Videogame City

My brief personal gaming history started and stopped with Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Megadrive. I’d never been a mall kid playing Streetfighter on arcade games; and occasional goes on friends’ Ataris and Nintendos didn’t turn me into lifelong Space Invaders or Donkey Kong addicts. But I know I’m unusual in that… particularly amongst the digital community. Whether its a new media company with its office Wii, a casual game on your iPhone, or Grand Theft Auto allnighters with beer and pizza, Manchester’s a videogame city.
So I’m pleased that Urbis are celebrating the phenomenon of the video game – now over thirty years old – in a new exhibition starting in mid-May called Videogame Nation. Britain, and the North West in partiicular have been amongst the most creative areas for video game development o ver the years, so its an appropriate place for such an interesting exhibition. I’m imagining a wide range of nostalgia fiends will be taking their offspring along and reminiscing over forgotten favourites. With the Wii Fit and Nintendo Brain Training, video games have got a much better press of late, and it will be fascinating to see the development of the fad that never faded.