MC: But I think that’s a great thing about Power Up, in that it can kind of shine a light on some of the things that you think you remember and you go, ‘Oh, actually do you know what, we’ve come a long way.’

Total Darkness uses digital storytelling to help children recognise how the skills they have and use everyday are useful to STEM. The games we play online tend to be modern first person shooters. Not that I particularly love the quality of them, but they’re just accessible and it’s the sort of consensus. Being quite competent in first person shooters we went straight for the N64 GoldenEye. We were terrible at it. I could not believe the control system was as it was on the N64 until you start trying to play it again. And so there is that funny thing about nostalgia when nostalgia meets reality. MC: The vast majority of games are up to PEGI 12, and I have one or two PEGI 16 recommended, like Halo 3 – where we have a sign out that says this game is PEGI rated. MC: They’re not paid by us, we have an amazing, huge range of volunteering programmes in the organisation, who deliver tours around the museum, do other things, do stuff behind the scenes… GC: Retro gaming has got very expensive in recent years. So was all this more costly than your overlords imagined?The good thing is we are only talking about the last 50 years. Most of the people, thankfully, are still around, and we have opportunities to tell those stories. The Science Museum Group recently did appoint a curator of gaming technologies. I’m not a curator. My job in the organisation is to create immersive commercial experiences, and that’s why I also run a cinema. Electricity is fundamental in the modern world. In KS2 your students will be learning the basics of how electricity works and the Science Musuem’s ‘Launchball’ is the perfect way to test their electrical science knowledge. Get this game up on your interactive whiteboard and challenge your students to get the ball rolling across the levels, using electricity, wind and other energy to do so. Earth and space: Stargazing Live – BBC

Playing ball is a phrase with many meanings, and this category includes “playing ball” in every circumstance where it is possible. In the US, playing ball may refer to playing baseball. Your students will discover the mysterious forces that affect the world around us, from gravity to magnets, pushes and pulls. A very simple game, tug of war engages kids’ muscles and their competitive spirit while also teaching them science. All you’ll need for this is a strong but soft rope to reduce the risk of rope burn, a piece of tape and a little bit of scientific knowledge. Teach your children about friction and tension in this fun practical activity. Light and sound: Total Darkness – Science Museum GC: The other thing that you mentioned is that you don’t have any adult stuff, and yet the history of video games is one of extreme violence! GC: Is there no way to have, say, a video montage, or something, of those types of games, to explain why they’re not there? I mean, something like Final Fantasy 7 is incredibly important to the history of gaming and it’s not represented here at all. Cause I was very adamant that I didn’t want us to be a place where consoles come to die. They probably come for a life longer than they ever expected. [laughs]The major changes focus on improvements to user experience, simplifying flows and removing server dependencies to future-proof its portability. The biggest of these changes relates to the wildly successful ‘create and share’ functionality which now allows user-designed levels to be shared via a simple link.

On the 8- and 16-bit not being as heavily represented… obviously, we have the timeline and I think the timeline is fairly comprehensive and you won’t find many consoles that aren’t in that timeline. MC: Yes, we’re good friends, we talk all the time. We are… watch this space is all I would say for, for what happens next for gaming and the way we talk about it in Science Museum Group. So, I haven’t ignored them, but they are definitely not as prevalent in the entire space as some of the… I’d say taking it from the SNES and Mega Drive era onwards, where things got a little bit more accessible and there are still a volume available. GC: It seems to me there could be a serious anthropological study done here, because I don’t think the relationship between different generations of families and video games has ever been studied. I don’t think anything to do with video games is studied well. Even the ones about whether games are dangerous always end up having a tiny sample size and dubious parameters. It’s all terrible science.At the heart of the game – just like in the gallery – lies a set of scientific phenomena. In-gallery, the comprehension of the science is provided through practical demonstrations and installations, whereas in the game, players get to understand the science by experimenting and witnessing causal effect, in a ‘sandbox’ environment. MC: You’ve probably seen the study that came out just a couple of weeks ago, about 87% of games before 2010 not being commercially available. There’s, there’s so many stories that risk being lost. We undertook that in about 2018 and then, obviously, 2020 came along and did what it did. So around that time we were looking to see what we could deliver in the museum on a longer term basis and I put together the proposal to deliver what you’ve seen today, which is the permanent gallery.