Exhibition formerly in the William Fox Gallery. In the fall of 1989, before “virtual” was a reality and before the appearance of interactive multimedia, CD-ROMs, and something called the World Wide Web, the American Museum of the Moving Image surveyed the history of the world’s first digital entertainment medium with the exhibition Hot Circuits: A Video Arcade. Ten years later, we find ourselves in the midst of a "retro-gaming" craze. The Internet has become ground zero for arcade arcana, offering extensive information for collectors and fans, shareware homages, arcade game emulation software that, when paired with the code from the original game, makes your PC think that it’s Pac-Man, and multi-player games that turn our digital telecommunications networks into one massive game palace. Back on store shelves, video-game companies are discovering what the music industry has known for a long time: the past can be mined for profit. The classics are being cloned, emulated, compiled, enhanced, and updated for a home market made up of children craving novelty and post-boomers binging on nostalgia. There are deeper reasons why these games endure. Arcade games familiarized an entire generation with computers and screen-based interaction. They remain an object lesson in game design. Despite their technologically complex origins, they can be experienced as simple but intense pleasures, with engaging play mechanics and elegant interfaces. —Carl Goodman, Curator of Digital Media