Retro video games going high-brow at Indiana State Museum

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Vintage arcade games - you know, the ones you remember from your misspent youth such as Asteroids and Pac-Man - are once again objects of fascination and wonder.

And not just to kids in their parents' basements either but also to well-adjusted, sophisticated adults - thought leaders.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York started collecting early video games, including Pong, in 2013, amid some art critics' criticisms.

A year earlier, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., ushered in video games' move to high-brow with the show "The Art of Video Games."

And recently the Indiana State Museum, known for the frequency of its Abraham Lincoln exhibits, began play. Its "Celebration Arcade" was such a hit - 2,300 visitors and $8,000 in revenue in its first month despite scant promotion - curators are keeping the interactive exhibit around for four more months.

It is being rebranded as "Retro Arcade." Most of the two dozen or so games are at least a quarter-century old. Galaga. Crystal Castles. Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat. Sullivan still goes by "Danny," but he has been eligible for Social Security since 2012. It has been 31 years since he won the Indy 500.

The state museum has gone to lengths to make its exhibit resemble one of those cave-like arcades that were staples in shopping malls in the 1980s. The lights are dimmed, and a curtain covers the window. The games' jangly, boingy electronic noises, familiar to people of a certain age, fill the space.

In the days before gaming became something you did at home, it was a communal activity you did in arcades.

"This takes people back to their childhoods," said Damon Lowe, 42, the exhibit's curator.

Today is a time of retro cool. The Indiana Pacers' Hickory jerseys. Manhattan cocktails. Music on vinyl. Mutton chops. On Tuesday rap performers Salt-N-Pepa played a sold-out show at the Vogue in Broad Ripple. They won a Grammy at the peak of their popularity - in 1994.

Retro arcade games are having a sort of super-moment. Not only are they museum pieces, they're also the feature attractions of a new kind of night club - arcade bars. At a handful of places around the country, including in hipster mecca Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you can drink a craft beer and play Donkey Kong. Indianapolis will have one called Tappers, 501 Virginia Ave., in the next few months, said Tappers principle Jeff Moulton. Moulton, 31, explains retro's draw this way: "People are craving authenticity."

"Times are tough now," said Kaylin Lapan, the Smithsonian's 26-year old new media program coordinator (she helped organize Saturday's "Indie Arcade," a now-annual gamer-palooza at the museum), "so it's nice to look back on a time that seems like it was simpler. We get to think about a time our parents were still taking care of us, and we were in school, and school wasn't that hard."

Whether paired with a pale ale or an Abe Lincoln exhibit, the video games of yore are on an undeniable upward spiral. It marks a turnabout from a time they drew criticism as, at best, a waste of time.

"With any new medium, you at one point see condemnation," said Chris Totten, who teaches at American University and heads the Washington, D.C., chapter of the International Game Developers Association. "It's a pattern. In the '50s they said comic books were ruining youth."

Last week registered nurse Kevin Smith spent a day off with his three sons at the state museum's arcade exhibit. He took a turn on Galaga. Smith is 46. Galaga is 35. Smith scored 30,000. "Huh," he said. "It seems like I used to get 80,000, but I could be remembering wrong."

Digital imaging has come a long way since Galaga's era. Lowe, the exhibit's curator, said when his son first saw Asteroids, a game Atari debuted the year before Ronald Reagan was elected president, he was underwhelmed. "He was like, 'It's a triangle shooting at dots,'" Lowe said. "But then he played it, and he ended up liking it."

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Source: The Indianapolis Star, http://indy.st/1T2lYyr

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Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com