On thursday I went to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) to check out the Game On exhibition.

According to their website “The Game On exhibition has thrilled more than a million players of all ages from around the world.”.

Most of my old favourites were there including Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time [Nintendo 64], 007: GoldenEye [Nintendo 64], Sonic the Hedge Hog [Sega MegaDrive], and DigDug [Arcade].

The most popular of all the games were the four XBox 360s setup in a multiplayer square shape all playing Halo 3 on 32” HD screens, and the two nintendo Wii’s connected to 50” Plasma screens, playing Wii Sports: Tennis and Mario & Sonic Olympics.

Some of the highlights of the exhibition were the top ten gaming consoles of all time - which included the PlayStation, Game Boy, Atari, Commodore 64 and the Commodore Amiga. They had a dozen fully working arcade machines with games from asteroids to Dig Dug to Ms Pacman to Street Fighter and a sample of 20+ different fully working hand-held gaming consoles including the Nintendo DS, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance.

Connected to a 3 metre projector screen in the centre of the exhibition was a fully functional Mechwarrior cockpit. The whole system is quite complicated in that you are required you to flick 5 switches to engage the system, then you had to wait for the onscreen power gauges to reach at least 75% before you can start the ignition. The inverse aim joystick on the 100-ton war machine also made shooting difficult.

My favourite stall at the exhibition was the original storyboard from the development of the Grand Theft Auto 3 game. The wall featured a detailed family tree of all of the missions and 200 lines of the source code used for when a vehicle blows up. The exhibition is being held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in federation square, Melbourne until Sunday the 13th July. The exhibition is open from 10am-7pm every day and till 9pm on thursday nights. Full Price is $15 and Concession card holders pay only $10.

You can find out more information about the exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image website.