Videogame Nation Exhibition Coming Soon - January 7th 2011
Organisers at Woodhorn are delighted to announce details of the exciting blockbuster exhibition heading to the Northumberland museum next month.
A huge celebration of British videogaming will allow visitors to immerse themselves in the world of games as Woodhorn looks back over more than three decades of British gaming success.
The exhibition, Videogame Nation, will show how games have developed from the very early days in the 1970s through to the present day. With a host of titles up and running and ready for visitors to play, the exhibition will put the growth of the British industry into context.
Today, British games such as Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto and Little Big Planet are household names. Gaming in the UK took off in the 1980s with many programmers spending days, even weeks in their bedrooms producing some of the most iconic games in gaming history. From the seeds of titles such as Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy, a multi-million pound industry has grown, with the revenue generated from games frequently surpassing that of music and film.
Videogame Nation at Woodhorn will give visitors an exciting hands-on experience of how gaming has evolved.
Imagine a video arcade populated with some of Britain's greatest and most influential games including Head Over Heels and Jetpac, and then complement those legendary titles with an array of consoles, spanning the length and breadth of game hardware development with games such as Tomb Raider, WipEout, Destruction Derby, Sensible World of Soccer and LEGO Star Wars.
Director Keith Merrin is enthusiastic about the exhibition. “Visitors to Videogame Nation will really be able to capture the mood of gaming by playing early games in an authentic bedroom setting, ‘visiting’ a seaside-style arcade, even taking a seat in a football stadium. They will experience a host of machines from the ZX Spectrum and the Nintendo DSi to the Mega Drive, Wii and Xbox 360. We’ll even have more obscure consoles such as an Atari Jaguar and an Amstrad GX4000.
“As well as the actual games, visitors will also be able to see some of the stunning artwork created by games developers and magazine artists, read original design documents and view machines most of us had forgotten. The exhibition promises to be entertaining and informative for everyone.”
The exhibition has been curated by videogaming stalwart David Crookes and Pollyanna Clayton-Stamm.
David said, “Gaming has become a hugely significant part of so many people's lives over the years and yet there is still a feeling that games are for geeks. This exhibition aims not only to help strip away such preconceptions but also celebrate the contribution British developers have made to gaming. It's a multi-million pound industry today but that wealth of cash hasn't been to the detriment of creativity and we aim to look at games as a cultural influence and a still-developing form of interactive media.
“Right from the very beginning when games were produced by people sitting in their bedrooms, imagination has been at the forefront but with the hugely powerful consoles we have today, that creative thought is being unleashed like never before and visitors to the show will see just how far the industry has come.”
Pollyanna added, "Videogame Nation is a collision of what people would traditionally consider to be 'high art' and popular culture - that confluence of cultures which is so stimulating."
Videogame Nation opens to the public on Saturday 12 February. The exhibition will be accompanied by an events programme details of which will be available shortly.