Hasta La Ideas

Courtesy of The Strong, Rochester, New York

Courtesy of The Strong, Rochester, New York

This will be difficult for Generation Xbox to comprehend, but it used to be that when kids wanted to get their game on, they had to amass a bunch of quarters and take the subway to a videogame arcade. And arcades used to be something like dive bars for kids—they were always shady, filled with cigarette smoke exhaled by miscreants, and there was always the possibility you’d get your ass kicked or have your jacket forcibly taken from you. Even still, arcades were awesome.

Perhaps the strangest thing compared to today’s sleek gaming system boxes were the huge cabinets games used to be mounted in. They were phone-booth-sized particle board affairs sometimes laminated with fake woodgrain, as if some artisan had carved Ms. Pac-Man out of mahogany. The fact that they were in cabinets had at least one positive long-term effect: Shigeru Miyamoto, game god and Donkey Kong inventor, started out as an industrial designer tasked with creating cabinets for Nintendo.

In any case, we’ve just learned that the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, up in Rochester, New York, has somehow got their hands on what they’re calling the Atari Arcade Design Collection: 250 industrial design drawings of arcade game cabinets dating from 1974 to 1989, in all of their primitive marker-rendering glory.

Courtesy of The Strong, Rochester, New York

The collection provides a rare visual documentation of the thinking behind the design of Atari’s coin-operated games at a time when the arcade was the hub of the video game industry and Atari was the leading producer of arcade games.

According to ICHEG Director Jon-Paul Dyson, “These drawings offer a rare look into how designers created Atari’s iconic arcade cabinets. Researchers will find new information about the development of these games, and the vivid visuals of these designs give them great potential for public exhibit displays.”

Courtesy of The Strong, Rochester, New York

Speaking of which, when will they be displayed? We contacted ICHEG and they’re saying possibly this summer, though no hard date has been set. Sadly all we’ve been given are the paltry teaser images here, which weren’t even scanned, but appear to be cell phone pics of drawings laid on a table. Shocking, isn’t it, to see how these primitive marker drawings created a generation of dreams?

Courtesy of The Strong, Rochester, New York

Rochester’s a good six hours away from NYC, but if ICHEG posts some more compelling teaser images, I’d consider taking the trip up there. I’d like to see the drawings displayed in a gallery populated by civilized adults, where I could walk in wearing whatever jacket I wanted and not have to worry about walking back out in a T-shirt and with a fresh black eye.

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