The Museum visit process
The way that someone can visit the museum is through booking a visit spot exclusively via our website. The reason is purely technical and relates to the limited availability of spaces per visit.
The museum, despite covering 200sq.m, is space restricted by virtue of the volume of the games and can only host 30 persons. And this is essential in order to avoid overcrowding. The only way through which we can ensure a satisfactory and functional experience for everyone is the pre-booking of your visit slot.
ωραριο λειτουργιας & περιοδοι επισκεψης
The museum operates between Monday and Friday between 6pm and 10pm. On Saturdays and Sundays, the museum operates between 10am and 10pm. Each visit slot lasts 3 hours. The visit slots are defined for two reasons. Primarily, because we need to be able to manage the hosting capacity and secondarily because the tour is a compulsory function of the operation of the museum (legislative requirement) and consequently without defined slots it would be impossible to schedule the tours.
On weekdays, the visit lasts three hours and relates to a consecutive 3-hour slot within the 4-hour period. So, someone may come at 6pm and leave at 9pm or come at 7pm and leave at 10pm. On weekends, the slots are 10am – 1pm, 1pm – 4pm, 4pm to 7pm and 7pm to 10pm.
Again, unfortunately due to organizational reasons, we are forced to maintain a strict time schedule. We didn’t cut a single minute from the visitation time, to ensure that we did not deprive this from your experience. But as a consequence, we won’t be able ever to give you “just 5’ pleaseee”.
Do we book exclusively online?
Yes. There are no tickers on the door. You can book your tickets from the website via the «Visit Booking» section. You can choose your date and time of visit from the available slots, book and pay online. You can reschedule for free at any time up to the time of your visit.
Unfortunately, as we have said above, there will be strictly no access to the museum to anyone without a reservation and there are no exceptions to this policy. For anyone. Moreover, our staff are unable to issue any “tickets” on the door.
Visit cost
The visit cost for anyone that wishes also to use the games is:
- Adults:12€ including VAT per 3-hour slot.
- Children up to 6 years old: Free
- Children between 6 and 12 years old: 3€ inc. VAT per slot.
- Children between 12 and 18 years old: 6€ inc. VAT per slot.
- Students: 9€ inc. VAT per slot.
Nevertheless, again via the online booking system, you are able to book a completely free visit, that includes the historical tour, but no use of the games. We offer this ability as we believe that access to knowledge must be open to everyone and must be free. For the same reason, visit is completely free (with use of the equipment) for schools, universities and other institutions, as long as these are organized by the institution itself.
What is included in the tour?
Your visit includes being welcomed by our staff, who will inform you on which tour group you have been allocated to. You will then be able to browse and use any games you wish. Our staff will inform you when your tour starts.
We will hold the tours in groups of 7 – 10 persons, so that you will have the opportunity to hear the historical tour, but also ask any questions you may have. The tour contains a short historical narration about the consoles and arcade games that started the video games industry. We will place emphasis on those that made significant impact to the technological development and to those that were loved the most. You should expect to see some machines that you loved a lot and some that you have never seen before. We place more emphasis on those that may not have been widely known but have significant impact in the development of the industry. After all, we are a museum and the visit and tour aim to have an educational character. At the same time, we aim to give you the opportunity to feel the joy of using the games that you loved. The tour contains the first video game console in history, the Magnavox Odyssey, and the authentic Atari Pong, but goes up to a technology demonstrator of Sega featuring holographic projection. The rarest a game is, the more we are intrigued by it!
Which games can we use?
You can use all the arcade games. The video game consoles will be on shelves behind glass and are available for demonstration and exhibition purposes only. We hope to be able to make some of them available soon during special events. But we seek your understanding of the fact that the video game consoles were not created to operate 24/7. The arcades were! Now, there is a wonderful video game console museum available in Greece, where you can get a much better video game console experience and we are very excited about this fact. So, if you are really into video game consoles, please visit the Video Games Museum at https://www.videogamesmuseum.org/
The machines do not need any coins or other forms of payment to play a game and their use is absolutely free for those who have purchased a ticket. The machines are programmed to be in Free Play mode or have a free credit button, depending on what their technology permits.