Consollection found!

This shared post hides a motive of mine: one day my children can access and see all the games consoles we have had experienced within last 25 years (the photo is a mere part of them). History in our hands... Every console we have touched instantly becomes part of our cultural memory. In times gone by, people collected coins, dolls … train numbers – and some still do.

Consollection is a history of the (video) games console evolution: from Apple’s Pippin Atmark, Atari’s VCS 260 through to the Sony Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. If you’re between 5 and 40 years old, you’re going to remember one of these consoles as your first - they’re very sensual, intimate devices. They’ve become designed to better mould to your hand, and allowed your imagination to take flight on screen. More buttons were added everytime, controls became more complex, and then were slowly taken away, and we’re moving today to a future where our bodies do the interacting; where we are the console.These days, new inventions become normal and standard in a generation. There are kids now who’ve never heard of The Beatles, and can’t conceptualise the world without the Internet. They’ve created their own history, a world of hardware and software being constantly refined, reduced in size, expanded in capacity.

These now historic items, collectable physically or in cultural memory, have always been supported by advances in software; bringing the Streetfighter & Grand Theft Auto series to life, just as they did with early games like Pacman, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong. Going right back you might remember the earliest Tennis games (two blocks and a moving square ball going from side to side!). Future generations will look back on our manual control systems with a mixture of amusement and nostalgia. Somewhere, there’ll be collections with coins, stamps, and computer game consoles!