Near TCO: National Videogame Museum

By the Welcome Reception on Tuesday night I’ve had time to visit several places from the list of sightseeing ideas (see my previous post). My favorite place from the list so far the National Videogame Museum.

Normally I’m not a huge fan of videogames, especially old ones - they were not part of my childhood or even teens, so they don’t carry a nice fuzzy feeling with them. But this museum I enjoyed greatly, more because it has not only rows and rows of artifacts and memorabilia from various epochs of video games, but also lots of games you can actually play, from a giant reconstruction of Pong to modern Xbox games.

My top pick is The Typing of the Dead - a hilarious shooter arcade in which you get rid of zombies and other monsters by typing words and phrases quickly and correctly. That’s one way to learn touch-typing! I balked at the final boss fight, and only because it was time to leave for the reception.

As a bonus, kit1980 persuaded one of the retro computers which was supposed to run some kind of a game to celebrate Topcoder Open 2018 instead :-)

On Wednesday the TCO started in earnest; you can hear (or read, if you’re not watching the live broadcast) more from me on the Marathon competition. Stay tuned!