Game, the video game through time at the EDF Foundation

If at 50 years old you don&#8217t have a video game console, it&#8217s because you have missed your life. Oblikon.

From March 1 to August 27, 2017, the EDF Foundation welcomes Game, the video game through time. An exhibition at the same time playful, erudite and didactic, where all the generations meet to have fun and exchange ! Organized on three levels in a beautiful and luminous space, it&#8217s a journey as pleasing as stimulating, with the curator Jean Diez at the controls.

Graduate in philosophy, Jean Zeid discover the video game from childhood with Pong, like the entire generation of the 1970s. Later, and for almost 20 years, he practices the cinema as a columnist and journalist at Europe 2, RFM and Le Mouv‘. Since 2010, he makes a weekly column, on franceinfo, in which he evokes video games and social networks.

From the outset, the EDF Foundation welcomes visitors with Uncharted 4 on the big screen: An action and adventure game published by Sony, which features the character of Nathan Drake, an Indiana-Jones-like. Multiple adventures await this hero, which are all pretexts for sublime graphics and decors in the virtual world bluffing realism.

Home sports fans are particularly well catered for, as four versions of the famous game are presented FIFA, which fully justifies the title of the exhibition. But you can also practice car racing with the arcade terminal Deluxe Outrun. And dance on the second arcade terminal Dance Dance revolution from Konami A very musical game on which the public reproduces a choreography by following the arrows on a ground carpet.

On the cerebral sport side, a Nintendo Game boy in human size is exposed, like a menhir impassive to the evolutions that surround it. Imagined by Aleksei Pajitnov, A Soviet computer engineer, this videogame symbol with its monochrome screen from the end of the 80s, which was incredibly successful when it was launched, tests the sagacity and speed of the visitors with a virtual realitya huge Tetris The addictive version of the perpetual puzzle !

But before continuing this exhibition on the second floor, we remain long minutes interested in two other original places on the first floor: The first is a simple room where is hung, like a gallery, a dozen paintings that are actually screenshots of famous video games, such as Day of the Tentacle or Another World. Of course, this immediately questions the visitor about the art in video games. And the second place is like a recreation of a teenager&#8217s bedroom where a multitude of vintage items such as consoles and figurines emblematic of a past but not so distant era are piled up 🙂

Once on the floor, the oldest games are exposed. It starts with the inevitable nod to Pong, the cocktail table of Atari. Then, we naturally take a lot of pleasure to (re)play mythical shoot’em up like Defender and Space Invaders, or inexhaustible platform games like Sonic and Donkey Kong.

Game, the video game in the test of time ?

In half a century, the video game has become one of the main cultural industries across the planet, and today generates tens of billions of euros ! Whether it&#8217s a platform, adventure or simulation game, video games are constantly exploring new ways of playing and technology. Today, it is the turn of virtual reality to gradually impose themselves in our homes. And on the lower level of the EDF Foundation space, visitors can try out Eagle flight, the game of;Ubisoft where we fly over a totally abandoned Paris, drowned in dense vegetation. Once equipped with a headset on the ears, a second headset on the eyes and a controller, the experience is indeed immersive.

On the other hand, this gear is still uncomfortable, and once removed the most sensitive will feel a bit dizzy for long minutes.

Back to the first floor to conclude the exhibition Game on a real hall of Fame. A very original idea to put on the front of the videogame scene, a name and a face on the creators and -trices of the most iconic games sold worldwide. There are about twenty portraits like the one of the Frenchman Michel Ancel (Rayman, The rabbits) or to the Shigeru Miyamoto (Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda). Since one rarely reads a book without knowing its author, why not do the same with the video game ? And to remind visitors that behind this playful object, there is a creator and therefore an artist, is also to bring an additional brick to the debate which is to know if the video game is a work of art or not…

Between flashback and flashforward, this exhibition is obviously not exhaustive. We do not see Bomberman running in the corridors, nor Boulder Dash along the walls, or Earthworm Jim get out of the elevator. But this video game exhibition is enough rich and surprising to interest an audience from 7 to 77 years old, especially since out of the sixty or so games presented, half are playable.

For sure, the visitors will have only one desire at the end of this exhibition, that to take out its old console of its old box, buried under an avalanche of objects at the bottom of the cupboard, then to slip in the first cartridge come and to plunge virtually into its adolescence.

Then to your handles ! Ready ? Play !

Game, the video game through time
From March 1 – August 27, 2017
Free entrance from Tuesday to Sunday from 12pm to 7pm
EDF Foundation space
6, rue Récamier 75007 Paris