Vapriikki Game Museum

The Game Museum is an exhibit in Vapriikki Museum, which is located in Tampere, 179 kilometers north of Finland’s capital, Helsinki. Here, you can experience the history of game culture from a Finnish perspective.

The entrance to the Vapriikki Museum in Tampere, Finland.

Historical Eras

The exhibit features multiple decorated Finnish rooms that showcase different gaming cultures throughout history. In these rooms, you can also play games that are available.

Set in the 1970s during Christmas, this room features a Pong Console.

Set in the 1980s, this room showcases Commodore 64, “The Home Computer of a Nation” and Boulder Dash.

Set in the 1990s, this room features the Nintendo Entertainment System Console and the wooden Labyrinth first manufactured by BRIO of Sweden in 1946.

This room is set in the mid-1990s and has a PC and a CD Player. Rules of Conduct for the Finnish Assembly 1995 LAN event are shown on the wall.

The videogame store “Peijoonit” is set in the early 2000s. You can play SEGA Dreamcast here.

A gaming “cellar” set in the late 2000s, here you can play Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on SEGA Mega Drive.

The Consoles

This wall showcases the many home video game consoles that have been released.

The Evolutionary Tree of Video Game Consoles

Magnavox Odyssey, the first commercial video game console that was released in 1972.

The Games

The exhibit, of course, features several different games that you can play or view their physical copies. Different console games, PC games, mobile games, arcade games, board games, and tabletop games are all represented in the exhibition.

Pocket Monsters (1996)

“I was really careful in making monsters faint rather than die. I think that young people playing games have an abnormal concept about dying. They start to lose and say, ‘I’m dying.’ It’s not right for kids to think about a concept of death that way. They need to treat death with more respect.”

• Satoshi Tajiri, CEO, and Founder of Game Freak Inc, Director, Game Designer, Scenario Writer, Map Designer of Pocket Monsters: Red & Green

A display case showcasing an international game copy from each generation of the Pocket Monsters series, among other memorabilia, including a Pokéwalker unit on top of the case.

Pocket Monsters, or internationally known as the Pokémon franchise, started as a project of embodying Japanese Satoshi Tajiri’s childhood hobby of insect collecting on Nintendo’s Game Boy in 1996 and has since evolved into the largest global multimedia franchise. This franchise is known for its ambition to push Nintendo’s portable hardware to its limits. It remains to be seen whether the leap to the home game console Nintendo Switch hardware will continue this trend.

HUGO (1993)

You cannot always win… Not even every time!

• Hugo

The Hugo franchise was made by the Danish company Interactive Television Entertainment in 1990s and was originally played via corded phone on a television screen over live broadcasts before being ported to PC. This game combines skills such as restricted controls, timing, quick navigation and memory. The levels you can play at Vapriikki include the “Train” and “Airplane”. These two levels are arguably the easiest ones of a total of 21 levels due to their short length and controls based only on a horizontal plane. Later levels in the series such as “Canyon” add memory mechanics which require the player to have a high level of concentration on the game constantly for them to be successful.

My Summer Car (2016)

“My Summer Car is the answer to driving games’ forevermore neglection of what driving a car really is.”

• Johannes Rojola, CEO of Amistech Games and Developer of My Summer Car

A display case showcasing parts and service manual of Nissan Datsun 100A, the car that was the inspiration for My Summer Car’s Satsuma AMP. On the right is Johannes Rojola’s personal greeting for the museum viewers from which the above quote was taken.

The Finnish developer of My Summer Car has painstakingly recreated a virtual representation of Nissan Datsun 100A which is portrayed in the game as Satsuma AMP. Like the developer has modeled all of the parts, it is the player’s job to painstakingly rebuild and repair the car from hundreds of loose parts so it is fit to be taken to Rally and Drag Race events. At the same time, the gamer must manage the needs of the player character. A PC station in the museum allows you play a version of the game from its early development phase.

Conclusion

I would really like to write about more games that were presented in the exhibition, but we are now nearing the end of the article. The game museum is just one of the beautiful and wonderful exhibitions in Vapriikki, and experiencing them all in full can take multiple days, so If you wish to visit the museum, plan accordingly!