- Who
- Computerspielemuseum Berlin
- What
- first first
- Where
- Germany (Berlin)
- When
- 1997
Founded in 1997, the Computerspielemuseum Berlin, in Berlin, Germany, was the first dedicated videogame museum. Initially operating as a physical museum, the institution moved online in the year 2000, before opening its current location on Karl-Marx-Allee on 21 January 2011. The museum holds over 300 items in its permanent exhibition “Computerspiele. Evolution eines Mediums” ("Computer Games. Evolution of a Medium"), including various arcade cabinets including Computer Space, Pong, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders.
Among the museum's more unusual exhibits are the original valve-operated early German computer game Nimrod from 1951 and the PainStation from 2001, an adapted version of Pong that literally punishes the player whenever they lose a point with "an electric shock or a hit from the whiplash".
The museum also has a Poly-Play cabinet, the first and only videogame machine produced in the former East Germany (GDR) by VEB Polytechnik Karl-Marx-Stadt.
