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We should be getting used to seeing video games in museums. But for anyone who's been playing them long enough to see games artlessly demonised or dismissed in the mainstream media, it's still a thrill to see a long-standing cultural institution - in this case, the enormous, ancient National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh - giving over a major wing to arcade cabinets and consoles.Originally staged at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne, the Game Masters exhibition traces the development of the medium over the decades through the lens of some of its most influential creators. This auteur-led approach is flexible enough to cover everything from Eugene Jarvis's Defender to Masaya Matsuura's Parappa The Rapper, via PC classics and innovative tablet games.
Crucially, as well as hearing about the design process through video interviews and poring over concept art, you can play every one of the games featured to see what all the fuss is about. The exhibition space doesn't try and recreate the smoky fug or questionable odours of the dingy arcades of communal memory. If you make it past the serried ranks of original arcades at the entrance, you discover a clean and accessible layout of gaming and video pods - it's big, bold and bright.
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