This console-filled structure greets National Videogame Museum visitors in the opening lobby. Old promotional videos play on a loop on the screens facing both directions.
FRISCO, Texas—Finally, there’s a museum made for people like me. The National Videogame Museum (yes, they spell it as one word) has been open since April of this year in the Dallas-area suburb of Frisco, and it houses an incredible collection of gaming memorabilia. The rarest cartridges, systems, and prototypes are all here, protected as if they were the Mona Lisa (and for some game collectors, they may as well be). Come here to marvel at one-of-a-kind finds like a Nintendo World Championship cartridge, a mint-condition Ultra Hand toy, or the only known white-molded Atari 2600 in the world.
This gallery is a dive down game-collector wonk, with a mix of super-rare items and collections of various gaming “eras.” Here is arguably the most famous of the NES’s rare carts.
But fear not; the giant museum houses a ton of playable games from every era imaginable, along with a lot of interactive exhibits. “We hate museums,” NVM co-founder John Hardie told me while he gave me a tour of the space, and he emphasized that he wanted his creation to feel different than any other museum in the world.
