Update: The National Videogame Museum’s opening date was pushed back to April 2016.
We’ve known for a while that a museum dedicated to the history of video games was coming to Frisco. Now we have a (tentative) opening date: The National Videogame Museum will open its doors at the Frisco Discovery Center some time in late December, according to a press release.
The museum is touting itself as the only one of its kind, and will highlight an extensive collection of more than 100,000 consoles, games, and other memorabilia dating back to the early days of the industry, when Pong was on the cutting edge of arcade play. Per the press release, the museum will also emphasize the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math to the video game industry. The STEM focus will hopefully convince some cool teachers to schedule field trips to the world’s most educational arcade.
Here are some of the installations visitors can look for, from the release:
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 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 will share the Frisco Discovery Center with the Sci-Tech Discovery Center, Black Box Theatre, and Frisco Art Gallery. The digs in Frisco make sense: Gearbox, the studio behind games like Borderlands, recently moved there from Plano, and North Texas is home to its fair share of companies making video games.
Admission to the museum will be $12 for adults, $10 for children 12-and-under (and active military service members, educators, and seniors).
On a related note, I’ve always wrote “video game” as two words, and Wikipedia seems inclined to agree with me. But it’s hard to dispute the expertise of the folks behind a “videogame museum,” and I hope someone out there can settle this once and for all.
For more information about the National Videogame Museum, go here.
