Now no longer even pretending to be educational

What's on at Sloan Museum these days, I'm sure you're wondering.  (This is the museum that we re-christened the Dinosaur Museum when Thomas was tiny because they had a display of terrifying animatronic dinosaurs that both attracted and repelled him.)  Well, turns out they've stopped trying to appeal to/terrify the tots and have decided to target sad middle-aged men.  That's my people!  How do I know?  Because this is their current exhibit:

They give you 4 tokens at the door and you can pay for more if you like, but I've stockpiled tons because I whizz through the museum all the time with Frederick and he shows no interest.  What youngster wouldn't be drawn to flickering monochrome blips, you ask?  Beats me!  (The one on the left is the earliest ever game, called "Computer Space" that was probably played by Bill Gates in his formative years.  The one on the right needs no introduction.  No, it isn't a game about foul smells.)

This is the first one I remember playing, on a holiday in Wales, whence Sophy and I had been shipped by parents desperate for a break.  (They left us on the platform in Taunton and departed whooping with joy.)  Many's the 10P I sank into this.  It was no loss, I would otherwise have spent them on souvenir shells or rock or some other tat.

A classic.  I mostly played the version that Ralph burned into the EPROM of my Commodore PET.  Yes, that sentence was intended to be Greek to most of you.

Now you're talking.  Sadly it was on the fritz this particular day, but this is the fastest and most fiendishly difficult game EVER.  Well, except for its sequel (Stargate), which added yet another button.  Great sound effects, especially when a humanoid is being snatched by an evil alien.  Also good "whump" sounds - sometimes it pays to be in a big chipboard cabinet.

I love the little graph paper sketches.  I did many similar such things in my rough book when I was supposed to be listening to Mr. Isaacs teach us German at Wellington School.

This one I played a lot on my one visit to a student union conference in Blackpool, either 1984 or 85, when I was at Exeter College.  It was that or listen to interminable droning in the actual hall.  I believe at least one future Labour Politician was there.  Quite cured me of student politics, it did.  But the game's good.

Sadly, as with many joys of my childhood, the grip has loosened, and I no longer feel the need to spend the day hunched over a joystick in the fetid dark.  Now I look at that sentence, that's probably a good thing.  Perhaps it would've been different if they'd've had Amidar, a strange Pac Man ripoff where you alternate between being a gorilla and... a paint roller.  It's only my fave because it happened to be the game that the failed CB shop in Wellington had that me and my pimply pals used to go cluster round after school.  I was the first to get the SECOND extra life, an achievement that is easily top three in my lifetime triumphs.