this "professional" museum.

[Blanka]

For me the games can be put out of the context of the cabinet in certain cases. We should not forget that the games were presented different in the USA, in Europe and in Japan. Of course, a complete original working cabinet is the best option for a museum, but to let people play and experience the games itself, Mame+LCD is fine. As long as the controllers are good, you can experience the game very well. Some games even look better on LCD, I like wide-gamut blockyness very much for the classics. Even vector looks great on 1600x1200 displays. With later 256-colour palete games the characteristics of CRT are much more needed. They started to make games more photo-realistic, and dithering looks bad on LCD.
On consoles I'm even more into emulation. The original hardware does not mean much for me. It's just about the software with consoles. LCD TV for it: fine. The problem here is more in the implementation. Most expositions use stinking-bad kitchen/trailer trash TN LCD TV's, with tons of backlight bleed, colour shift, weird pixel polishing and stuff. A nice IPS/PVA screen, correct aspect, blocky mode (no fancy GPU scaling), DVI/HDMI connected display to a computer with emulators is perfect for old console games. Just hook up some classic controllers for accurate gameplay.

[amuzulo]

It looks like I've mostly been misunderstood here. When I mentioned that arcades don't have a tradition, what I meant to say about arcades is that due to the 1984 law, they didn't go on to become a part of popular culture as much as in the USA for example. Personally, when I first moved to Germany, I looked online to try to find an arcade nearby, and was shocked to find that there appears to not be any more in all of Germany! Where I grew up in Harrisburg, PA, I'm pretty sure within a half hour I could still reach about 5 arcades that are still in business. It's really sad how things developed in Germany.

When I said that computer games have a bad reputation, I meant that the German press generally covers them in a negative light, focusing on violence and addiction rather than the positive aspects of these games (read Jane McGonigal, for example). Also, most Germans tend to equate coin-operated games with gambling machines due to the legal history here, which is very unfortunate. Also, I've generally come under the impression that these games are considered for kids here. I'm playing a racing game on my iPhone and someone I know comes up to me and says, "Oh, you're playing a kid's game!" Grrr.

It's hard not to take all of this criticism personally. The arcade section is just one part of the museum, so it's not possible to have tour guides who know all the topics of the museum equally well and from both the software and hardware sides, at least at this time. Remember that this museum only opened in the beginning of this year. In any case, I contacted the museum director/curator and he said he'll reply here tomorrow, since he's away on business today.

[Laschek]

Remember that this museum only opened in the beginning of this year.

I always thought that it was just a re-opening? To my understanding the museum exists for quite some years but didn't have an actual location for some time. I own a video tape of a 3SAT TV broadcast called "Generation Pong" from 2001 about the history of video games which features a Computerspielemuseum in Berlin, is that a different museum? At least it has Mr. Andreas Lange and they feature the Polyplay (still intact), ridiculoulsy stating that it was the only surviving one.

[level42]

First: I want to say that I admire it that you still talk with us here, we burnt you pretty badly. Please don't see this as personal attacks, it's just that you reached those 0.1% of the population that gives a lot about those old pieces of wood with ancient electronics in them

Also: I welcome every initiative that is trying to preserve classic computers/videogames/arcade games. That most of us don't agree on the way it's done, is very obvious and doesn't need to be repeated.

Not sure when you moved from the US to Germany, but I'm not too sure about the law actually being to blame for the demise of arcades in Germany.

For starters: arcades weren't really that big and as much around as in the US. Ever. The "scene" in Europe was mostly tourist places for proper arcades, and snack-bars,movie theaters etc. for one or two machines. The arcades that I used to know from my youth are mostly actually still around today because they are at those tourist places. Lots of those machines were also at "arcade" at camping sites and other holiday parks.

I think in Europe, the UK had (has?) the "best" arcade scene. (Part of the) British tend to be less negative about gambling in general, so this probably helped. (I remember Ladbroke's tried to get us to gamble on sports matches, didn't work here).

I agree with you that the "general public" doesn't even see the difference between an amusement machine and a gambling machine, and put them "in the same corner".
However, the people who around 40 now, and have grown up with videogames tend to be much less negative about them.

Anyway, all that considered, I don't see how that "justifies" the mame-ing and TFT-ing of those classic machines.
Also, how about the rest of the machines in the museum. I'm sure there are C64's, spectrums and hopefully some Atari machines running there ? Are those being emulated too ?

I'm interested to know if the museum still has the original hardware around (hopefully) and if they would be willing to actually restore the machines to original state, maybe with help of some of us here in any way or form...

Let me end to say that I totally disagree with Blanka, but that's not the first and the last time, and everyone has his right of an opinion.
If you seriously say that vector games look BETTER on a TFT you either never have SEEN a real vector game, or you simply just don't get it.