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The show's accompanying text is a fount of video-game lore. Space Invaders was the only game to spawn a physical malady recognized by the New England Journal of Medicine: Space Invaders' wrist. A programming bug in Defender, one of the most complex of the space-battle games, made play virtually endless once the score reached 900,000 (its makers thought no one would ever beat 60,000). The origin of the odd name Donkey Kong is still unclear. Some say Donkey came from a Japanese word for stupid; others claim that the game was intended to be called Monkey Kong, but its Japanese manufacturers misspelled it.
Video arcades were once viewed by parents as the worst havens for truancy and other youthful mischief since the pool halls that caused such trouble in River City. Today they look like important precursors of the computer revolution: Would PCs have been so quickly accepted if consumers hadn't first got their computer feet wet with video games? Artistically, too, the machines often present dazzling displays of computerized graphics and animation.
Both the graphics and the games have steadily grown more sophisticated. In 720 degrees, players ride a skateboard at breakneck speed through mazelike city streets. In NARC, the newest game on display, a gun-wielding cop mows down a horde of onrushing drug dealers in various seedy locales, from slum street to subway platform. Stunning, loony stuff. But what NARC lacks is the imaginative abstractions of the older, less realistic games: the swirling, swooping attack forces in the space game Galaga (maybe the best machine omitted by the exhibit) or the kaleidoscope of insect-like creatures in the still mesmerizing Centipede. Ah, those were the days.