The Finnish Museum of Games opens in Tampere
The Finnish digital gaming culture finally gets its own museum when The Finnish Museum of Games opens at Museum Centre Vapriikki on 5 January 2017. This is the first museum of gaming in Finland, and one of the first ones in the world, and gives the many decades of Finnish gaming history the surroundings it deserves.
Come and see the museum and play our games at the press meeting on Thursday 15 December at 10 am.
- The Finnish Museum of Games displays the beginnings of digital gaming in Finland and how this hobby developed over the years, reaching its current position, explains Researcher Outi Penninkangas from Vapriikki.
- Although the focus of the museum is on digital games, we have not forgetten board games and role-playing games either.
The Finnish Museum of Games is focused on experiences: visitors can try the games in their authentic environments. There are more than 100 games on display, and 60 of them can be played.
We have, for example, an arcade where you can play coin-operated games. You can also visit the room of a Commodore 64 enthusiast and play the NES games from the early 1990s in the home of an NES gamer.
- Some world-class rarities are also available for playing. In other museums, you can only admire these from a distance, explains Mikko Heinonen from Pelikonepeijoonit.
- All our gaming machines have been carefully restored to their original glory, thanks to crowd-funding.
Some of the museum’s costs have been covered by crowd funding. The supporters who bought advance tickets during our campaign can already visit the Finnish Museum of Games in December, and the museum’s doors will open to eveyone else on 5 January 2017.
The Finnish Museum of Games is the result of a collaborative project by the Media Museum Rupriikki housed in Vapriikki, Pelikonepeijoonit and the University of Tampere.
A trio of Finnish game collectors, Pelikonepeijoonit, has recorded Finnish gaming history since 1999. They donated their collection of hundreds of gaming devices and thousands of games to be used by the Finnish Museum of Games in their exhibitions.
With a picturesque location beside the Tammerkoski rapids, Vapriikki is a museum centre that offers things to see and do for the whole family. We host about a dozen exhibitions at a time, with varied themes, including history, technology, and natural sciences. Vapriikki is also home to the Natural History Museum of Tampere, the Mineral Museum, the Postal Museum, the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame, the Media Museum Rupriikki and the Doll Museum.
For more information contact:
Researcher Outi Penninkangas, Rupriikki, tel. +358 50 341 3262
Mikko Heinonen, Pelikonepeijoonit, tel. +358 50 558 0976
More information about the museum at www.vapriikki.fi/en
