Systems

Electronic game ‘Shuttle Voyage’

1983

This Shuttle Voyage game is a Chinese copy of Ninendo’s Game and Watch series of electronic games. Game and Watch was a successful line of products from Nintendo that generated enough profit for the company to invest heavily in researching and developing the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Gameboy. This ensured the company’s survival and dominance through a competitive period of electronic game industry development, consumption and growth. The game has a monochrome LCD (liquid crystal display) screen on which the player can control the movement of characters through a themed set of tasks. The balance between an achievable outcome and a degree of difficulty invited the user to play the game again and again, thus achieving one of the principal goals of electronic game design. This electronic game comes from a group of twelve items donated by Michael Henry, which together provide a glimpse of play and family life in one Australian household.