The National Videogame Museum in the UK has launched a new exhibition called “Together We Play,” running from 18th July and highlighting the personal stories, memorabilia, and keepsakes players associate with their favorite games. Iconic franchises like Tomb Raider and Super Mario feature prominently among the celebrated titles.
Rather than treating games as static artifacts behind glass, the show emphasizes participation. Visitors are invited to share their own gaming memories and collections, framing the medium as a living social practice shaped by the people who play it. The event aims to honor the bonds, friendships, and shared spaces that have grown up around a common love of interactive entertainment.
Why It Matters to Retro Fans
For anyone who spent formative years in arcades or trading cartridges with friends, the exhibition’s theme will feel familiar. The retro era was shaped as much by the social spaces around games—arcade aisles, living-room couches, schoolyard trading circles—as by the software itself. A museum show that puts personal collections and shared memories at the center acknowledges that gaming history is also people history.
The Headlining Franchises
Tomb Raider, which debuted in 1996 from Core Design, became one of the defining action-adventure series of its era and helped establish the template for cinematic exploration in 3D. The original trilogy remains a touchstone for late-90s console and early home-PC gaming. Super Mario, meanwhile, has been a fixture of the medium since the early 1980s and remains one of the most recognized characters in popular culture, with a catalog spanning platformers, racing games, sports titles, and more.
Including both franchises signals the breadth of history the museum wants to honor. One represents the rapid technological leap of the mid-1990s; the other spans decades of platforming tradition reaching back to the dawn of the home console era. Together they illustrate how the medium has scaled from simple side-scrollers to sprawling 3D adventures, while the player communities around them have only multiplied.
The launch comes as video games continue their rise as a dominant global entertainment industry, but the museum’s focus is squarely on the human side. For readers tracking developments in retro preservation and gaming culture, the exhibition is part of the broader retro gaming news landscape where institutions work to keep play history alive for new generations.
Source: Time Extension