Game Masters....

After finishing our presentations last week we decided to take a long weekend to rest and relax. I had come down with some kind of bug that wouldn't let up for over two weeks. Unfortunately, I was still recovering several days after the talks so we spent Sat/Sun resting at home. On Monday we decided to get out of the house and just as you'd expect Wellington delivered gray skies and rain. :) We weren't surprised or too bothered so we decided to do one of the ultimate Wellington-rainy-day activities: visit our local museum, Te Papa.

Bundled in rain gear we walked downtown and found our way to the special exhibition called GameMasters. After donning our nerdy gamer wristbands we started at the beginning of the beginning. That is, old school arcade style video games. We played the classics like Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and something like Missile Command.

Then we moved onto what I consider the ultimate blast-from-the-past video games: Super Mario Brothers. They had a large section of the one of the rooms dedicated to our favorite Italian plumbers. It was awesome - you could sit down and play any of the games. Talk about a walk down memory lane! We played the original Mario Brothers, you know the ones with the grey console and controller. :)

One some larger screens they had newer, multiple player games like Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter and Super Mario Galaxy. Tim and I spent some time playing together to beat a level of Lego Harry Potter - talk about fun!!

Then I moved onto the arcade racing games that are actually shaped like cars with gas/break pedals and all. It was hilarious to feel the entire machine move when you fly around a corner or more likely when you fly off the track and crash into a palm tree. :)

Much to my surprise I then fell in love with a 3D Sonic (the hedgehog) game. Wearing the 3D glasses over my glasses (awesome I know) I raced Sonic through the crazy course - it was so much fun. :) Thinking about it now I realized that was the first time I'd ever played a Sega game. 

We moved onto the simulation games and I almost Tim for good. He started playing SimCity, where you build your own city from the ground up, and it took considerable effort to budge him from the spot! But once I did we went to play really interesting, almost virtual reality, games with amazing graphics. We also found a big screen with Kinect Fruit Ninja - Timmy was a natural!

Lastly we went and played a round of Rock Band - in short, a disaster. In the end we wanted play Angry Birds they had set up on a HUGE touch screen (imagine your TV) but there were two guys hogging it for more than an hour. Sigh.

In the end we had a great time, played games that we've always loved and tried others we had never seen before. Some of them I can't really describe so the incoherence isn't included in the above descriptions. Overall, it was a really fun way to spend a rainy day. It makes me want to play Lego Harry Potter again and Tim has already downloaded SinCity so he can play to home. Nerds. :)