Emulator - arcade glory in an Aussie art gallery

[dark-aleph]

I just had a oldschool blast of an afternoon, playing 80s arcade games at a retrogame themed art exhibition in Brisbane, Australia.

 

The event is called Emulator, but despite the name they've packed the gallery full of genuine arcade cabinets (well genuine up to the point where all the 20c slots have been replaced by $1 units ).

 

The art is mostly pretty average, which isn't a bad thing, since it's well known that gallery visitors spend 7 seconds on average looking at each artwork - this means you can get all the art out of the way in the time it would take to clear a few boards of Pac-Man! There's a cool papier-mache relief Metroid head, and a cute Dig-Dug painting rather excellently titled '6507'. The standout though is an awesome poster-sized Donkey Kong print, beautifully rendered in a classic 80s cartoon style.

 

The arcades include 1942, Galaga, Gyruss, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Pengo, Juno First!, Mr. Do's Castle, Frogger, Defender, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Pleiads, Bomb Jack, Gunsmoke, Space Invaders, Dig-Dug, and four or five others I can't recall.

 

You can check out their website to find out about some of the other events associated with the event, such as chiptune music nights, game development talks, and highscore battles and prizes. The Bleeding Hearts gallery hosting the event is a community oriented place, and it's pretty nice to know that all your coins are going to help children's cancer funds.

 

I managed to set new highscores on the Pac-Man and Frogger machines, but I only cleared four boards on each so those scores won't last long! Juno First was my favourite of the afternoon - I must say I'm really impressed with how faithful the 2600 homebrew is, it almost perfectly captures the feel of the game. I really loved Bomb Jack too - after I got over my initial disappontment upon realising it wasn't Bomberman, I had a few fun rounds on it. The arcade size and portait orientation of the screen make it waaay better than any of the console conversions.

 

My only real disappointment was Defender. I like both Defender and Defender II on the 2600, but I found the arcade really horrible to play. The controls are slippery, the screen jerks about awkwardly, the playfield feels cramped, and the buttons all seem to be placed in the worst possible places for player comfort. Oh well, everyone's gotta be a doubter about some classic game or another!

 

If you're in Brisbane, you already know that the best you'll do with pre-90s arcade games is to occasionally stumble across a festy badly-maintained unit in a greasy fish'n'chip shop half an hour out of the city. So you really should drop by and gives these games a spin. The event runs until September 30, and it's at 166 Ann Street (just down the road from Central Station).