Gaming in a Museum

While on a walk around Berlin we came upon the Computerspiele museum. As it turned out it was far from an accident that we came to a video game museum, it was a special surprise! 

The layout of the museum was a bit strange, it was generally nonexistent besides a slight organization of the newer games in the front. There was one big room with two, way-too-narrow, way-too-packed with games and people, side rooms that had all the old arcade games. Some examples of games we played are Donkey Kong, Tetris and Pack-Man. They had two player mode on most if not all of the games and we took full advantage. Unfortunately my prowess was limited and I got utterly crushed in Tetris and Pack-Man. Instead of a play winner we did a play loser and Jack and I tied in the next game of Tetris.

For Pack-Man nobody was willing to go against my dad who was the champion of six rounds of the game with a total of six pieces of fruit collected in one life! We named him Master Eater of Ghosts and moved on to the next game. Another loss for me and triumph for him was the race car game. It was a simple game, press down the gas peddle with one foot while steering with a wheel. No brakes was a little disturbing especially when I sorely needed them. At every turn I would careen around the corner on the pixilated screen and more than half the time blowup with a great kaboom and flash of lights that could give someone an epileptic seizure. It got worse. With every win there was an upgrade available for the car and once he saved up enough upgrades a missile was unlocked. Now at every lap if it wasn’t already hard to make it around the corner without my car going splat I had rockets being launched at me! About seven loses later, I had had it with losing and I made the brilliant decision to request that we switch sides. The result, drumroll please, was another loss. After that humiliating finale, I was done with multi-player mode, and I went and lost to the game at Donkey Kong. 

The museum was a little more crowded at this point and I decided to head back up to the entrance where some of the more recent games were on display for play. I found a game released during Covid where all the characters wore masks and you had to stay six in-game feet away from the NPCs (None Player Characters). While looking through the new games I also found the game I probably spent the most time playing. I don’t remember the name, it wasn’t in English, but it was a puzzle game where you were some kind of octopus or squid creature that went through box puzzle things. I beat at least five levels before wondering what I had been doing for the past twenty minutes. 

After all of that we were dragged away from the museum, practically kicking and screaming in Jack’s case, because of the two hour museum implemented time limit.